How much has your car cost per mile to run?

[Dr Zoidberg]

Be honest with your figures if you can please.

My PD140 Elegance octavia has just hit 55k miles on the way to work today so after a comment in another thread I thought I'd work out what that's cost me per mile.

It cost about £16100 to buy and is now worth £8210 as a trade in , so that's depreciation of £7910
6 tyres have cost £365
A service was £210 (the second was paid for by skoda)
I've taxed it twice since new - £230
I've paid two and a half years insurance - £1100

Fuel is a rough guesstimate - the first 45k at about 48mpg and 94p a litre would be £4k in fuel
The last 10k at 51mpg and £1.20 a litre on average would be £1070 , so £5070 in total.

That's a complete expenditure of £14865 to do 55k miles which works out at 27p a mile which I think is pretty good for a brand new car of that size.

[daiking]

Is that £16100 after buying it outright with cash or the OTR price plus finance/interest costs?

I've cribbed together some figures, this is for 2 years come Aug 1st and includes the cost of a service that is due this month so I'm not cheating ;-)

Mazda 3, 1.6 petrol. Car cost £12312 and have driven 24215 recorded miles @ 34.6 mpg (bri9m to brinm calcs)

Depreciation = £5962
Finance cost = £173
Insurance = £2035
Tax = £147
Servicing = £350
Parts = £51
Petrol = £2992
TOTAL = £11710

Cost per mile = 48p per mile

[Dr Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by daiking

Is that £16100 after buying it outright with cash or the OTR price plus finance/interest costs?

I would need to get some figures from home to accurately do mine but I can tell you my first 24215 miles cost me £2992 in petrol so 12.4p per mile in petrol alone.

I had a bank loan at a nice low interest rate. That's not factored into the figures but it won't make a huge difference

[yegnold]

£0.253 per mile, assuming 5 pence per mile depreciation... £0.1175 of this is in fuel.

[postmanpat]

yee gods, octy 2 vrs, 2 years 2 months

tax used to date 250
insurance 700

16k miles at 29 mpg = 2482 litres @ approx £1
= £3432

Depreciation approx £7,750

approx £11182

= 69 - 70p per mile

OUCH

Forgot 4 new tyres @ £500 and 2 x service @ £370

75p per mile

[Tom_vRS]

Heres a nice PDF of mine, assuming the car is worth £0, and the only costs not on there are tax (considering I've not had to pay for that yet) and insurance (which is very car/driver/use/location etc specific). So thats 85p per mile, which seems like a lot, but I've only done a few miles, and hopefully the only costs for the next 12 months will be the cost of an MOT, and the tax, so the ppm will plummet!

[Sonic1980]

My Fab Vrs...


It cost about £11200 to buy and is now worth £6800 as a trade in , so that's depreciation of £4400
6 tyres have cost £450
Service have been 120, 240, 120, 120, 430
I've taxed it three times since new - 340
I've paid two and a half years insurance - £1300

Fuel is a rough guesstimate - £7500

That's a complete expenditure of ~£10655 to do 67k miles which works out at 16p a mile

Surely not! Dirt cheap...

[Dr Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by Sonic1980

My Fab Vrs...


It cost about £11200 to buy and is now worth £6800 as a trade in , so that's depreciation of £4400
6 tyres have cost £450
Service have been 120, 240, 120, 120, 430
I've taxed it three times since new - 340
I've paid two and a half years insurance - £1300

Fuel is a rough guesstimate - £7500

That's a complete expenditure of ~£10655 to do 67k miles which works out at 16p a mile

Surely not! Dirt cheap...

You can't add up.

Those figures total to £15020 , which is 22.5p a mile :0)

[Dr Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by postmanpat

yee gods, octy 2 vrs, 2 years 2 months

tax used to date 250
insurance 700

16k miles at 29 mpg = 2482 litres @ approx £1
= £3432

Depreciation approx £7,750

approx £11182

= 69 - 70p per mile

OUCH

Forgot 4 new tyres @ £500 and 2 x service @ £370

75p per mile

I know fuel prices have risen a lot , but when you work it out , it's not actually that big a percentage change to the total cost of running a car.

My depreciation was more than the total fuel bill for example , but that gap will close over the next year as the fuel will cost more but the car will have a smaller drop in value

[postmanpat]

completely agree, massive depreciation and low mileage will allways kill figures like these, buying new cars changing (relatively) frequently and opting for high spec high end models doesn't help either

[Dr Zoidberg]

Nope , not at all.

Mine is a relatively low figure because I got a very good discount at the time of purchase , and then do a lot of miles. Obviously the extra mileage does cause some extra depreciation , but not as much as the car loses simply by existing.

Anyway , watch someone with a diesel Felicia come along now and depress us all with their low running costs

[skinnyman]

Mk1 vRS on an 06 plate owned from new.

Taxed twice.

23,000 miles - fuel £3593 (approx)

4 new tyres.

Insured twice.

Serviced once (variable).

Depreciation - £6500 (roughly).

So overall it has cost pretty much 50p per mile. Best not to think about it really.

[postmanpat]

Originally Posted by Dr Zoidberg

Nope , not at all.

Originally Posted by Dr Zoidberg

Mine is a relatively low figure because I got a very good discount at the time of purchase , and then do a lot of miles. Obviously the extra mileage does cause some extra depreciation , but not as much as the car loses simply by existing.

Anyway , watch someone with a diesel Felicia come along now and depress us all with their low running costs

Isn't that what I said, my figures are killed because of low mileage and high depreciation, If I had done 100k in the same scenario then running cost would have been nearer 26p per mile

[loskie]

I bought my octavia 4.5 years ago at 5 years old cost me £4700(with 47000m on it). I calculated a few months ago that I had covered 90000miles at a total cost of approx £19.5k. this incuded the purchase price of the car and EVERYTHING else. I was beginning to think it was costly to run till I worked this out. I'll have had about £20k to run it in expenses so basically my private miles have been free.
Just goes to show what a killer depreciation and interest charges are on car costs. if you only pay £5k you can only lose £5k in depreciation.

Cost per mile 21.5 pence

[Dr Zoidberg]

Originally Posted by postmanpat

Isn't that what I said, my figures are killed because of low mileage and high depreciation, If I had done 100k in the same scenario then running cost would have been nearer 26p per mile

I was agreeing , as in no it doesn't help

[postmanpat]

lol, sorry alex, read it the opposite way

[sdenny]

Originally Posted by Dr Zoidberg

Be honest with your figures if you can please.

My PD140 Elegance octavia has just hit 55k miles on the way to work today so after a comment in another thread I thought I'd work out what that's cost me per mile.

It cost about £16100 to buy and is now worth £8210 as a trade in , so that's depreciation of £7910
6 tyres have cost £365
A service was £210 (the second was paid for by skoda)
I've taxed it twice since new - £230
I've paid two and a half years insurance - £1100

Fuel is a rough guesstimate - the first 45k at about 48mpg and 94p a litre would be £4k in fuel
The last 10k at 51mpg and £1.20 a litre on average would be £1070 , so £5070 in total.

That's a complete expenditure of £14865 to do 55k miles which works out at 27p a mile which I think is pretty good for a brand new car of that size.

54 Plate Octy I vRS, bought new Feb 2005, now with 71,200 miles:

(figures below rounded)

Purchase: £13,600
Interest on loan: £1,250
Insurance: £2,100
RFL: £560
Service/Maintenance: £1,550 (inc cam belt etc, brake discs + pads)
Tyres: £630 (needs another 2 soon)
misc: £304 (arm rest, MoT, Wing mirror, breakdown insurance)

(exact figures below)

Total spent to date: £19,962.80

Petrol to date: £8419.20

Total: £28,382

cost per mile if I throw it away now: 40p

Assuming a trade in of £4k (not sure if this is realistic) this comes down to 34p

[matt@theforce]

Current Car

octi pd130
7200 purchase
6000 current value
1200 depreciation
250 service 90k
50 mot
250 service 100k
240 tyres
50 front brakes
500 clutch
700 suspension/poly bushes
110 road tax yr1
120 road tax yr2
350 remap
25 air filter
900 Insurance x 2years
140 egr valve
2090 milage @ 1.15 per litre @ 45mpg x18,000 miles
18000 total milage
6975 Total of above costs

0.39 Total cost per mile to run

----------------------------------------------------------------------
My old Octi 1 vrs

vrs
11500 purchase
6200 sold for
5300 depreciation
350 service
450 remap
400 exhaust
100 dv
30 air filter
440 tyres
3799 fuel @ 90p litre @ 28mpg x26,000 miles
1500 Insurance x 2 years
190 road tax yr1
210 road tax yr2

12769 Total Costs
26000 Total milage
0.49 Cost per mile to run

-------------------------------------------------
SWMBO's Fabia Vrs

12000 purchase
8015 px value now
3985 depreciation
220 1yr service
220 2yr service
110 road tax yr1
120 road tax yr2
120 x2 tyres
700 insurance x2 years
2717 milage @ 1.15 per litre @ 50mpg x17,000 miles

8192 Total costs
17000 Total milage
0.48 Total cost per mile
-------------------------------------------

I really enjoyed working this out and I found the results quite interesting. None of our cars have finance etc on so this made it easier to work out.

[daiking]

Matt, I'd go back and check your fuel costs

I think you're a factor of 4.544 out

[Burnsey]

Previous Superb 2.5v6 over 2 and a bit years

24p per mile

Pretty good for large luxury car. Did help a lot that I bought it after it had lost it's initial chunk of depn. If I'd had it since new rather than having a couple of used cars over 4 years then it would have been 35p a mile on 60k miles in 4 years.

Some interesting info coming out of this thread

Have generally tried for 10 p per mile in fuel costs and thankfully moving from 1.6 octy to 2.5 diesel just about kept this up then the move to the octy 1.9 just about kept up until the fuel went above 1.20 a litre. It's interesting that the Revenue still think 10p is reasonable