ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Fuel for Thought,” hosts Donovan Woods, director of operations at the Fuels Institute, and Britt Brewer, marketing manager at NACS, talked with fuel experts about the intricacies of fuel quality, octane, engines and fuel efficiency.

The two issues Andrew Austin, senior vice president of specialty products for the Mansfield Energy Corp., hears most from customers revolve around engine technology and the supply chain. “Customers want to know whether there’s a mismatch between that technology and the fuels specifications,” Austin said. The supply chain concern encompasses how fuel is stored and turned over, as well as fuel quality.

“Today, in the fuels industry, there really are a lot of different coalitions around fuel,” including refiners, engine manufacturers, fuel marketers and customers,” Austin said. “It’s very helpful to bring together all these different groups with different points of view … to collaborate around what is a common challenge … of how our transportation industry’s going to be turned upside down in the next 10 to 20 years” by electric vehicles and autonomous driving.

Steve Przesmitzki, global team leader for strategic transport analysis at Aramco R&D, discussed octane and how currently, octane has been used to give engines more power. “There’s actually a more of a push to say the power is fine—let’s push the efficiency gains to actual miles per hours … The engineers if given more octane could design more efficient engines,” he said.

“Fuel retailers care about what fuel they sell,” so Przesmitzki encouraged everyone involved to work together to give customers what they need.

Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play Music and Stitcher and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 39,000 times in more than 95 countries.