How to work out how much a car costs to run on a daily basis?

TempyJo

Can anyone help?

I have been car free for the last three years and have been perfectly happy using public transport.

I have just started working in London so now commute everyday. The worst part of the journey is getting to my local station and back - a seven mile journey. At the moment, I am taking a bus in the morning and a taxi back at a cost of £14.20 per day.

I'm trying to work out if I buy a car for around £800 (a friend has a T reg Mazda 323 1500cc), would two seven mile journeys cost less than £14.20 once you have taken all other costs into account?

How do I go about working that out?

Thanks if anyone can help.

paddedjohn

£14.20 per day, £71.00 per week, you work 46.4 weeks so thats £3,294.40 a year spent on public transport.

Fuel will be about £4 per day but your biggest cost will be your insurance, do you have to pay for parking? car will need taxing, maintaining and there is depreciation to think about aswell.

Al1x

I think a car would possibily cost you more by the time you have thought about insurance, road tax, MOT, upkeep and petrol.

paddedjohn

Say you got 2 years out of the car then that will cost about £300/year depreciation so £6 per week, add fuel £20 per week, insurance £20 per week (complete guess as it depends on your age and driving history etc) then tax at £4 per week est and mot and repairs at £5 per week that is a rough total of £49 per week before you add in parking etc.

ancientbuilding

I was once a transprt contractor (in the 70s) and analysed total costs of all types of vehicles I used. At that time, if you knew the kilometres per litre or miles per gallon you could mutiply it by 3 if the vehicle was doing about 12000 miles per annum and come up with an overall running cost.

Most middle-size modern cars do about 6 or 7 miles per litre, so that looks like 21p per mile for fuel (in suburbs) x 3 = 63p per mile.

But bear in mind that if you once have a car you will use it for other things than the original purpose, and this may cost you an arm and a leg! Or, alternatively, you may do much less than 12,000 miles a year, in which case it will cost more per mile.

Ultrasonic

The big unknown here is insurance. TempyJo, could you use somewhere like gocompare to get a quote for you to drive the car you mentioned and post what it is?

Knowing what if any parking costs apply would also be helpful.

TempyJo

Hi All - thanks for replying to this. Have just got some insurance quotes through Confused.com which came out anywhere from £497 to £2000!! I last insured through Direct Line so maybe if I contact them and they still have my record on their system I might get a better quote.
Apart from that parking could be free if I park 5mins away from the station.

Netwizard

TempyJo wrote: »

Hi All - thanks for replying to this. Have just got some insurance quotes through Confused.com which came out anywhere from £497 to £2000!! I last insured through Direct Line so maybe if I contact them and they still have my record on their system I might get a better quote.
Apart from that parking could be free if I park 5mins away from the station.

NCB is only valid for 2 years usually so you might be stuffed on that one. I wouldn't take depreciation into account (How much can an £800 car depreciate by. With a full MOT it will always be worth around £500)

Is something like a bike an option? maybe one with an electric motor on it if you don't fancy pedalling the whole 7 miles, or maybe a scooter?

paddedjohn

Netwizard wrote: »

NCB is only valid for 2 years usually so you might be stuffed on that one. I wouldn't take depreciation into account (How much can an £800 car depreciate by. With a full MOT it will always be worth around £500)

Is something like a bike an option? maybe one with an electric motor on it if you don't fancy pedalling the whole 7 miles, or maybe a scooter?

If an £800 car is only worth £500 a couple of years later then its depreciated by £300 or nearly 40% so depreciation should be taken into account especially since the car is 15 yrs old so may not last a couple of years.;)
A scooter is a great idea especially considering the short journey.

Andy_L

The AA give some useful numbers, broken down by fixed costs (eg insurance, tax) and then per mile (eg fuel, servicing)

http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/running_costs/index.html

TempyJo

Thanks everyone for your comments. Insurance is a killer! Managed to get car down to £600 but most insurance quotes are twice the cost of the car!!