Made another calculator thing: Running cost comparison

[FridgeFreezer]

As a mate was telling me I should by an econobox to replace the freebie, I ended up wondering exactly how much money I'd really save by gaining a few MPG, so I made this:

Running Cost Comparer

Turns out it's really not worth the expense of changing or the misery of driving something utterly soulless to save a few quid a year.

There's also the Vehicle cable calculator for those who find it useful.

[andyb]

Can I suggest that the cost difference figure show positive/negative figure. So, both work out the same then difference is zero (obviously ) but if left side is the cheaper option then should be a positive value, left side more expensive then it show be a negative value. Does that make sense?

[Retroanaconda]

Handy tool for comparisons. Obviously it only accounts for the fuel usage, but since that's the majority of the cost that's probably no bad thing.

For my vehicle the fuel costs me 15.4p out of the 18.3p/mile overall running cost so it's the biggie for sure. Insurance/repairs/MOT/tax are tiny in comparison.

[ejparrott]

Definitely not worth me swapping my 200 for a V8!!

[qwakers]

but it shows me how bad my current car is comared to my last. 100% more expensive :-)

[Tanuki]

From my PoV the issue's **never** fuel; the "Cost-of-cash" is by far the bigger one.

i.e. "If I had to take out a loan/take on a personal-contract-plan to get another more-economical car to replace or run alongside the Defender (which I own outright) how much would it cost me?"

OK, interest-rates are low - but even considering that, I can get a hell of a lot of fuel for the Defender for what I'd be paying-out on a new-car-loan or PCP deal.

On top of fuel/maintenance the Defender costs me car-tax, insurance, and depreciation (which since they stopped making them has actually been negative!). A parallel car would still incur car-tax maintenance and insurance on top of the cost-to-buy/lease.

[WesBrooks]

Its interesting looking at running costs like this properly. I've done it a few times for my daily. At 25,000 miles a year swapping from my skoda 2.0 TDCR to a 1.6 greenline version would save in the region of £2500, but buying a high mileage 3 year old version of the latter would loose me that much in a year in value on the car, so not worth doing.

Getting back towards the green oval and I got bored and compared the average CO2 emissions in manufacture for a mid size car and compared that to the CO2 savings of driving a Prius (no chance, just playing devils advocate) over the emissions from the 3.9 V8i discovery on a more average mileage of 10,000/yr. Turns out you'd need to keep if for three years before it makes sense from an emissions stand point, and quite a bit longer to offset the cost of buying the car...

So basically justifying buying a new car on economy or emissions is more often than not a false economy unless you plan to keep the car for much longer than the average 3 year lease hire purchase plans.

[WesBrooks]

Just dug up the old spread sheet.

Some internet sources site the CO2 emissions during manufacture of a mid-spec mondeo as 17,000kg. I'd suggest it fair to assume that this is a fair guess at the Prius, perhaps on the conservative side when you consider all of the batteries etc.

Data:

V8i Disco: 391g/km, 16.4l/100km

Prius: 70g/km, 3l/100km, £23295 purchase.

Average mileage: 7900 (UK average for 2014)

Totals:

V8i: 2384 £/yr, 4942kg CO2/yr

Prius: 884.8 £/yr, 884.8kg CO2/yr

Result:

Cost offset in 12 years (94,000 miles on the clock)

CO2 offset in 4.2 years