Buy a car or take a taxi: which is more profitable for you

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

To answer this question, compare the cost of 1 km by taxi and by your own car.

Finding out the taxi fares is easy. It is much more difficult to figure out what the cost of operating a personal car is. People buy cars at very different prices, someone drives more often, someone less often, some do not go to auto repair shops for years, and someone has less luck, and they have to repair the car often.

We want to show what constitutes the cost of 1 km of track and how to calculate it. You will be able to substitute your numbers as an example and estimate the cost of driving a car in your case.

Taxi cost

Taxi fares vary depending on the day of the week, time of day and other circumstances. Let's use the online calculator of the first taxi service we come across. Let's say we need to get from a suburb of Moscow to one of the nearest districts of the capital.

For a trip over a distance of 25 km, we will have to pay 770 rubles, which is about 30 rubles per kilometer. We will build on this price.

The cost of a trip with your own car

There are many terms here:

1. Gasoline costs.
2. Machine depreciation is the difference between the purchase price and the sale price.
3. Ownership cost - recurring payments (taxes, insurance, and the like).
4. Periodic maintenance.
5. Repair.
6. Costs associated with storing the machine.

Gasoline costs

It is very easy to calculate this value. To do this, you need to know the average fuel consumption of your car and the price of fuel in your area. For example, with a consumption of 7 l / 100 km of AI-95 gasoline at the current price of 45 rubles per liter, we get:

7 l × 45 rubles / l ÷ 100 km = 3, 15 rubles / km

Oil consumption adds a few more kopecks to this value. For example, with an engine oil price of 2,000 rubles and a replacement frequency every 15,000 km, we have:

RUB 2,000 ÷ 15,000 km = 0, 13 rubles / km

The amount is absolutely insignificant, but let's take it into account.

The cost of fuels and lubricants as the car wears out and the performance of the engine deteriorates slightly, but not much.

Depreciation of the machine

This value is also calculated simply: you need to divide the difference between the purchase price of the car and the sale price by the car's mileage during this time.

For example, you bought a car for 800,000 rubles, and five years later sold it for 300,000. During this time, the mileage was 150,000 km. Means:

(800,000 rubles - 300,000 rubles) ÷ 150,000 km = 3, 3 rubles / km

The more expensive your car is, the more it loses in value during its operation. The less you drive it, the greater the contribution of depreciation to the cost of a kilometer will be.

Ownership cost

This includes expenses that do not depend on the mileage of the car: taxes, OSAGO, the cost of passing a vehicle inspection. These are annual payments, the amount of which depends on the power of the car's engine (tax), the place of registration of the owner and the driving experience of the car allowed to drive (OSAGO), as well as some other circumstances.

The amounts of these payments may vary significantly, but on average do not exceed 10,000 rubles per year. We will take this figure for calculation. With an annual mileage of 30,000 km, the cost of ownership will give us the following contribution to the cost of a kilometer:

RUB 10,000 ÷ 30,000 km = 0.33 RUB / km

The more you drive, the less the already insignificant contribution of taxes and compulsory insurance to the cost price of a kilometer becomes.

Periodic maintenance

The costs of mandatory maintenance (MOT) of the car, the volume of which is set by the manufacturer, are considered here.

As a rule, maintenance is tied to a mileage interval of 15,000 km. If the annual mileage does not exceed 30,000 km, it can be considered that maintenance is carried out twice a year.

But the amount of TO varies significantly. While the car is new and there is still no wear of components and parts, MOT comes down mainly to control and adjustments. Then the number of parts to be replaced gradually increases: worn-out brake discs and pads, belts, shock absorbers have to be replaced.

Here are the factors that can affect this indicator:

• The older the car, the more expensive it is to perform maintenance.
• The more expensive and more complex the car, the more expensive the spare parts and services of the car service.
• The car owner can carry out some of the maintenance work on his own, which reduces direct costs.
• The owner may also ignore the manufacturer's recommendations and fail to comply with his instructions: do not change parts on time or do it less often, and simply ignore some work.

It is almost impossible to calculate even the average cost of maintenance taking into account all these circumstances.

Repair

Repair costs are difficult to separate completely from maintenance costs. We agree to consider an unforeseen replacement of failed parts as repair. Modern cars are very durable, but, like any other technique, they break down. Here the variety of life situations is even greater.

Let's mark the trends:

• The new car practically does not break down for the first two or three years. With increasing age and mileage, the need for repairs increases.
• The cost of spare parts and the repair itself varies depending on the brand.
• Having the desire and opportunity, the owner can perform many types of repairs on his own and pay only the cost of spare parts.
• Operating conditions can extend the maintenance-free life of a car or, on the contrary, ditch it ahead of time. Someone's car may break down more often and require large repair costs.

According to the experience of several surveyed car owners, the total cost of maintenance and repairs over five years is from 20 to 50% of the cost of a new car.

In our example, the cost of a new car is 800,000 rubles. We count to the maximum:

800,000 rubles × 50% ÷ 150,000 km = 2, 67 rubles / km

Storage costs

The cost of renting a garage, parking space, parking costs in the city, depending on the situation, may be either absent altogether (the car spends the night under the window) or very large sums (8 hours of parking in the center of Moscow will cost 2,000 rubles).

For the sake of simplicity, we will assume that parking is not related to driving and will not take it into account.

What is the bottom line

In our example, a new car was purchased at a cost of 800,000 rubles, which after five years of operation was sold for 300,000 rubles with a mileage of 150,000 km. In terms of a kilometer, the costs were:

Fuel costs, rub.	3, 15
Depreciation, rub.	3, 30
Ownership, rub.	0, 33
Maintenance and repair, rub.	2, 67
Total, RUB / km	9, 58

It turns out that in our example, using a private car is more profitable than taking a taxi.