What Price “Freedom”?
No, I’m not talking about getting a second car, but wondering about the whole concept of a car at all.
Here’s the problem. It’s time for us to part company with our current car. It’s a 2001 Renault Lagune (yes, I know) that’s done 108,000 miles or so, and is getting to an age where things will probably start going wrong, at the most inconvenient times. Like when half-way to visit in-laws in Wales.
But when it comes down to it, I really don’t want another car either. There are two reasons for this - the costing the Earth one, and the costing a packet one. It’s time to move on from a car-driven way of life, and to stop tipping cash by the bucket-load into owning a car.
Actually there’s a third reason - I just don’t like cars.
So, using this car-cost-calculation-page, handily signposted by the Sexify blog (”Bicycles are becoming sexy again. Shouldn’t you?”), I’ve found out that even for my current modest mileage of 12,000 miles a year, and for a cheap second-hand car (£6,000) replaced after four years, the site says that annual cost is just over £5,000.
That’s a scary number, so I did some playing around with the site, and think I’ve spotted an error in how it works things out. Look, I’m an engineer - how else do you expect me to pass these long winter evenings with just my Foxy Wife for company?
Anyway - the error is that the site double-counts loan repayments and depreciation. I’m sure that someone with a qualification in accounting can tell me that this is perfectly correct, but for the world of how-much-cash-do-I-have-in-the-bank-today that most of us inhabit, it doesn’t make sense.
So working around this problem, I’ve come up with a new version of the car cost calculator in Excel. This says that my total cost is somewhere around £4,200 a year or around £350 a month. Still a pretty scary number.
So given that I really don’t want a car, is this all the amunition I need for the forthcoming discussion with my Foxy Wife? I’ve a feeling it’s not, and I’m going to have to come up with a plan that says, “And this is what we’ll do when X happens, and when we want to do Y, this is how we’ll cope, and under Z circumstances, well then we’ll . . . etc”.
Any help on exactly what those circumstances are, and what the actions to take will be very much appreciated!
Double entry book keeping got the better of me, either way cars are expensive.
A hire car will cope with the trips to wales and Ikea (or any large box shop).
The local errands a bike will sort of course or £350 will pay for a lot of taxi trips in a month.
Note how the video stresses the “safety” of the car at the end.
I’m not actually all that enthusiastic about cars either, but to be fair, a “cheap secondhand car” can cost an awful lot less than £6000. Try £600. It makes a huge difference to your running cost calculations.
“We don’t need a car, but we could do with a bakfiets, an Xtracycle….”
;-D
I may borrow your spreadsheet for similar discussions in my home.
We have an eight-year-old Fiesta which I expect to do 6000 miles this year (1064 of which were over half-term on our holiday to Scotland, for which we could easily have used a hire car).
Is there a car club or street-rental scheme around you like Streetcar? when we lived in London we didn’t have a car, we just rented one when we absolutely had to and then spent a mad weekend doing all the things we couldn’t do without a car. FWIW these were: stocking up on garden supplies (50L bags of compost are a bugger to get on the bus), moving sofas and going birdwatching anywhere other than Barnes Wetland Centre.
Now we need one to live, but I’m working on it.
When I lived in the city, I didn’t own/need a car. Having moved to the ‘burbs in an area where, although I’m still close to the city, public transit is woefully inadequate, I cannot imagine life without at least one car.
To the calculator: I think replacing a car every 4 years as pretty frequent. If you’re spending roughly $8,500 USD on a car and keeping your annual mileage low, I would suspect you can get more than 4 years before purchasing a new car. If you’re spending <$1,000 USD on a car, then I would suspect you’d replace that car more frequently than every 4 years.
Karl, the link to the excel calculator seems to be broken. I’d like to see how you calculate that and if I can convert it to Euros.
Thankfully we are part of a carshare, so fot €9 a month we can use one of a variety of cars on the one or two occasions a year when we need one. I can’t stand the things myself though: they’re stresful and awkward, so I avoid using them if I can.
Hi Andy -
Thanks for letting me know - the link should now work.
The spreadsheet is protected, but only to prevent accidental errors messing it up - there’s no password to unlock it. Enjoy!
Karl, have you ever read this;
http://rts.gn.apc.org/socid.htm (Andre Gorz, The Social Ideology of the Motor Car)?
“The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one.”
It comes at the “What Price Freedom?” question from a slightly different angle.