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HSV engineering general manager Joel Stoddart says it had been difficult enough for company management to overcome the "taxi mentality".
"It was even harder to understand this and implement it in a performance car," he said.
HSV boss Phil Harding says the decision was made two years ago when petrol was about $1.60 a litre and rising.
"Fuel isn't that price now, but no one will be able to tell me what the price will be in future," he says.
The HSV liquid propane injection (LPi) system was developed with Orbital Engineering. The LPI system features a multi-valve fuel delivery module, meaning that each one of the engine's eight cylinders has both an LPG injector and a petrol injector attached to it. Stoddart says they designed the system to look like original equipment, "not an afterthought". There is no loss in peak power or torque as the engine switches to petrol over 4000rpm.
Stoddart says there is little change to the power and torque curves when running on gas, either.
"Maintaining engine and handling performance was important. We didn't want to dilute the car," he says.
The engine starts in petrol mode, then switches seamlessly between LPG and petrol as required. Running on LPG, CO2 emissions can be reduced by up to 15 per cent and fuel costs can be decreased by up to 50 per cent, depending on the price of LPG and driving styles. The boot loses about 165L of space and weight is increased by about 100kg when the LPG tank is full.
LPi is a $5990 option available on all but the ClubSport R8 Tourer and costs $6390 on the Maloo ute as a new tub liner is required. It is also eligible for the government's $2000 gas rebate.
The LPi system was tested over two years in five vehicles increasing to nine recently. Testing included one major hot trip to Darwin and several to Kununurra in Western Australia with cold and altitude testing in the Alps during the "bumper snow season this year".
It also included marathon 450-hour endurance sessions on the factory dyno and simulated crash evaluation for the tanks.
