Petrol vs Diesel

A_Lert

Diesels are more likely to be targeted by "clean air zone" charges in future. For example London's ULEZ typically charges for diesels older than 2017, but petrols back to 2006 are normally not charged for.

AdrianC

A_Lert said:

Diesels are more likely to be targeted by "clean air zone" charges in future. For example London's ULEZ typically charges for diesels older than 2017, but petrols back to 2006 are normally not charged for.

Euro6 diesels - the current spec.
Euro4 petrols - because that's when petrol emission caps reached the same NOx limits as the current diesel ones.

As for that Panda - that'll sell easily for that money, if it's as good as it looks.

TomokoAdhami

That tax cost simply depends on your nitrogen oxide emissions. For more clarification, I just hit this tax table https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables and noticed that cost of both diesel and petrol is the same in many senses but probably sometimes, the CO2 emission matters. By the way, instead of diesel and petrol vehicles, it is the time to shift to pure electric vehicles with zero-emission rates and no doubt, such steps would also overcome the tax quote. 

anotheruser

AdrianC said:

anotheruser said:

Mase more difficult as I'm looking at a 2017 plate. Some say free tax, others say £155, hence confusion.
Tax is likely to be the biggest outgoing for that car (apart from the initial purchase of course).

And, no, VED will not be the biggest outgoing. Tax is cheap. Even if it's a Band M/£40k+, £565/year vs £475 car.
Depreciation will almost certainly be the biggest outgoing. Insurance, maintenance, fuel will all be up there, too.

I really don't know why people think their situation will be the same as mine.
Or why they think my insurance will be more expensive than £150 a year (or potentially higher if I bought a car that the RRP is over £40k).
You do not know my situation, so when posting again, perhaps stick to what you DO know instead of thinking about unknowns that aren't really relevant to the information you have been presented with.

The reason I think the VED will be one of, if not the biggest on-going cost (sorry I didn't explicitly mention this) is that the car has just been MOT'd (but that's only £40 a year and completely unavoidable), plus I should think (not impossible, but very unlikely) that it'll happily sail though a few years of MOT.  Maybe it won't but I there's no point in taking into account unknowns, because it could cost £5000 to fix or it could cost just £5.
So let's just stick to the known costs...

I don't count the cost of fuel as part of the car.  It's an unavoidable cost and likely a diesel would cost less for my needs anyway.

Insurance, again isn't really counted as a cost for the car itself because it's something I have to pay.

Remember, car tax is just that. An extra tax for having a car. If I can avoid paying it by choosing a car that has very little or no tax, then I'm obviously interested.  Amazing that people seemed to latch onto that one sentence in my OP and run with it.
I can only compare with what I have - a car that I pay £185 a year and a car that I pay £30 a year.  By that comparison, the current car and anything over £50 is too much when I know I could pay a lot less.

Further to this, I couldn't really give a stuff about depreciation.
I owned my last car for 10 years and although only being owner number 3, I'm likely the last.  Same will be for this new car.  If it's worth £0 tomorrow, it doesn't matter as (like the whisky analogy), the price would have been paid and in return for that price, I get the vehicle.
Yes, if used car prices drop significantly tomorrow I'd be a little sad I didn't wait but then we have to make those choices at the supermarket every day.  Don't buy milk today for tomorrow the price may be cheaper.  Or it may be more expensive.  But that's an unknown, so can't really control that or take it into account.  So all in all depreciation is a bit of a red herring.

So looking back on all that, the only cost I can really control is the tax value so that's the one that will factor significantly when I purchase a car.  This is MoneySavingExpert after all!

DrEskimo

anotheruser said:

AdrianC said:

anotheruser said:

Mase more difficult as I'm looking at a 2017 plate. Some say free tax, others say £155, hence confusion.
Tax is likely to be the biggest outgoing for that car (apart from the initial purchase of course).

And, no, VED will not be the biggest outgoing. Tax is cheap. Even if it's a Band M/£40k+, £565/year vs £475 car.
Depreciation will almost certainly be the biggest outgoing. Insurance, maintenance, fuel will all be up there, too.

I really don't know why people think their situation will be the same as mine.
Or why they think my insurance will be more expensive than £150 a year (or potentially higher if I bought a car that the RRP is over £40k).
You do not know my situation, so when posting again, perhaps stick to what you DO know instead of thinking about unknowns that aren't really relevant to the information you have been presented with.

The reason I think the VED will be one of, if not the biggest on-going cost (sorry I didn't explicitly mention this) is that the car has just been MOT'd (but that's only £40 a year and completely unavoidable), plus I should think (not impossible, but very unlikely) that it'll happily sail though a few years of MOT.  Maybe it won't but I there's no point in taking into account unknowns, because it could cost £5000 to fix or it could cost just £5.
So let's just stick to the known costs...

I don't count the cost of fuel as part of the car.  It's an unavoidable cost and likely a diesel would cost less for my needs anyway.

Insurance, again isn't really counted as a cost for the car itself because it's something I have to pay.

Remember, car tax is just that. An extra tax for having a car. If I can avoid paying it by choosing a car that has very little or no tax, then I'm obviously interested.  Amazing that people seemed to latch onto that one sentence in my OP and run with it.
I can only compare with what I have - a car that I pay £185 a year and a car that I pay £30 a year.  By that comparison, the current car and anything over £50 is too much when I know I could pay a lot less.

Further to this, I couldn't really give a stuff about depreciation.
I owned my last car for 10 years and although only being owner number 3, I'm likely the last.  Same will be for this new car.  If it's worth £0 tomorrow, it doesn't matter as (like the whisky analogy), the price would have been paid and in return for that price, I get the vehicle.
Yes, if used car prices drop significantly tomorrow I'd be a little sad I didn't wait but then we have to make those choices at the supermarket every day.  Don't buy milk today for tomorrow the price may be cheaper.  Or it may be more expensive.  But that's an unknown, so can't really control that or take it into account.  So all in all depreciation is a bit of a red herring.

So looking back on all that, the only cost I can really control is the tax value so that's the one that will factor significantly when I purchase a car.  This is MoneySavingExpert after all!

Assuming of course you can't accommodate an EV? Over 10,000 miles a diesel will set you back about £1,000/year in fuel costs, whereas an EV can be as cheap as ~£150/year (charged over night using an EV specific energy tariff).

That coupled with the VED savings (£0 for any EV) makes it very MSE!

Herzlos

anotheruser said:

The reason I think the VED will be one of, if not the biggest on-going cost

Sure, if you discount all of the other costs then VED will be the biggest ongoing cost, but for almost everyone (including yourself) it almost certainly isn't.

Taking the worst case of £500/year VED, that's £42/month. A tank of fuel costs more than that and maybe gets you 600 miles at an absolute maximum for approximately 7,200 miles (just below average). Even the lowest possible insurance (your 150) is £12.50/month.

So for your VED to be the highest cost, you'd be looking at a car with high tax, low insurance, that had no value, doesn't cover many miles or need repaired.
It's a prominent and painful one to deal with every year though, and given a choice I'd take one with the lower VED but to be honest if you're being MoneySavingExpert it's one of the last things to care about. You'll save more money going for an older model car, a higher MPG, or walking more.

I used to always buy old barges which were dirt cheap because the tax was high. I was paying £495/year to tax a car that was worth £500! but it gave me super cheap luxury motoring for a few years. What really hurt was only getting 15-20mpg and not even needing to tell the petrol station staff which pump was mine because I was in every week.

Mickey666

anotheruser said:

The reason I think the VED will be one of, if not the biggest on-going cost . . . 

Who was it who said "you're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts"?  

AdrianC

"If I ignore the inconvenient costs, then I can prove exactly what I want to be the biggest expense because of a point of principle..."

Anybody else thinking of Humpty-Dumpty at this point?

In a normal year, we have four vehicles taxed. For 2020, their 12mo VED rates totalled £905.
Only one of them is CO2-taxed. It would be £40 cheaper if it was on the non-CO2 engine-size rate.
I don't total what I spend on them (I daren't!), but I can say with certainty it would have been a lot more than a grand... and that's without paying much for labour, because I do almost all work myself.

And, BTW, insurance for them all totalled about half of the VED, while depreciation for them is almost certainly negative.