Car ownership cost calculator

It depends on how much you drive, and that is the point. Depreciation, insurance, taxes and most of the maintenance happen whether the car leaves the garage or not; only fuel grows with the distance.

With the numbers this tool starts with, the crossing point is around nine thousand two hundred kilometres a year. Below that, depreciation is the largest single item; above it, fuel takes over. At five thousand kilometres a year depreciation is 28 percent and fuel 16; at thirty thousand it is the other way round, 16 and 52.

Because if you already own it, what you paid is gone. What is still in play is the difference between today's value and the value on the day you sell.

If you are deciding whether to buy, put the price you would pay in the first field and what you expect to get back in the second. Both readings work; they answer different questions.

Because fuel is one line out of six. The tool shows fuel alone per kilometre right next to the full cost per kilometre, and the distance between the two numbers is the size of the usual mistake: with the starting values it is 0.55 against 1.79.

It also explains why the same car costs a very different amount per kilometre for two different people. Most of the cost is fixed, so it spreads over whatever distance you drive: from 3.53 per kilometre at five thousand kilometres a year down to 1.04 at thirty thousand.

Financing interest, fines, tolls, and the return that the money tied up in the car could have produced somewhere else. Any of them can be large, and all of them depend on a situation this tool does not ask about.

Add them into the yearly fields if they matter to you. The arithmetic is a sum, so nothing breaks by putting a cost where it belongs.