Cost of owning car vs using taxi

bigpound

Hi how many times a year do I have to use a taxi before I am better off having a car?

Most taxi journeys I would take would be between £10-£30.

Including everything such as cost of car, tax, insurance, fuel etc

and my insurance would be in the £1200+ range

thanks

Mojisola

You need to factor in convenience as well. Journeys from A to B are easy to do by taxi. If you need to go to A, call in at B for something and have half an hour in C before finishing your journey at D, they're not so good.

thescouselander

Not sure what its like round your way but round here taxis work out at about £4 per mile. My car doesn't cost me anything like that to run.

Stonk

I read not long ago that the "average" car costs about £5K a year to run, counting all costs.

I would say that figure is of the right sort of magnitude. Somewhere between £1K and £10K.

I don't think that the concept of an "average" car is at all useful, though, because there is such a wide variation in so many factors of car ownership. Also, whenever you see such articles they're designed to get startling headlines, so they always take a worst-possible-case scenario (e.g., purchase brand new car on finance from a high street bank, insure it with the first insurer whose name you think of, run it for 3 years and then replace it by part-exchanging for another new car). Pretty much like the alleged £200K it costs to raise a child to 18 years of age.

Weird_Nev

I calculated that when I owned my Audi Diesel and lived in Central london, it would actually have been cheaper for me to rent a car when we needed one rather than run my own car. We only really used the car for weekends away and holidays, and it was horrific to run due to servicing costs and faults.
Taxis are different though- cost far more per mile, usually £2-£3 at least. My current car only costs me 30p a mile all in and it's a 2.8 petrol!
I'd say if you ONLY take 2-3 short journeys a week, a run back form the supermarket, the odd trip back from the pub or something than you may be better off using taxis and hiring a car when you need it for a weekend or whatever.

You'd really need to do the maths on your journeys and how youd' use a car vs the alternatives of a pedal bike, busses, trains, coaches, taxis, hire cars or whatever else was best for the given journey if you didn't have access to your own car. Your initial question is entirely meaningless to be honest, only you know your travel routines and can answer the question!

When factoring in costs of a car you need to consider:
Depreciation Say £1000 a year
Insurance You said £1200
Road tax LEts be charitable and say £150 average depending on what you buy
Maintenance (budget £100 a month for anything with more than 3yr/40k on it IMO)
Fuel at 20p a mile (30mpg) or whatever it works out as.
Plus the "Opportunity cost" of buying a car over doing other things with the money.
there's no doubt it's an expensive business running a car.

I make that as: £3550 + Whatever fuel you use depending on milage - and of course maintenence will increase if you do very high miles.
So you can safely spend £10 a day on taxis before having your own car becomes more sensible, even before you fuel the thing!

Stonk

You've got intangible benefits to owning a car though. Sometimes when I've called a taxi, they have said there's a hour's wait. I remember one New Year's Eve, I was pretty much laughed off the phone by all the local private hire companies as I tried to book a car for that evening! And then sometimes you arrange one and it doesn't turn up.

If I ever need to go out in my own car, it's always there and ready to go at 30 second's notice. Goodness knows how to value that, but personally I value it quite highly.

Another thing is that I love driving. I absolutely hate being a passenger. So there's another tangible benefit for me to car ownership.

Weird_Nev

Stonk wrote: »

You've got intangible benefits to owning a car though. Sometimes when I've called a taxi, they have said there's a hour's wait. I remember one New Year's Eve, I was pretty much laughed off the phone by all the local private hire companies as I tried to book a car for that evening! And then sometimes you arrange one and it doesn't turn up.

If I ever need to go out in my own car, it's always there and ready to go at 30 second's notice. Goodness knows how to value that, but personally I value it quite highly.

Another thing is that I love driving. I absolutely hate being a passenger. So there's another tangible benefit for me to car ownership.

Good God man! Get thee to pistonheads! This forum isn't for the likes of you!

This forum is about miserable motoring in horrible little cheap cars which sip fuel, take 14" tyres and cost buttons to run, or else a Hyundai with a 17 year warranty and 80% 3 year depreciation, with no unexpected running costs other than the gradual removal of your soul.

"Enjoy driving" indeed. Wash your mouth out with 10W40 and go and sit on the naughty bicycle.

People who knit their own teabags don't care about waiting an hour for a taxi. They positively love it! Gives them more time to post about how their 4cwt of home-made jam has saved them 3.2p a day off of breakfast since 1992.

property.advert

Some simple maths for me on getting a second car (I was doing the 2 taxis a day chore):

Taxi cost

£5, twice a day, about 500 journeys a year purely on work. Cost £2500.

Second car cost

Depreciation - £1000 (buying second hand and running for some years)
Insurance - £500
Tax - 250
Maintenance - £500
Fuel - £250 (journey to work only)
Parking - £1000

Total cost £3500

So on paper, in my situation, running the second car would be about £1000 a year more expensive. Of course, running a much smaller, far more economical car would make the comparison much closer and may even favour the car over the taxi.

However, taxis just don't work as a permanent option in the real world.

Getting one from the station to go home is the easy part but they can never be guaranteed to be there at the right time each morning, 200+ times a year. Sometimes they won't be there at the station at night or they'll be late and it'll be raining or snowing. IN the morning they'll arrive early and get annoyed that you cannot depart early. Or they will arrive late and you'll miss your train.

Then comes the other times you want a car. Phone from Asda and you'll be waiting 20 minutes in the cold outside. I promise you that just doesn't work twice, nevermind all year. Longer distances just become far too expensive and you can begin to resent them.

Overall, the freedom offered you by a second car is too great to turn down. If the question is whether to use in place of a first car, then there is no question to answer.

missile

I could not suffer listening to a know it all taxi driver telling me how to cure the euro debt crisis, end wars and fix child poverty twice a day.

Sandrock

This is going to be different for every person, as it contains so many variables! However, I've calculated it for me as a rough guide.

My fixed costs of motoring (Insurance, road tax, MOT, service) come to £505.

My car costs 16p/mile to run. My average mileage is low, at roughly 4000 miles per year. This totals £640 in fuel.

Total costs of motoring for me are £1145.

If my average taxi bill was £15, this means I could do 76 taxi journeys a year or less than 1.5 per week. I currently use my car about 4 times a week, so for me this is not practical.

You then have, as another poster pointed out, the convenience factor. With your own car you can just jump in and go rather than having to phone and plan around a taxi. However, on the flip slide a taxi can be more convenient at times!

For me, with a cheap to run car and living in a village using a taxi all the time is simply not a feasible option.

jaydeeuk1

If car is out of budget, how about a scooter/quadracycle thingy? Might require another test, but you get the convenience of a car without all the expense. Some quadracycles even 'look' like cars, like that french thing? Sure, its about as quick as walking, and most blow up by 30k, but it has a roof. And a steering wheel. And I doubt anyone would want to steal it.