How much does your car cost to run?

Been adding mine up and wondering how i can get the costs down! astra diesel btw.

Insurance – 450 (used to be 250!)
Tax – 165
Service/MOT – 200
Last year it needed
Two tyres – 100
Alternator – 300
12,000 miles @ 50mpg = 1560
Depreciation – 1000 (a guess)

That works out at 3775 or 314 per month. Ouch!

Need to get an Aygo/C1 or an old banger – do they still make sense?

given your main costs are fuel and depreciation I’d avoid anythign new as it’ll up the latter or anythign old as it’ll up the former.

My skoda octavia cost 27p a mile, bought at a franchised dealer at 3.5 years, sold at 6.5 years

At just over 31p per mile, I don’t think that that is a very expensive car to run at all.

Very little thankfully- Ive a company car + Fuel card, that covers both work and private miles..

I was looking into getting a second car and came to pretty much the same figure. I’m sticking to commuting by bike.

I don’t consider depreciation as a running cost.

I think I worked it out that I turn about 10p/mile profit with my car based on work paying me 45p/mile and most of my miles being for work.

1.6petrol C-max and me 25yrs old

Will definately sell it once work has stopped paying for it.

I don’t consider depreciation as a running cost.

i don’t think most people do! Perhaps i should rephrase the question as how much to own and run a car. Notice AA divide it into standing/running costs.

I’m just trying to work out the cost of running it at the moment. Costs gone up, income gone down. Looks like the car might have to go.

molgrips – Member

I don’t consider depreciation as a running cost.

Its a art of the cost of your motoring no matter if you want to ignore it. A large component for many folk

It’s an indirect cost. You buy a car, it costs £x – that’s the outlay. anything you get for it when you sell it is an income. Separate pots, for me.

I think last time this came up, I worked out it was costing me about 18p/mile but then I do a lot of miles (~600/wk just commuting) so things like depreciation, tax & insurance get diluted down somewhat.

Something like:

tax – £120
Insurance (incl. breakdown) – £420
MOT – £30
Servicing x 2 – £220
Tyres x 4 – £240
Depreciation – £1000

+ fuel.

Lease car here through work on a private lease other than the payments I only pay for fuel. Bulbs, wiper blades, servicing, tyres you name it and it’s covered.

So roughly without fuel it costs me 22p per mile and with fuel about 22.50p per mile but my equation for working fuel per mile maybe wrong.

DOH! I was miles off not sure what I did but it’s 33p per mile with fuel.

It’s an indirect cost. You buy a car, it costs £x – that’s the outlay. anything you get for it when you sell it is an income. Separate pots, for me.

So you can drive down the cost of motoring by putting some of the costs out of your mind. At filling stations I’m going to put the price of diesel out of my mind and only apply the costs of a packet of crisps and a can of pop to my journey. I feel richer already.

My van will hit its 300,000th mile sometime next month, although most of those miles aren’t mine I decided to work out how much diesel its consumed on that journey – that was eye opening!

Insurances/taxes obviously per year, servicing and parts averaged since 2008 when I bought it:

Based on 8K miles
Tax 125
Insurance 250
MOT 55
Depreciation (based on price I paid versus price of similar model now in paper) 125
Repairs (ave per year):
Tyres 100
Crank pulley 8
Servicing 30
Replacement bulbs 3
Brakes/pads 15
Fuel (at current prices) 1100

Cost per year:£1826 inc fuel.

Based on 4K miles
2nd car (Only been running for 7 months):
Insurance 550
Tax 215
Fuel 1180
MOT
Depreciation 0 (It’s worth more as parts than I paid for it in 2004)
Repairs 0
Servicing 30
Tyres x2 160
Brakes 50

Total 2185

Total cost of 2 cars 4011 per year.

£220 insurance (group 2)
£30 a year tax
60-70 mpg
£160 annual service (no breakdowns yet)
Mot £50
Cost 5k to buy, and I’ll keep it til it’s dead

That’s just silly molgrips unless you plan to eventually replace it with a cheaper model, you have to save what it’s depreciating to buy a replacement. That’s the true cost whether you like to admit or account for it or not.

Otherwise, I’ll claim that my bikes cost me nothing because I don’t pay for them ‘out of that pot’.

21p a mile. 14,400 miles and around £3118 in costs including depreciation most of which is fuel.

The answer to depreciation is not to buy a car anywhere near new or to get one that will appreciate as it ages.

Tax £460
Service + MOT £350 (and that’s at a specialist, not a dealer)
Insurance £650
Petrol (5000 miles at 22MPG, superunleaded) £1500

= 59p a mile! Excluding depreciation. Add that in (say £3K, it’s 5 years old now) and it’s 119p a mile.

Do I win?

VW Golf company car cost me £89 per month in tax and fuel costs on average £111 per month so a nice round £200 and nothing else to worry about.

I do about 14k private miles per year. About 17p per mile.

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport 🙂

I’ve always regarded cars as a 300-400 pm touch – whether its running yourself, purchase, repair or company car tax…

55p per mile not inc depreciation.

350z:

£450 insurance
£240 tax
£50 service (done myself)
£28 MOT local honda garage offer
£400 tyres
£300 exhaust
£500 depreciation
£? petrol @ 26mpg 6000 miles

lalala I’m not playing this game. Actually compared to some above its not too bad over a year.

Tax £245
Insurance c£400 (have changed cars twice this insurance year so exact figure not available)
Servicing c£200 (mainly consumable parts as I do most of the work myself)
MOT £125 including some minor remedial work
Fuel Approx £300 p/m, although my mileage claims at work normally net me about £250 p/m
Depreciation – nil, I bought my car well below bottom book knowing it’s history and with an appreciation that it needed a few bits doing, these have been done by myself for very little cost, I could easily sell the car tomorrow for £1k more than it has cost me so far.

was – do you replace the exhaust and tyres every year?!

Depreciation – nil ….. I could easily sell the car tomorrow for £1k more than it has cost me so far.

So it has actually cost you money really.

Say you do well and buy a car for £1500 that you’ve seen elsewhere go for £2500.

It has effectively cost £2500 as you could have sold it on immediately for £2500.

I do this all this time and justify it to other people like you have… man logic!

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

I’m still better off, both in cost and time, as we’ve discussed before. My daily costs inc all fixed costs are £3.45 for the car. The return bus fair alone for me to get to work is not far off that, then I need to add £2.40 for the return tube cost. Oh, and the bus/tube route takes over an hour, driving takes 20 mins.

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

No good for me, I work in community visiting support plus a 30mile each way commute and shifts make it more than impractical, after 10pm there is no public transport link between work and home..
Otherwise I’d dump it tomorrow, it’s just a tool now…

was – do you replace the exhaust and tyres every year?!

No… I suppose rear tyres might last 2 years doing 6k but exhaust should last 50k miles or so.

Tax £260
Ins £406
Fuel £1900 (9000m at £1.30)
Service £512 (first one for two years I’ve had it)
Breakdown cover £40
Depriciation, not a lot as it’s worth bgger all to start with

Just over 30p/mile, not bad for a huge MPV with a 2L petrol engine.
.
Being a bit nerdy I made a spreadsheet for bike-carrying cars before I bought it.
Volvo V70 Estate, Renault Espace, Landy 110 V8 with LPG.
Oddly enough the Landy was cheapest.
Added my SO’s brand new Aygo to the list. That was by far the most expensive.
It’s all about depreciation, and Landy’s don’t do much of that.
Should have been brave and bought the Landy but opted for ‘none of the above’

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

I live 15 miles from my work. We have one bus per week which is community run. Public transport isn’t an option for an awful lot of people.

chuffing loads.

insurance = £800/year
tax = £110
MOT = £200 (there’s always something that needs attention)
service = £200 (as above)
fuel = £70/month (450miles/month or 5400miles/year = £840)

wassat? £2150?

£180/month?

actually, that’s not bad – considering it ‘buys’ me the ability to go where i want when i want, and take loads of stuff/people with me.

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

Train from Harrogate to London (210 miles)…
Taxi to station (no buses from my house)
£8
Train from Pannal to Kings Cross
£80 (start at £32 to around £120 for a cattle class ticket depending on time travelling)
Train from Kings Cross to central London location
£12

48p per mile

😉

This is a very useful link.

http://www.cuttingyourcaruse.co.uk/addup.xls

Gobsmacked to discover even my humdrum 1.6 Focus costs me 47p a mile.I`m actually considering going back into the company car scheme having run the figures,as it would be cheaper.

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

Harrogate bus station to Knaresborough bus station (3.7 miles)

Fare – £2.20 (59p per mile)

And I have a 25 minute walk to the station (again, no buses from my house)

Just remeber these cost when comparing to public transport

Harrogate to Leeds on the train
15.7 miles, ticket costs £7.40

47p per mile

Again a 25 minute walk to the station (the bus station is next to the train station so the same walking time) as there are no buses (or I could add the £8 taxi fare on to that as above).

😉

535i – running cost 36ppm / overall cost (inc. dep) 48ppm
Bought old and cheap.

Freelander TDi – running cost 26ppm / overall cost (inc. dep) 46ppm
Bought new.

These are ongoing ppm’s based upon 4 years for the Beemer and 5 years for the LR.

Based on that spreadsheet I’m at 32p/mile.

Not bad seeing as I bought the car for more than it was worth (low milage so it was priced based on being newer than it was, from a dealer) and it’ll be average milage when I sell it so I’m effevtively loseing 40%/£2k of the cars value this year!

Offset against the ‘income’ of 45p/mile for works milage (inc. commuting milage) it’s actualy only going to cost me £400 this year!