The Cost of Motoring

I decided the other day to get a more realistic idea of the cost of driving around so that I could get a feel for the cost of individual journeys we make. I started off by filling the fuel tank in our very modest 1.4 Vauxhall Corsa and then just using the car normally for a few days. I then refilled the car and recorded how much fuel it took to fill it, the mileage that we had done, and the cost of the fuel, the car runs on petrol.

The initial results are as follows:

In round numbers the cost of fuel per litre at ASDA was £1.28 and we had covered 280 miles between top-ups, to refill the tank took 29.21 litres. Converting to gallons we had used 6.42 gallons, this made the price per gallon £5.86 and gave a reasonably accurate fuel consumption figure of 43.61 miles per gallon.

So, to travel 280 miles had cost us, in petrol alone, £37.50p which gives us a per mile cost in petrol alone of 13.425 pence. This means that a 20 mile round trip of 40 miles is going to cost us £5.37p before we even think about parking or the other costs associated with the trip.

To make an estimate of the other costs I added up the car insurance (£280), road tax (£190), MOT (£40) which gave me a figure of £510. I added to this an estimate of depreciation of £1000 per year giving a total of £1510, I have EXCLUDED any additional costs for repairs. All this added together and spread over the year gives me a cost of just over £4 per day before I drive the car at all and EXCLUDING repairs.

So, completely ignoring the original purchase price and any repairs when I come to make my round trip to work the cost of just having the car is £4 before I even move move and it will cost me an additional £5.37 in petrol, a total of £9.37. If I were doing that 5 days a week it would be costing me £46.85 a week to go to work, or £187.40 in a 4 week month or £234.25 in a 5 week month. This of course excludes the staff parking charges I might have to pay at the NHS hospital I work at.

Now that's scary.