How much does it cost to own a car?

I can't see where you get those figures from. They allocate 0.76p for a car which, when new, cost up to £10,000 which is £76/10,000 miles. Fully fitted costs range from approx £37-£71 . Since they're attempting to adjust the price paid for the cost of the car they're probably assuming the owner will purchase 4 cheap tyres at 2 x £76 = £152 /4 £38 each every 20,000 miles. Which matches the market price for such tyres.

The AA explain their figures thus -

"The figure used is based on an estimated tyre life of 20,000 miles. Different values are used depending on the engine size or price band. Actual tyre life may vary depending on individual driving style"

Personally I think it's too simplistic to attempt an adjustment based on the cars new purchase price on average & below average price vehicles.

Are they made of Bakelite !? I'd say that your experience is unusual. I'll dig out my receipts and try to work out how long mine last although I've had a couple of punctures over the last year.

Daytona

This would be a recoverable cost (from your employer), so could not really be counted as a cost of not owning a car.

What if the meeting is a wedding, or a job interview, or etc. There's lots of resons you need to be somewhere earlier or stay later than you can return to with public transport.

Jim.

I guess that it may be cheaper to hire a car than to pay the combined costs of public transport plus hotel fees.

the Diesel car page. For some reason £0.85/mile for tyres. I had to go back a few years to get their oil price - this was always laughable, even doing 30,000 a year on 6,000 mile oil changes the oil used in the services didn't come to the AA figure.

since when have front wheel drive cars needed all 4 tyres replacing at the same time? 20,000 miles - jeez, I would be asking for my money back !

agreed. Their costs aren't going to reflect what someone making an effort to be economical spends.

all my cars since 1985 have had at least 2 sets of fronts without the rears being replaced. One did 105,000 on the rears, they were going to rot away before they wore out. The worst fronts did about 33,000.

Phil

That reminds me of the Edinburgh to London challenge of seeing if you can buy a banger for a single long trip which works out cheaper than the public transport cost.

Daytona

Exhaust replacement - they rot over time.

Don't forget windscreen insurance. A few days ago driving to work there was a loud bang and now I have a penny sized chip quite close to my eye-line, so probably an MOT failure if I don't replace the screen.

Would have been difficult 40 years ago, when you could get a standby shuttle flight for five pounds, and rarely had to wait more than one hour to get it.

There are four bus companies that run the route so competition is rife. They are student passes, but they don't ask for ID and I have seen several other people buy them. 2 for UK North, 3 for Finglands/Stagecoach/R Bullock. However the 3 ones work after midnight, the 2 ones don't.

Joe

I snipped this from a newspaper (can't remember source) a few months ago:

"Motorists have little idea of the true cost of owning and running a car, according to research by the RAC. The motoring organisation calculates it to be, on average , £438 a month, which includes purchase, depreciation, insurance, fuel, servicing, VAT and breakdown cover. "

That's £438 per MONTH, not per year.

purchase and depreciation?

So the average household income is something like 30,000 ? and the average household has something like 1.6 cars means 30% goes on the car?

I can't believe that.

Jim.

I'm sure its true, but irrelevant. Average is a *very* misleading statistic. If there were 99 people each with a car that cost 1 and 1 with a car that cost 1 million, the average car cost would be about 10,000. Obviously entirely unrepresentative of what that population spent on cars.

...and neither does the RAC if they're making generalisations like that.

Daytona

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