No molgripos – running car does cost thousands a year unless you have an old banger that never breaks down and hardly use it.

Average car usage is at least a thousand a year just in fuel.

If I moved back to a London suburb I doubt I would own a car. Public transport is excellent, if a bit expensive, supermarkets 5 mins away. Real killer for me is I let the car space so my car ownership expenses would immediately be high due to loss of rental income.

Well done all those non car owners above.

No molgripos – running car does cost thousands a year unless you have an old banger that never breaks down and hardly use it.

Let’s get this straight.

You don’t own cars, I do, and YOU’re telling ME how much it costs? Think about that for a bit now.

TBH, even low milage in a reliable banger is going to be at least ~1500 a year with tax, insurance, MOT, fuel, running repairs and so on. I don’t think I’ve ever spent less than about 2k in a year. And that includes the car being left parked for (potentially) most of the summer, (April to September) other than a quick trip out for 50-60 km once every 2 or 3 weeks. If it started. So no fuel costs to account for.

Yes molgrips – I can do basic sums and know what stuff costs. How many miles a year do you do and what is your MPG. How much are insurance costs? Servicing? Car parking charges? VED? New tyres every year or two ( I am very fussy about tyres – my motorbike ones were replaced when going below 2mm in the centre) Perhaps the odd repair ( how much did the electronics fiasco cost you in the end?) How much time did you spend on the suspension.? My times worth £15 a hour – bet yours is a lot more.

Most folk vastly underestimate the cost of car ownership forgetting a lot of the expenses and they don’t notice them.

10 000 miles per year ( less than average) at 40 mpg – (around average) is £1600 per year

New tyres every year or two

I have GOT to stop taking roundabout like Eu Rouge – I’m getting through the fronts twice a year.

Average mileage in UK = 7900p/a. So, based on today’s fuel prices and mpg of 35-45, fuel cost alone for one year is £900-1200. So, unless you don’t pay for insurance, MOT, tax, basic maintenance items etc, it’s definitely going to cost more than £1k.

I’ve been car-free off and on for years. Started when I lived in Melbourne, then continued in London. Simply no justification in a city but I appreciate life would be trickier if I had kids. As it is, it’s a doddle. I rent a car whenever I need one, according to what I want to use it for. I commute exclusively by train and spend weekends with friends/family via train or bike. And I walk or cycle to/from shops/pubs/ etc. I hanker after a Larry vs Harry cargo bike but my bike spending this year is done. Very happy.

I thought average milage was !2000. From memory tho

The RAC has the cost of a medium family car at £4000+ a year ( IIRC – can’t be bothered to check)

Fuel costs also apply to hire cars….

How much time do you spend booking hire cars/taxi’s/waiting for taxi’s – remember, that’s costing you £15/hr.

Extra bike maintenance time/cost associated with extra bike use.

Extra food eaten to replace the calories burnt while cycling everywhere…. 😉

Standing round on train platforms/at bus stops – that’s more time multiplied by £15/hr……

Do non-car owners take that into account when telling car owners how much their cars are costing them?? 😉

I agree that car ownership as a total cost adds up to quite a bit of money – but there are different aspects to the cost. There are the fixed costs & the costs associated with the mileage you do. If you don’t do many miles, then the fixed costs start to look expensive (my tax is £120 regardless of whether I do 5k miles/yr or 25k miles/yr).

EDIT – we did this years ago on here & I sat down and worked out that my car was costing me £0.18/mile – but I was doing 34k miles/yr. That included depreciation. All the costs got divided by 340000, so the number is quite small on a per mile basis.

You’ve a car in the family home, therefore you DON’T do it…
And while you may not use it, your wife does presumably to do the things that you’d do if you had a car and she didn’t.

Not really, no. She uses it to go to work (3 miles away, if I worked there I’d cycle), to go to the gym (see above) and to see her parents (1 bus ride away) and friends (I just meet mine closer to me or on a train line). The very few occasions we use the car together could easily but cut out if needed.

When I sold my car I budgeted to hire a car once a month, in 2 years I’ve never used that.

Yes molgrips – I can do basic sums and know what stuff costs

And I can’t?

How many miles a year do you

This isn’t about how much MY car costs ME, it’s about how little a car COULD cost someone.

🙂

Fuel costs also apply to hire cars….

Average year for me maybe 1000 miles so a couple of hundred?

How much time do you spend booking hire cars/taxi’s/waiting for taxi’s – remember, that’s costing you £15/hr.

Very little – I am well organised. Say an half an hour to an hour every hire at 4 hires a year so under a £50. car hire place is a 5 min walk away

Extra bike maintenance time/cost associated with extra bike use.

My commute is 1500 miles a year and my bike is alfined, hope discs and rigid for winter. Chains last a couple of years. not replaced any sprokets in years, tyres last several years, brake pads several years – say £100 a year???

Extra food eaten to replace the calories burnt while cycling everywhere….

I just get skinnier – lost 2.5 stone in 3 years

Standing round on train platforms/at bus stops – that’s more time multiplied by £15/hr……

Bus is ever 5 mins from outside my house. train waiting time a few mins because I know the timetables

Do non-car owners take that into account when telling car owners how much their cars are costing them??

Probably not

I agree that car ownership as a total cost adds up to quite a bit of money

Nice retort tho

Been carfree for 15 years, since then managed to have two kids who are now at primary school. Wife won’t drive, I use car clubs, hire cars and car jacking* if necessary. Probably spend between £500-£1000 a year on them.

*This may not be true.

It’s pretty easy when you think and plan ahead, not so easy if you’re already living a lifestyle linked to car-convenience though.

I really hate blagging lifts and using other peoples cars too. So I don’t do that either.

cycle commutting lowers stress, car comutting raises it.

There’s a legion of camera-equipped, expletive-filled angry cycle commuters posting on YouTube that would suggest the first part of your statement merits some equivocation. My experience of commuting by car is that it’s as stressful as you want it to be. My worst commutes in Edinburgh were on the bus.

Thanks guys good to know some of you do/have done it. I’m really struggling to see why I shouldn’t as most
Folks are saying it can’t be done/I’ll miss car too much !

I’m liking the idea more than ever 😀

I LIKE walking and going by train. It does depend on how convenient the service is or what the walk is like. My local station is a three minute bike ride away and it’s the same at the other end for work. What makes me drive so often is the cost of the train – £10 for a 30 mile round trip vs about £6 in my gas-guzzling five seater car with one person in it. I’m working with the assumption that I wouldn’t want to get rid of the car completely. If I were happy to do that then the cost would even out, but then I might not like walking and going by train so much, knowing I had to.

tjagain – Member

My commute is 1500 miles a year

And you only use your bike for commuting?

tjagain – Member

I just get skinnier – lost 2.5 stone in 3 years

That is not sustainable long term 😆

If you use public transport – I guarantee you that you are deluded if you think you only wait for a few mins or so ‘because you know the timetables’.
Frequent problems I have experienced with public transport are, but not limited to:

– Buses arriving early & don’t wait, so you either arrive at the stop in plenty of time (at least 10mins) or risk missing it – (might not be relevant in your 5 minutely bus utopia – even living in West London, we didn’t have buses every 5 mins).

– get on a bus and it just sits there for an amount of time before doing anything.

Cancelled trains without advance warning

Late trains

Train breakdowns/signal faults/jumpers etc.

Are the bus/train journey’s the same duration as taking a car? Do they drop you at your destination, or must you walk some distance at the other end?
I can’t think of any train journeys I have done in the last few years that have been cheaper/quicker than if I’d just taken the car…

While it does sound like you live in an ideal place to free yourself from the shackles of car ownership, you do seem to view aspects of it with particularly rose tinted specs…..

Been carfree for 15 years, since then managed to have two kids who are now at primary school. Wife won’t drive, I use car clubs, hire cars and car jacking* if necessary. Probably spend between £500-£1000 a year on them.

Again, you must live in an urban area – ‘car clubs’?

Molgrips

Yes – and unless you drive a very low mileage in an old small car that is very reliable it will be thousands a year as I said.

stumpy

I have to a great extent organised my life around not having a car – its important to me.

Its a long long time since I had any of the issues you mention. The 22 bus goes from directly accross the road from me and is every 5 mins – It drops me off right at the train station. also have other buses from the same stop as well if I want to go to a differnt part of town but I only really use the bus when going to the station otherwise I cycle. Dunno how much more extra miles I do on a bike that I could do by car other than comute. Hard to quantify.

On trains – my most frequent train journey is to my parents ( I am in leith – they are in Milngavie around 55 miles away IIRC) Bus to station is around 15 mins say plus a 5 min wait. trains are 6 an hour 4 need a change but the connection is 3 mins) and take an 1hr 30 mins so total journey time under two hours each way £16 return (IIRC) My folks live 3 min walk from the train station ( deliberate by them)

driving ( I have done it) varies from 1hr 15 to over 2 hrs depending on time of day and its a 110 mile round trip – thats £10 or so in petrol plus the rest of the costs of motoring. But I can read the paper and have a coffee or a beer on the train. Much nicer. Also on the car journey I would have to walk to where it was parked at this end – – very little car parking where I live – I have had to park a good few mins walk away when I am using a car. A car is usually a few mins quicker on average but can be slower. cost pretty comparable. Free wifi on the train as well. Sometimes I take my bike and ride from the city centre rather than getting the train Glasgow / milngavie – that saves a few mins and a few quid

Yes – and unless you drive a very low mileage in an old small car that is very reliable it will be thousands a year as I said.

I’m obviously not trying hard enough. 😥

The main things I miss a car for are getting awkward shaped stuff back from the shops. Most recent a mirror 4’x3′ can’t carry that on a bike, too far to walk. I had to get the tradesman doing work on the flat to get it.

Usually you can get delivery but sometimes this does not work. I have however carried a bathroom sink and pedestal on a bike, 27 m of copper pipe, 5 rolls of loft insulation and all sorts of other odd stuff.

Yes – and unless you drive a very low mileage in an old small car that is very reliable it will be thousands a year as I said.

So having a car costs tons of money except when it doesn’t?

Ok, thanks for letting us know.

A car is usually a few mins quicker on average but can be slower. cost pretty comparable.

That’s been my experience too unless there’s more than one person travelling

Anyway, OP – being car free is fine, try it, you can always buy another if you feel like it. I’m not arguing against being car free, I am arguing against TJ’s bollocks.

I should probably stop.

tjagain – Member
The main things I miss a car for are getting awkward shaped stuff back from the shops. Most recent a mirror 4’x3′ can’t carry that on a bike, too far to walk. I had to get the tradesman doing work on the flat to get it.

I was gonna ask about this.
I do a fair bit of DIY and without the car it would be a major ball ache getting stuff home from places like B&Q.
Same with garden stuff and trips to the dump a few times a yr….
I guess they’re all surmountable problems, just require a lot of planning/compromises/forethought…..

Yes – and unless you drive a very low mileage in an old small car that is very reliable it will be thousands a year as I said.

Without variable costs like something associated with getting a car through its MOT, mine costs, very approximately, £530/year, that’s a tank of diesel roughly every couple of months, tax and insurance.
It’s a fifteen year old Octavia that does about 5k/year. It’s used for shopping at the weekend, I alternate with a mate Fridays/Saturday’s when we go to the pub or gigs, and I use it Sundays when I go out somewhere away from home for a walk.
There’s loads of cheap, reliable cars around, most of the real trash ones went during the scrappage sceme.
I don’t use it during the week, I have a different car every day that I bring home to deliver the following morning, so I could, theoretically, not bother, but if I want to go to a concert in Bristol, the last train leaves Temple Meads at 10.32pm, which is a joke, most bands are still playing at that time, and it would take at least thirty minutes, usually lots more, to get from a venue to the station, and there’s nobody I could scrounge a car from, plus my mate would get very pissy at being my taxi driver every time we go for a beer or to a gig.
He lives six miles away, not near any major village or town, or pub.
With a 91 year-old living with me as well, there’s the very real possibility of extended hospital stays, and again public transport to Bath RUH would be hugely impractical, it’s several miles out the other side of the city from the station.
The last time I used a taxi was to get home quickly from the home of the bloke who was getting my car MOT’d because I had a gig to go to, and it’s over an hour’s walk home, or five minutes in a taxi, which cost me £8.80!
Bugger that on a regular basis.
And the osteoarthritis in my knee has put me off riding bikes.
Doing without a car is great for the fit and healthy, who have a large circle of friends and family to scrounge draw on for help, and who live in an urban Utopia with readily available public transport at their beck and call, but for many of us, it’s just not practical.

I should add that I have geared my life to living how I want without a car. My baker is across the road, as is my butcher. My train station is at the end of my road and my workplace about 8 mins walk the other end. I can ride excellent on-road or off-road routes from my door (if I had to get in a car to ride… I’d probably change something…). I can catch a plane with one change of train, my family live within a 40 minute ride. That’s all a conscious decision and I realise that I’m lucky to be in that position.

Plus, I figure that if I can’t have a Singer Porsche, I don’t want anything.

Count – £530 a year ( but you exclude some costs) How much is your VED? whats your MPG cos thats not much fuel and of course mots and servicing are part of the costs. NO new tyres ever? No servicing? No car parking fees?

Oh how we’ve missed TJ’s rabid arguing.

A quick peek at the skoda octavia stats. looks like £140 or more a year VED – am I right? 45 mpg ish? so your 5000 miles is around £500 in fuel @ 50 mpg Annual service? £100 a set of tyres every 4 years so £50 – 100 a year in tyres. Insurance? got to be £100 plus surely.

where have I gone wrong with my addition?

Oops – am I getting carried away again? – don’t worry – 12 hr shifts 6 out of ther next 7 days so you won’t hear much from me and I’ll shut up on 😳

Fuel costs are irrelevant to the ownership as far as comparison goes. It’s the fixed costs as it were, the fuel is a journey cost so is comparable to taxi or public transport (and it makes a mess of your calls…)
Car is ved, insurance, motor, consumables and service/repair costs.
Those saying how long do you wait for a bus train or taxi, I assume they never sit in traffic etc.
Someone posted about the cost of the taxi, how does that compare to fuel and parking? It would cost me $15/day for a taxi to and from work and costs a minimum of $12 parking.
Or not being able to ride somewhere that isn’t at home, as I said bike goes in something as small as a hyundai i20 which is about as cheap as it gets. Little bit more planning but not much.
That is the difference think ahead a little and it’s all possible, it may end up cost neutral with behavior changes or maybe a bit more.
However it’s very dependent on where you are etc. We all know how hard it would be out in the country but most large towns and cities do very well.
Things like car share/car clubs and the like will make a big difference to people too.