UKC

I'm trying to estimate how much my car costs me to run per mile, roughly, for my journey to work.  Its 18 miles each way, half motorway half stop start urban roads.  I reckon I will get no more than 40miles/gallon so just fuel maybe around the £5 mark. 

For comparison, our expenses rate per mile is 45p/mile which takes into account the hidden costs as well, this comes out at around £16 for the journey.

I imagine the true costs will be somewhere in between, any clues?

 

In reply to kipper12:

It may well be somewhere in the middle, but it is impossible for us to know without knowing a lot more about the vehicle and your use. How many miles a year, annual fuel costs, tax, insurance, servicing and maintenance, depreciation.

In reply to kipper12:

As above, need details about the car, are you including depreciation etc. Example of my own calculation is below.

I drive a 2002 Focus Estate Petrol (so no depreciation) that gets ~36MPG. Based on petrol being an average of £1.15 I've spent £3000 or so on Petrol to drive 20000 miles since I got it.

I've just paid for this years insurance, tax and MOT bits so they have yet to be amortised, but assuming nothing goes wrong over the next year, I'll be looking somewhere around 30p per mile. This figure includes costs for the car, and the fact I have paid lots on insurance. Figures are below.

Car £690 Insurance £900 Tax £130 Windscreen £25 Tyres £100 Service £360 Misc £40 Service + MOT £225 Tax £130 Insurance £681 Windscreen Wipers £20 Back seat £40 Service + MOT + Tyres £300 Tax £190 Insurance £555 Petrol £2987

In reply to DamonRoberts:

Depreciation is a good point. Most people know that the 45p per mile is to contribute toward wear and tear and some compensation toward you running your own car (including insurance hike for adding “business purposes” to your premium) but it also only just struck me this year that - depending on car’s price point, and as you say, irrelevant in your case - each mile can knock perhaps 7p-10p off its value

 

Think about car shopping . Let’s say you find two near identical cars, say Focus/Astra/Cee’d

one has 65k miles on it and is £2700

another has 45k Miles and is £3900

6p per mile there. At the higher end of he market, that price per mile will increase

 

I maybe am talking rubbish, it’s just an idle speculation really. If anyone would care to comment I’d appreciate it

In reply to kipper12:

Do you get to expense your standard commute? Wish I could! 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I wish you hadn't just used "expense" as a verb. But we can't all have what we wish for

In reply to ianstevens:

Sorry boss! The pitfalls of becoming a sales tosser

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Sad times indeed.

 

To contribute to the actual thread, I got myself a diesel back in August. I tend to drive rarely, but when I do it's always in excess of 30 mins (and often 2 hours) so suits me. In a very non-urban environment so I feel less guilty re: particulate pollution, which is also an indirect cost of running a car IMO - sorting our air quality is going to cost in the future. But we'll ignore that for now as I'm sure several to many PhD theses can and will be written on it. I appreciate that the cost:mile ratio will seem high as I've recently got the car (53 plate A4 estate, 1.9tdi) so will factor in the purchase cost as I tend to favour driving cars until they die. It does ~50mpg. I've had some "unplanned" maintenance costs but I'd expect this on a car that's 14 years old, usually in the order of £400-500 per year.

To date: Miles - 5000

Purchase cost: £950; Fuel: £560; Insurance: £180 (6 months worth); MOT: £45; Service £100; Brake Calipers: £280; Tax (6 months worth): £100. Total: £2215, excluding purchase: £1265. Or £0.443/0.253 per mile. The former figure (and the latter hopefully!) will go down as the purchase cost is diluted, and the annual maintenance (i.e. MOT/service) are distributed across the remaining months of the year. Interestingly, still below the expense rate of 45p/mile I'd put on my tax return, or people seem to be able to claim from their employers.

In reply to ianstevens:

You have just made a very good argument for accepting a company car if offered one!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

That would be illegal. A company could pay for your standard commute, but that would be a taxable benefit, not an expense.

Anyway, as far as cost per mile goes...

I work on two costs. There is the total cost of running a car, including tax, insurance depreciation etc. averaged over the life of the vehicle. This comes pretty close to the 45p a mile official figure, even for my modest car.

I also have  a "per mile for this journey" cost. This is what I'd accept or offer as a contribution when driving to the crag for example. It assumes I already have the car paid for, and just covers fuel and wear and tear. It is approximately equal to fuel +20%.

It's interesting working this figure out, especially compared to when I used to ride a motorcycle. Car tyres cost peanuts for example. On a bike, tyres are a significant part of the cost per mile.

In reply to kipper12:

Lifetime cost/lifetime miles.  For example (illustration only)

Something like 200000 miles for a diesel car to write-off over 15 years.

Then:

Purchase £15000

Insurance x 15 = £10000

MOT, service, Tax x 15 = £7500

Tyres, brakes = £5000

Odds and sods (lightbulbs, screenwash, carwash, wipers, etc) = £1000

Diesel = 200000/40*£1.25 = £6250

Total = £44750

= 22.5p/mile

Note the diesel cost is only 15% of the total cost of ownership

In reply to kipper12:

When I was made redundant and had to buy my own car I bought a 2 litre diesel Mondeo. I made a log of everything I spent on the car.

I ran it for about 6 years and put 245,000 miles on it before it needed an expensive repair which wasn't worth doing so I sold it for £500.

Overall fuel cost was just over £26,000

All other running costs combined including depreciation came to just over £22,000.

It all worked out to a cost per mile of 19.7p which I thought was cheap motoring really.

 

In reply to Deadeye:

That excludes repairs, obviously.  In 200,000 I'd expect a few fairly major repairs / replacements

In reply to Deadeye:

Sorry but fuel is priced in litres nowadays not gallons.

So 6250*4.54 = £28,375.

As a ballpark I always find the total running costs of a car are about twice fuel costs.

In reply to kipper12:

It's an interesting one as I just calculated out what mine costs. Even at an average of 26mpg the total cost including depreciation over 5 years amounts to 37 pence per mile. Not a supermini, granted, but for the fun it gives I'm willing to suck it up. Even adding in the 'fun' bits I've bolted on it still sneaks in at a whisker under the £0.45 allowance over the time I've had it. There's a lot to be said for doing your own maintenance!

In reply to kipper12:

I'm also boring enough to keep records of all car costs.

Jaguar XJ Diesel owned 10 years 100,000 miles £0.55 / per mile.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

No, I'm just using this as a benchmark

In reply to kipper12:

Yes, I see that now (you wrote “for comparison” in the OP). Sorry for the confusion

In reply to Hooo:

 

 

cant comment about motorbikes but for cars ... I wish! Depends on the car. I pay £140 per tyre and I am being a bit cheap apparently and should be getting the £180 ones!

low profile fat poseur tyres for 19” alloys because I am a dickhead

 

replaced 6 in 2 years.

2 on wear and tear and 2 pairs on mysterious blowouts

 

In reply to Rick Graham:

 

With no disrespect to Deadeye who has innocently made a common mistake....this is my favourite post of the year so far!

In reply to kipper12:

Just read this thread with interest because it's been a topic I've thought about a lot recently and has led me to think about getting a lease car - which I always thought was a ridiculous expensive way to own a car - but then when you think that you can have a very nice brand new car for 2 years /20k miles for around £300 per month = £7200 over the 2 years. 

Assuming you are in a job where you get paid mileage at 45ppm, the above works out at around 36p per mile, https://journeyprice.co.uk/ says that a mile costs around 18p in petrol if you get 35mpg, obviously there will be insurance and one or two services over the two years but there should be no other hidden costs. 

I think the 45ppm HMRC rate could get you a lower end lease car + petrol and insurance covered completely, compared to the above example where you would have to contribute some of your own earnings towards it.

It's just something I've thought about.

 

Edit: just realised I put "expensive way to 'own' a car"! I realise the contradiction in that sentence now!!

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I'm sure it's possible to spend a fortune on car tyres if you get silly, but there's no need for it. I've just bought a set of 4 for under £250 fitted. A good quality brand too, not cheapies. I think I've bought a total of 10 tyres in 80k miles, so that's 0.8p per mile. A mid range bike will get through a £250 set of tyres in 5k miles!

 

In reply to Hooo:

I can get a set of Pirelli’s for my car for £250. I guess it would be 4 times that if I had some fancy low profile jobs.

In reply to Hooo:

 

Because my car has silly “no need” poseur wannabe racer wheels on, there is a need to spend a bit more on tyres. I can get the cheapo version of my tyres for £70 a corner from no-name brand but given that I have a “performance” car, this would be like drinking very good wine from a plastic beaker.

 

on my previous sensible normal car it was about £70 a corner for good tyres (Uniroyal rain something). I accepted when I bought my silly car that all costs would double (apart from insurance which stayed the same, and VED which went up 1000%!!!)

 

 

Wow, and the bike carries a much lighter load. How does the wear and tear manifest so dramatically? Or is it that a tiny reduction in tread depth that would be fine on a car, is safety critical on a bike ?

 

In reply to elliot.baker:

 

Are you assuming that the job pays 45p per mile for your standard commute from home to regular/base place of work? As discussed above, this wouldn’t generally be covered - 45p per mile is for business travel to sites away from usual place of work. Might be worth recalculating to allow for this

Expensive way to “have” a car might work grammatically

In reply to kipper12:

Working from my own numbers, which include depreciation, tax, mot/repairs, insurance, service and fuel over about 14000 miles per year (the more miles the cheaper per mile) it costs me approx. 18p/mile. I average about 50mpg in a Peugeot 407 2l turbo diesel and if I do long motorway runs I can considerably increase this overall average. The depreciation is quite low because I bought an old car which I knew the history of. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Agree that running crap tyres on a performance vehicle is a false economy. Especially if you then crash it as a result. I have to admit that I've done exactly that on a bike. Even so, your performance tyres are still a lot cheaper than ones for a decent bike.

Bike tyres do have to have less tread depth, but the main reason they wear so fast is that they are incredibly soft and sticky. Back in the 80s I could get bike tyres that would last 10k, but you'd be mad to use them on a modern bike.

In reply to kipper12: I have a 1.9cdti Vectra. Well had because it's sitting on the drive with a need for a new gearbox.

I've worked out the cost per mile which comes out at just below 33p.

That's for about 62,000 miles in 4 and a bit years. Broken down its about £4k purchase, £8k diesel and £8k all the other stuff. I reckon a newer car would have more purchase cost but less other stuff (hopefully less repairs).

Hope that helps.

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I more meant if your in the kind of role where you travel a lot for work like sales or consultancy or something like that, although the prices I put together in my post do obviously come out to more than 45ppm so you would be subsidising your own work travel a bit in order to have a 'nice' car. 

 

I think if you got a cheaper lease (say £170-250pm) + petrol then you could get it all in for under 45ppm but still be driving a new car, and avoid the uncertainty of repair bills etc (which has stung me a fair bit in the last year or so on a 10 year old car).

 

Obviously when you drive it at the weekend you're paying for it yourself "per mile" though!