Calculating Motoring Costs Per Mile

ExplorewithAndy

Are there any tools or guides for calculating motoring costs per mile?

I do a lot of driving and I am trying to assess costs to run the car and then look at public transport to see if switching to other transport modes is more viable. Be grateful if people could point out if there are any other factors I need to consider when traveling by car.

Ebe_Scrooge

Well, you could use the HMRC rates as a broad, fairly reasonable, starting point - 45 pence per mile for the first 10,000 miles, 25 ppm thereafter, per year.  These are, by necessity, a broad average.

If you want to work it out more "personally" it's not too difficult.  You've got your fixed costs - tax, insurance, MOT, servicing each year.  Add these up and divide by your annual mileage, that's your "starting" cost per mile.  Fuel - miles-per-gallon is easy enough to work out, then convert that to pence-per-mile based on how much you pay for fuel.

You then need to factor in repairs.  Difficult to do accurately, but you can see how much repairs have cost you each year over the past few years, average that out, and divide by annual mileage.  Perhaps add on a little bit on the assumption that you'll need more repairs as the car gets older.

Depreciation - you can factor this in if you want to, there are any number of depreciation calculators online.

Purchase price - factor this in if you want.

Add the whole lot together, there's your cost per mile.

You do need to consider the "convenience" factor.  If you're in a big city where public transport runs every 10 minutes from 6 in the morning till midnight, it's probably fine.  If you're in a rural location where it's much more restricted, that might be a key consideration.  What about weekends/holidays?

If you're talking about keeping the car and using public transport for just your daily commute, then the calculation is simply fuel costs - plus any parking costs.  You could add in a small "wear-and-tear/repairs" element if you want, on the assumption that commuting will be putting more miles on the car.  You need a more comprehensive calculation if you're considering ditching the car altogether.

Sandtree

ExplorewithAndy said:

Are there any tools or guides for calculating motoring costs per mile?

I do a lot of driving and I am trying to assess costs to run the car and then look at public transport to see if switching to other transport modes is more viable. Be grateful if people could point out if there are any other factors I need to consider when traveling by car.

AA used to publish a per mile figure for vehicles, not sure if they still do.

The cost varies depending on how you finance the purchase, how you service the vehicle, if repairs are done at main dealers with original parts or otherwise. Some will be mileage based and some will be time based.

All numbers are very assumptive as buy new/nearly new to resell in 2 years is also very different to buying a 10 year old vehicle with the intent to run it into the ground

daveyjp

I have always used 50p a mile as a fag packet calculation.  I decided to have a go at a rough calculation for my last car which I owned for over 5 years and about 40,000 miles.  It was a year old when I bought it.

With depreciation, fuel estimate at 30mpg, VED, insurance and all repairs and maintenance it worked out at more or less 50p per mile.

born_again

Costs of your car are easy to work out. You pay for them each year. Tax, Ins, servicing etc. Petrol keep a log.

One thing to factor in when looking at public transport is do they go where you want to go when you want to go & just how long does it take.

I did this for my commute of 16 miles. Living near to a Airport we have a good bus service that goes to City Center. Which covers the time I go to & come home. Now that is when the problems start. To get from CC to work is 5 miles. Which is not well served by buses I would be catching 1st bus out of CC which would only just get me to work ontime, that's if it turns up. Which it often does not & do not run on my late finishes. Add in timing for the bus trips is over 1 hour (with waits) compared to 30 mins in car. End of the day adding the costs up it was as cheap to use car, as catch bus. Not taking into account the car purchase cost. As a car was required for other times.

ExplorewithAndy

Thanks for the replies, using 45p mile seems a safe Ish calculation to use. On top of that, I suppose I need to factor in parking costs.
Based on a 100-mile round trip that works out £45, which seems a lot compared to public transport, but then if I am sharing the car with other passengers then the cost per mile becomes more viable. So if I travel alone it might be worth looking at public transport.
I guess the other factor is how eco-friendly each mode is per journey, which adds more complexity.

Grey_Critic

One factor that is ignored is Travel Time. For many years I travelled to Bradford, Shipley and Keighley (I live in Huddersfield) Whilst it could take up to an hour at times driving public transport was not an option. Travel time alone from home to work by public transport waould have been at best over two hours and that assumed each connection following on - and that was both ways. The costs involved made the car option cheap.

I do not disgree with using public transport but depending where you work it is often a case of you have to drive.

Money_Grabber13579

ExplorewithAndy said:

Thanks for the replies, using 45p mile seems a safe Ish calculation to use. On top of that, I suppose I need to factor in parking costs.
Based on a 100-mile round trip that works out £45, which seems a lot compared to public transport, but then if I am sharing the car with other passengers then the cost per mile becomes more viable. So if I travel alone it might be worth looking at public transport.
I guess the other factor is how eco-friendly each mode is per journey, which adds more complexity.

This is where you get into the argument of whether to include the fixed costs or ignore them and this depends on whether you would get rid of the car if you were using public transport for your journeys. If you still need to retain the car, then those costs will continue to exist and so should be ignored when calculating the cost per mile. It will also result in the cost per mile for the journeys which you do continue to make by car significantly increase.