Sales of cars fueled by liquefied petroleum gas surged 20 percent in the first five months of this year mainly due to high gasoline prices, a report showed Friday.

According to the Korea LPG Association report, sales of cars that run on the liquefied mixture of propane, butane and other chemicals, reached 76,209 units in the cited period, up from 63,303 an year earlier.

In contrast, sales of gasoline-powered cars dropped 15 percent on-year to 286,922 units, while diesel car sales remained virtually unchanged at 206,600 vehicles.

LPG-powered cars accounted for 13.3 percent of all cars, a gain of 2.9 percent for the whole of last year, with gasoline and diesel vehicles making up 50.2 percent and 36.2 percent of the total, respectively.

“High gasoline costs hurt overall car sales this year, but demand for LPG-powered cars went up because the gas is significantly cheaper than gasoline,” the association said.

It added that LPG cars are not only more economical to run, but release less green house gases than gasoline vehicles.

As of Thursday, the average price for a liter of LPG stood at 1,106 won ($0.96), which is only 55 percent the cost of gasoline, which reached 1,970 won per liter at filing stations across the country.

The association also said the release of specially adapted LPG-powered small cars, such as the Morning and the Spark, helped bolster sales, while domestic growth of the rent-a-car market contributed to a demand for more gas-powered vehicles. 

(Yonhap News)