Quote:
Originally Posted by slowmover
1) Driving costs $0.51/mile. It doesn't. Especially to an eco-modder. My car gets relatively poor mileage compared to many on this forum (~32 MPG), and its cost of ownership is well under $0.15/mile. If I paid for maintenance, this would surely increase, but would not even be close to $0.51/mile.
Actually the per-mile cost is likely higher. Much higher. You are confusing fuel cost with the greater "ownership cost": purchase price, finance charge, depreciation, tawes, insurance, registration, etc. Fuel cost is less than half, on average.
[snipping the car-centric stuff out to focus on the commuting part]
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We'll take an example of the three cars I own now:
Purchase price: All under $3000 but keep in mind that you can't just add this price to depreciation to make a figure. If you want to use this figure you can't add depreciation to it, you can use one and say you'll keep the car forever or you can factor the depreciation you expect at the time you plan to sell.
Finance charge: Non existent and doesn't really change with your commute distance.
Depreciation: I bought one for about half the cost everyone was asking for it, the next I bought with an asking price that was over twice what I paid, and the other probably depreciated down about $1500 now as it used to be rust free but now its almost a decade older and covered in brown flakes. I could sell two of them for the price I paid for them because I bought them with excellent opportunity, the asking prices are still $5-6k and the car is in great condition.
Taxes and registration: All three cars are $42 a year for this.
Insurance: Three cars combined $80/month (maybe if you are a young new driver you are paying loads more money for one car, I don't know)
Since the car is a one time purchase for most people that will likely last over a decade and hundreds of thousands of miles, its a larger issue if you paid to much for your transportation by buying new. You really can't factor the commute distance into this though because depreciation is based more on time and rust than anything else.
So let's take one car and do some math.
$3000 to buy and you keep it for 10 years and drive it into a lake.
$300/year
You were smart and saved the money to buy a reasonable car instead of hucking money into something shiny that smells good and has 5 miles on it. Don't get me started on leases either.
Depreciation? We drove it into a lake, it's not cumulative, we already factored this.
Tax/reg $42
Insurance, I paid $45/month for one car, you could expect the same if you've got good credit and aren't driving a sports car with the $5 deductible crash and 'acts of god' coverage. $540/year
Maintenance: 3 oil changes for 15k miles $24/year plus a coolant change every 2 years $20/year. I popped a water pump once, swapped the belts and hoses, spark plugs, and a few other things, and that's about it $350, so over 6 years($60/year). Add a tire swap every 3 years at $320 per swap, we'll figure $107/year.
$1253 per year, almost half of this is insurance and the car would likely give you more than a decade of operation.
How much is gas? If we figure 40mpg and 15,000 miles(375 gallons).
$3.50/gallon $1312
$4.00/gallon $1500
$4.50/gallon $1688
$5.00/gallon $1875
Figuring $4 gallon as gas prices don't exactly trend down over time, we're paying more for gas than anything else out of a $2753 total.
...but 15000 miles / 2753 = 18 cents per mile with everything included.
Now of course we are a bit better off if we don't drive our car into a lake like this scenario predicts. My daily driver is a Honda Insight now though and its costs are lower and the car in my example was actually bought for less than $3k.