September 6th could become a small watershed date for millions of Italian motorists. Not because petrol and diesel are suddenly destined to cost less, but for the opposite reason: the government is preparing to abandon the season of general discounts at the pump and to completely change the systemconcentrating resources on those with lower incomes and on the categories that need fuel to work.
The last embankment will remain standing until September 5th. The decree approved by the Council of Ministers on 26 August in fact extends for another ten days the reduction of 17 cents per liter on diesel, obtained through a 14 cent lower excise duty to which the effect of VAT is added. The measure also applies to some alternative fuels to diesel and is accompanied by the extension of the tax credit for road transport. The cost of the operation is approximately 130 million euros.
Then, however, the mechanism should change. And this time it’s not simply a matter of finding more millions to extend the discount by a few weeks.
From September 6th goodbye to haircuts for everyone
The reason is above all economic. Since March, the interventions implemented to keep pump prices under control have absorbed a total of approximately 2.5 billion eurosa figure that makes it increasingly difficult to continue reducing taxes on every liter purchased regardless of the income of the person who buys it.
The principle on which Palazzo Chigi is working is therefore different: no longer distributing the same benefit to anyone who refuels, but using available resources where the increase in fuel has the greatest impact.
This is where the possibles come into play petrol voucherstogether with a support system calibrated to the economic situation of families. The model could be reminiscent of the one already experimented in the years of the energy surge following the Russian invasion of Ukraine: vouchers that can be used for fuel, with tax breaks for those who receive them and for companies that recognize them for their employees. Among the hypotheses under study there is also the extension of the mechanism to self-employed workers.
However, there is no definitive provision yet. The political line has been indicated with greater clarity than its concrete application: the interventions following the deadline of 5 September must be «selective on the basis of income». And this is precisely where the difficulties begin.
Petrol bonuses, social cards and the problem of choosing who to help
Moving from a one-size-fits-all discount to targeted support means establishing a threshold, identifying the beneficiaries and building a system that does not become more expensive to administer than the benefit it distributes.
Among the possibilities that have been circulating in the last few hours is the use of paper Dedicated to youintended for the most economically fragile families, which could be loaded with an extraordinary contribution for fuel. However, it is a solution on which operational and political doubts remain, so much so that the dedicated voucher hypothesis currently appears more easily adaptable to a wider audience.
But income is only half the problem. Because a liter of diesel costing over two euros does not have the same meaning for those who travel a few kilometers a month and for those who spend eight hours a day in a truck, van or taxi. And precisely for this reason the second leg of the intervention should concern the most exposed production categories.
Trucks, vans, taxis and agriculture: expensive fuel becomes inflation
Trucking is at the top of the list. The existing tax credit has been extended along with the diesel discount, but the government is considering a more stable system to protect a sector in which fuel increases are quickly passed on to the cost of goods.
It is a decisive step, because the problem does not just concern those who pay at the pump. If transporting a pallet from a warehouse to a supermarket costs more, part of that increase sooner or later ends up on the receipt.
The same reasoning applies, with different proportions, to taxi drivers, companies that use commercial fleets, farmers, fishermen and workers who travel long distances every day. The executive’s challenge will therefore be to prevent the end of generalized discounts from turning into a new inflationary push when activities resume after the summer.
The numbers explain why political pressure is so high. On August 26, self-service petrol on the national road network was traveling around 2.02 euros per litrewhile diesel exceeded 2.13 euros; on the motorway, already the previous day, the averages were above 2.09 and 2.20 euros respectively.
And it is just as the government and motorists are looking for a solution that something much more interesting is happening on the car market.
The revenge of LPG
While politicians discuss excise duties and bonuses, Italians are voting with their wallets. And a growing part is doing so by choosing a fuel that seemed destined to become progressively marginal: LPG.
In July, liquefied petroleum gas reached the 10.6% of new registrationscompared to just 6.4% for diesel and 5.9% for pure electric cars. Hybrids remain ahead, now dominant with 47.5%, and petrol cars at 19%.
It is a significant result not so much because it heralds a new era of LPG, but because it perfectly illustrates the distance that can be created between long-term industrial strategies and the daily choices of consumers.
When petrol and diesel permanently exceed the psychological threshold of two euros, the average motorist returns to making an extremely simple calculation: How much does it cost to travel one hundred kilometers?
And in that calculation LPG retains an advantage that is difficult to ignore. On the motorway network, while petrol and diesel exceeded 2.09 and 2.20 euros respectively, the average price recorded by Mimit was around 88 cents per litre. Off the motorways, in many regions the averages are still roughly between 75 and 80 cents.
LPG has thus become a sort of refuge fuel: not the most modern, not the one in which the European industry is investing the most, but the one which in an emergency phase gives the motorist something that has become very rare, the predictability of the cost of filling up.
The European paradox: we buy it today, but we don’t know how much future it will have
Here the real paradox emerges. Italian demand is rediscovering LPG exactly at the moment in which European industrial strategies are looking elsewhere. In fact, the objectives on average fleet emissions are pushing manufacturers above all towards electric and other technologies with very low or zero emissions, making it increasingly less strategic to invest in the development of new generations of LPG-powered cars.
However, an important distinction must be made. Today there is no specific European ban on LPG. The legislation currently in force provides for a target of 100% reduction in CO₂ exhaust emissions for new cars from 2035, but in December 2025 the European Commission proposed to change that target, bringing it to 90% and leaving more space, through specific compensations, also for technologies other than pure electric. The review, in August 2026, is still at the center of the European negotiations.
The point, therefore, is not that Brussels has already definitively condemned LPG. It’s thinner: for a manufacturer to invest billions today in a technology that continues to emit CO₂ in the exhaust means betting on a regulatory framework that is still uncertainwhile investments in electric are necessary to meet European targets.
And this is how supply and demand risk moving in opposite directions. Motorists are once again asking for LPG cars because they cost less to use, while the industry is incentivized to concentrate capital and research on other engines.
The transition clashes with the price of full fuel
The photograph of summer 2026 therefore tells something more than a new fuel emergency.
It talks about how difficult it is to plan an energy transition when geopolitics suddenly changes the price of energy and forces families and businesses to think first about the month’s budget rather than the 2035 objectives.
On the one hand, the State cannot continue indefinitely to spend billions to artificially lower the price of each liter of fuel. On the other hand, it cannot allow a surge in crude oil to be transferred entirely to transport, production and consumption.
In the middle there is the motorist. That while Rome is studying selective bonuses and Brussels is slowly rewriting the rules of European cars, it has already found its own answer: looking for a full tank that costs less.
And the fact that, in the summer of 2026, that answer is increasingly the old LPG is perhaps the most surprising fact of all.
