Cost per mile?

[surfstar]

The thing that always give me pause, is that over the long run, the longer you keep a car and more miles you put on it, the smaller the purchase price factors in.

Makes me want to justify buying something newer and more expensive.

I'm looking to replace a Mazda that I bought for $5200 in 5/2001 and added ~260,000 miles to (now at 341k). Found something that I'm hoping is decent for $3300. Mid 40's MPG too. By far my greatest expense over the long run was gas, even with the Mazda averaging 33 mpg lifetime. I drive less miles now but still like to keep it economical even though I now could afford more (as in cash in bank for purchase).

A quite rough estimate put me under $.20/mile for the Mazda.

 

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
Electric cars NEVER pay for themselves, another green myth to be filed next to Chinese solar panel "green jobs".

I have nothing against electric cars, your helping me out. Much appreciated.


I do agree full electric cars a bit too pricy right now, but since when cars had to bay back for themselves?

A lot of people splurge on 40-50k cars (price comparable to Volt) and they don't expect for those to pay for themselves.

If that car was popular, it could produce some serious dent at big oil companies, Saudi royal family, and other unfriendly folks (Chavez and Putin come to mind but there are lots of other).

It's all about priorities in life.

 

[friendly_jacek]

Originally Posted By: eljefino

My $800, 39 MPG saturn is coming up on its 9th birthday in my posession. I could still get $800 for it.

Insurance and plates are $200/year, used tires $10 ea. Rebuilt the motor in my driveway for $200 in parts 50k ago and it doesn't burn oil. (At $3/qt this probably paid for the piston rings) Beat that!


You could never beat that. When I was student and poor, I could never understand why people buy brand new cars. I was very happy with my clunkers. Fast forward over 10 years and Prius is about the cheapest car you can find that is socially acceptable in my work parking lot.

 

[Artem]

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
Electric cars NEVER pay for themselves, another green myth to be filed next to Chinese solar panel "green jobs".

I have nothing against electric cars, your helping me out. Much appreciated.


I do agree full electric cars a bit too pricy right now, but since when cars had to bay back for themselves?

A lot of people splurge on 40-50k cars (price comparable to Volt) and they don't expect for those to pay for themselves.

If that car was popular, it could produce some serious dent at big oil companies, Saudi royal family, and other unfriendly folks (Chavez and Putin come to mind but there are lots of other).

It's all about priorities in life.


At least not at this point and time. They have to cost 20 grand and produce 200mpg all day long in order to EVENTUALLY pay for itself in gas savings. I don't buy the fact that the Volt gets 250mpg as advertised.

 

[BearZDefect]

Originally Posted By: eljefino

My $800, 39 MPG saturn is coming up on its 9th birthday in my posession. I could still get $800 for it.

Insurance and plates are $200/year, used tires $10 ea. Rebuilt the motor in my driveway for $200 in parts 50k ago and it doesn't burn oil. (At $3/qt this probably paid for the piston rings) Beat that!

eljefino, you are a longstanding star of BITOG.

 

[PandaBear]

No matter how you run the number, the lowest cost per mile is always a used, good enough condition econobox, not hybrid, not new econobox, not fancy new diesel, not natural gas, not electric.

Edit: except if you drive A LOT of miles and the fuel is a significantly bigger portion of your cost per year than the purchase price. I've ran some number in the past and to me it is around 30k miles a year, but that would likely eliminate EV and CNG due to range.

The key and the trick is to find something that is good enough for YOU that you can tolerate driving it. You wouldn't want to spend 3 hours a day in a molded car with no heat/AC, exhaust fume leak, and a leaky roof.

 

[javacontour]

Yep. TCO for my 1994 Geo Prizm was $0.12/mile. Purchased in 2003 for $2500, sold in 2010 for $1200, IIRC. That was everything, purchase, sale, fuel, maintenance, repairs, tax, tags and insurance.

It's hard to beat a 10 year old econobox for low TCO.

Even after needing to rebuild the engine in my 2003 Mazda Protege5, my TCO so far is $0.28/mile after about 15-16 months. That's not including insurance, it does include new tires a couple of months ago, and therefore is pretty respectable.



Originally Posted By: Donald
One really needs to figure total cost of ownership and then extract total cost per mile.

I agree a Corolla from down south might be a good buy, mechanically long lasting, no existing problem with rust, good MPG, low cost for essential maint, like brakes, struts, tires.

 

[javacontour]

Probably better than that if you look at my numbers for a 2003 Pro5 I bought last May and immediately had to rebuild the engine due to either my failure (dropped something in the cylinder, or failed to catch the fault from the previous owner), or the failure of a platinum spark plug. (Pad bounced around???)

I did a tune up as soon as I got it and it ended up burning a quart of oil every tank soon after that. So over $3k later, my shop drops the rebuilt engine in there. Bored 0.020 over, new pistons, rings, bearings, etc, machine work and other parts and labor to R&R the engine, send it to the machine shop, etc.

Even after all of that, I'm at $0.28/mile on this car after less than 18 months. So you are probably closer to the 0.12/mile I spent on my $2500 Geo Prizm back in 2003.

Originally Posted By: surfstar
The thing that always give me pause, is that over the long run, the longer you keep a car and more miles you put on it, the smaller the purchase price factors in.

Makes me want to justify buying something newer and more expensive.

I'm looking to replace a Mazda that I bought for $5200 in 5/2001 and added ~260,000 miles to (now at 341k). Found something that I'm hoping is decent for $3300. Mid 40's MPG too. By far my greatest expense over the long run was gas, even with the Mazda averaging 33 mpg lifetime. I drive less miles now but still like to keep it economical even though I now could afford more (as in cash in bank for purchase).

A quite rough estimate put me under $.20/mile for the Mazda.

 

[supton]

I think the numbers can get a bit fuzzy: for instance, how many of us would elect to go carless? Not me. So I'm not sure just how much of insurance and registration can or should be included. Obviously, certain vehicles will cost bundles on either: but for myself I like to look at those two numbers separate from cost/mile, as they are more of a fixed yearly cost. yes, they matter; but...

YMMV.

 

[starvin_sgt]

Originally Posted By: supton
I think the numbers can get a bit fuzzy: for instance, how many of us would elect to go carless? Not me. So I'm not sure just how much of insurance and registration can or should be included. Obviously, certain vehicles will cost bundles on either: but for myself I like to look at those two numbers separate from cost/mile, as they are more of a fixed yearly cost. yes, they matter; but...

YMMV.



What you say is a key Supton...I plan $1k per yer per vehicle in just costs, tag, insurance, tire and battery fund etc. I give this to each vehicle and then any amount above that is "costly"

These are my factors…of course the truck per tire cost is like twice what the car’s costs so I would never suggest a truck CPM could ever equal the cars. I did factor the cost of those tires for the car when I bought it…15” radials are much cheaper than 17” so for our primary car this lowers the CPM. Of course over 80k miles perhaps not so much.

 

[supton]

As I try to justify buying my 4Runner, I ran the #'s on my TDi:

Purchase: $23k. Call it $25k with interest. $5k residual at the moment. Maintance: I'll call it $1.5k/100kmiles. Tires: $400/40k. Repairs: ouch. It's been about $6.4k/260k. Fuel: I'm just going to call it $4.00/gallon at 40mpg. When I bought it, fuel was much less; fuel has been much more. And I generally get around 45mpg...

26.7c/mile.

The $4.5k 4Runner I'm looking: if I run for 5 years, what would I have to put into it? I'm guessing $1k in repairs and maintance; but I'll allot $2k. Residual would be $1k if blown up; more likely to be $2k even if I abuse it, so I'll assume that. Not a frugal vehicle on fuel so would only drive 5kmiles/year. $4/gallon RUG, at 20mpg? [Not likely, but let's run with that.] I get 38c/mile. I figure, the luxury of a backup vehicle, the cost of having that luxury that is, is covered by its insurance cost--everything after that is pure cost. [IOW, the $500-$1k / year insurance -- guessing here -- is what it's worth to me to have a spare vehicle on hand.] So is an extra 12c/mile worth it to me for just 4WD?

Obviously, it's a bit fuzzy to predict, and a whole lot easier to look in the rear view mirror and find what it really was.