AAA estimates cost of car ownership at $7000 per year

[phantom power]

It costs a lot of money to own and operate a car. AAA pegs it at about 7 grand per year (.pdf). That's close to $600 per month. Living in a place where you can reduce the number of cars per household provides significant savings. Minor changes to development patterns which would open up that up as an affordable possibility for more people would be a good thing.

Many people see owning a car as an inevitable expense. It isn't.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009_02_15_archive.html#7009272995678005770

http://www.aaanewsroom.net/Assets/Files/200844921220.DrivingCosts2008.pdf

[Lost in CT]

1. Good lord I pay 200 a month tops... I think there numbers are a

touch dubious.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. Really?

Interest (or opportunity cost, if you own it outright)
Depreciation
Tires
Fuel
Insurance
Maintenance

$200 seems kind of low. Depreciation alone can account for that.

[Lost in CT]

9. Well yes lets see.

Gas about $25 every 10 days.

Insurance runs $520 a year

The car has appreciated in value since I bought it. (it's a 1974 Road Runner with 318 CID V8)

Certainly the opportunity cost has saved me quite a bit of money. (considering what my other investments have done)

Maintenance is twice a year (if that and the bill is usually under $200)

Oil change I do myself.

Tires run $400 or so every two years.



Now my girl's Mini Cooper (35k new a year ago)would have no trouble hitting the six hundred a month level but as a household we are below that threshold.

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. Good for you!

In the big picture, my gas-hog 70 chevelle is without a doubt our economy car.

:hi:

[Lost in CT]

12. Thanks... I always get a kick out of people who sniker at having such a gas hog...

Is buying a brand new Prius really better for the enviroment or the wallet?

I think the jury is still out on that one.

[phantom power]

15. Replacing products prior to end-of-life is rarely a win, economically or environmentally.

If you've got a car or appliance that is still working, it's almost always environmentally better to keep it than replace it, even if the new model is more efficient.

[izquierdista]

2. Minor changes?!?

Compare the public transportation alternatives of any European city to any American city and call them "minor changes". Yes, like the weather in January is the same as it is in July, albeit some "minor changes".

[phantom power]

4. Walkable neighborhoods are as much about zoning as public transit.

Also, Atrios typically focuses on regions that are already "almost walkable." In the sense that they either already have decent public transit, and just lack multi-use zoning, or vice versa. (Which I only know because I read him regularly, not so much from this post.)

However, with multi-use zoning, it is possible to have walkable neighborhoods regardless of public transit. Our neighborhood is walkable, although its on the edge, since retail is about one mile in all four directions.

Although we don't, we could get by with one car instead of two. This weekend we walked to the grocery store and carried stuff home in a fold-up cart. For that matter, my wife could take the bus to work, and we could live here with no car. That would cause some more obvious changes in lifestyle, but I wonder how different it would really be. The biggest differences would be with respect to going places outside the neighborhood. Those would involve either longer bus trips, or taking cabs, or maybe day-rentals.

[izquierdista]

6. Walkable neighborhoods

You're right, only in America does "zoning" actually reduce the quality of life by making a car necessary. In the desire to segregate residential from commercial from light industrial from apartments, it is almost guaranteed that a car will be required to go from one to the other.

I have seen very few walkable neighborhoods in the U.S. At least as in comparison with typical neighborhoods in Europe. I have seen many more places where walking down or across the street is impossible because there are NO facilities provided for pedestrians - no crosswalks, no sidewalks, no shoulders, with highways, storm drains, culverts and fences blocking easy pedestrian access.

[phantom power]

7. The cultural path we've gone down here in America is pretty interesting.

The idea that separating residential from retail facilities, or community facilities, is the aesthetic to aspire to is pretty odd, once you step back. The only reason it worked at all was that car ownership was so cheap and so ubiquitous. Now that the economic environment is making car ownership more difficult, that separation is rapidly beginning to work against us. For families that are now being forced to give up cars, quality of life is deteriorating a lot more than it really would need to, under a hypothetical multi-use arrangement.

Another quality-of-life thing about higher-density living is upkeep. Here in America, there is a sort of worship of working outdoors. As I've hit middle age, I gradually realized that I don't really care for spending time outdoors maintaining a suburban plot of land. I don't really derive any pleasure from mowing lawns, or pruning plants, or tending gardens, or maintaining sprinkler systems. I don't hate it, but I'd be perfectly happy to not worry about any of that, and spend my time on other things.

I realize that a lot of people do like those things. For them, it is a hobby and pleasurable passtime. But I wonder how many people out there are spending time on the maintenance that comes with suburban real estate that would be even happier in a condo?

I have a feeling that people may re-discover such things, even though it happens out of necessity. And the GOP may still ruin it all by destroying community resource funding just as it becomes much more important for people having to let go of suburbia.

[izquierdista]

13. When I first moved to the 'burbs

I bought a house and did like everyone else. Well, not exactly like everyone else. I would get out on Saturday and mow the lawn, and I quickly realized that THEY didn't. They had Mexican gardeners come and mow their lawn while they went to the gym to work out. :silly:

I think most of the lure of suburbia was maintained by relentless advertising. You have to move to the nicer development, buy a new car to make the commute worthwhile, shop at the mall that is further away, get in the car and drive to go to dinner, etc. The future of suburbia is going to be what it is for all outlying areas in cities in the rest of the world: where the poor people live because prices are low and they can have enough room for a vegetable plot, a few chickens and a goat.

[phantom power]

14. Ah yes, the mexican gardener gambit.

Quite common in AZ. Another budget item we can probably expect to see fewer people affording.

[onehandle]

5. Pretty much on the nose for me.

I live in Atlanta, where you have to have a car.

People who come from L.A. feel perfectly comfortable here.

Like there, our public transportation is a joke and was designed to profit car dealers and oil companies.

Plus everything is spread out like crazy.

Sucks.

[kristopher]

8. The method used to derive the number may be problematic

It limits the context to 5 years of ownership. It seems to me that has potential to fail in capturing the benefits of the "drive it until the wheels fall off" strategy of ownership that is used by a significant number of people. They may be taking this into account, but the download doesn't address it directly.

[phantom power]

10. I think that is a good question.

Although maintenance costs go up rapidly with age, you can purchase a lot of maintenance each year for much less than a typical year's worth of car payments.

We just dumped a thousand bucks into our '96 corolla. But that's only few months worth of car payment. And the yearly registration fee is down to almost nothing (here in AZ registration fee is tagged to depreciated value).

I know people who have replaced entire engines, or transmissions, on their cars. It's expensive, but still less than car payments, even over just a year. And an engine or tranny will last a lot longer than a year.

Still, I think the point of the article holds. It costs a lot of money to own a car. And, it was an average. Our car payments on the Volvo were $560 a month, excluding all the other expenses. For a smaller, cheaper car, those expenses go down significantly, but then again if you buy an escalade, they can be higher.

I expect that we're going to be seeing measurably more people adopting the "drive it into the ground" strategy, for economic reasons. And more people figuring out how to get by on a single car.

Tangentially, I've been noticing more scooters around Tempe, too.

[izquierdista]

16. Maybe Tempe will start to look like Havana?

[XemaSab]

21. My '96 Corolla has gone from being bombproof

to being a hoopty wagon in the last year. :(

Has all the trim in yours fallen off too? :shrug:

[phantom power]

22. Some of the plastic interior is starting to deteriorate. We keep it outside.

In the AZ heat and UV. Not really a recipe for plastic longevity.

It's all part of our use it up until it falls apart strategy.

[XemaSab]

25. Half the interior trim fell off within months of getting it

Now the trim around the windows is starting to degrade. :shrug:

[Kolesar]

17. My insurance cost dropped to $550/year when I dropped collision coverage

And my fuel costs are "only" $1400/year. I surely have not spent $39000 in the nine years since I bought the whale for $24000 ((9 yrs * $7000/yr) - $24000).

[Muttocracy]

18. I've been spending a lot of money on my car lately, but that seems awfully high

and what I'll spend in a chunk for repairs is less than when I had a monthly payment. I'm one of those drive-it-til-it-rusts-to-death types.

[NNadir]

19. The figures almost certainly don't include external costs.

I'm sure they haven't looked at the cost of, say, heavy metals in the Los Angeles "River," oil slicks, corroded marble structures, lung cancer, and the ever increasing expenditures involved with opening web site posts all about the "really cool" Tesla electric car, and the ethanol Chevy Tahoe.

[phantom power]

24. No, I'm sure those figures are non-externalized economic costs.

Except maybe some minor exceptions like emissions testing fees, or oil/tire disposal fees, etc.

Hey, if you internalize an external cost, is it still external?

[XemaSab]

20. And what is the cost of NOT owning a car?

The only "store" within walking distance is the local shell station.

[phantom power]

23. That surely depends on where you live.

Among other things. I think I will quote Atrios again:

The point in the post below about automobile cost/ownership was not that everyone, no matter what your neighborhood is like, can live without a car. The point is that many people see one car per adult member of housing as an inevitable expense, when in fact in many (not all) places, even pretty automobile-centric ones, you can make choices which can reduce your car dependency. Reducing car dependency is not the same thing as living without a car, it means living in places where a car is less necessary and therefore it's reasonable to consider reducing the number of cars/household. And if you factor in the savings from reducing the number of cars you have your potential location options might expand as you can therefore afford to pay a bit more for rent/mortgage.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009_02_15_archive.html#7172119828433990602