Quote:
Originally Posted by jammies
I've spent $2374.69 over the first 7 months of this year, using Car2go exclusively. That includes a couple weekend trips to Edmonton, plus all my driving otherwise, as I got rid of my car last September. That works out to $339.24 a month.
Since I live downtown, I would have to pay for parking at my building @ $100/month. Before I axed my vehicle, I tracked my gas expenses, which were around $120/month; insurance/registration was another $95/month. Add in maintenance, which I'd say is around another $90/month ($1000 year minimum, as for example I'd have had to buy new tires this year) and you're looking at $400/month on a car which I owned free and clear of any loan.
Of course, if you don't pay for parking and have a new car where maintenance isn't such a big deal, those numbers go down, but your monthly payments on the car more than cover that number and almost certainly are much much more. And if you park downtown for work, you're probably spending more than $300 on that alone.
On the other hand, my driving habits are considerably different now, in that if I have grocery shopping or something where I need a car, I try to do several tasks during that trip instead of just going out and back. I also will gladly accept being a passenger if someone else wants to drive, whereas before I always liked to be the one driving. So it's not necessarily that a direct cost comparison is valid. But then you have to ask if changing your habits isn't maybe a good thing - an economic incentive to do what you should be doing anyway.
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I am surprised nobody has factored in depreciation and ownership costs especially if Car2go is replacing one of the family vehicles. CAA has a PDF on this. Their cost calculation for owning and driving a Civic 12,000 km a year is $7723 or ~$643 a month. Parking would be on top of this $100 a month in this case, so $743 a month.
$743 vs $339 is significant savings. Some will probably argue that they own their car outright there so their ownership costs are far less etc. There is always a cost of having dollars tied up in a depreciating asset, I think even in the best of circumstances, $550 - $600 is a pretty realistic number on the cost of owning a car and driving it 12,000 kms a year
I know there are intangibles of having your own car but I would find it hard to believe that you are not saving a significant amount of money by replacing one of your family cars with Car2go. Neither my wife or I work downtown and we live way out in the burbs. So Car2go would not work for us, but if I commuted downtown and lived in the Car2go area I would strongly consider using it.