Poll: What's Your Cost Per Mile? Car / Bike

[toincoss]

I'm switching vehicles from a coupe to a sedan, so I took some time to determine what my cost per mile was for my old car. When I graduated from college, I paid $24,000 for a Scion TC (new of course...what else do dumb grads do) and drove it for 131,200 miles. I recently sold it for $4,000, so my cost per mile was $0.152. I excluded costs of maintenance, gas, insurance and other variable costs, but it's probably a few cents higher ($0.17 according to MMM - http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting). 

Whether you're riding a bike or driving a car, what's your cost per mile?

In the future, what cost per mile should I aim for?

[jda1984]

Using your method (excluding gas, insurance, maintenance) our car costs are about $0.05/mile.  I put about 110,000 miles on a 2000 Ford Focus.  I bought it used in 2004 and sold it last spring.  The delta on buying selling price was $4,000.  We also bought a 2002 Chevy Cavalier in 2004 and still have it.  Bought it for $6,000 probably worth $1000-1500.  We've put about 100,000 miles on in that time.

We've had very little maintenance that needed to be done on the cars.  Oil changes, fluid changes at ~80,000 miles, tires, and brakes are standard maintenance items.  Besides those, I had a wheel bearing replaced on the Cavalier and replaced the alternator on the Focus a couple times (got a bad part initially...).

[ivyhedge]

Bike ... $17.94/mile. No worries, I did not vote. The bike is new, obviously, and that number will decline precipitously.

[GuitarStv]

How can you have a conversation about this while excluding maintenance, insurance, and gas?  Those costs are the bulk of the costs associated with car ownership.

[Syonyk]

How can you have a conversation about this while excluding maintenance, insurance, and gas?  Those costs are the bulk of the costs associated with car ownership.

I was just going to post something similar.

If I ignore maintenance, insurance, and gas, I've had some vehicles that paid me per mile!  Now, getting a cheap beater, throwing a good bit into maintenance, and selling it for more than I paid after a year or two of driving isn't actually getting paid to drive, but if I ignore all the stuff I had to replace, it sure is!

I don't know my exact cost per mile, and I {don't particularly care, don't want to know.}  On the truck, it's obscenely high right now because I've been doing some maintenance on it (parts are expensive), and it's not driven much (since I don't drive it as a commuter, just for hauling large or heavy stuff, or longer road trips when we're bringing a lot with us).

My ebike cost-per-mile... oh, $3k build cost (not really, since I used the battery from the last bike), 50 miles/wk, 6 months on the current build... $2.5/mi and dropping?  *shrug*  On the other hand, it should last nearly forever, and lets me get to work literally quicker than driving.

This "What did you pay vs how many miles you've driven it, ignoring everything else" metric is slightly idiotic, and it only works "well" (creates a low number) if you put a genuinely absurd number of miles on vehicles.

[WerKater]

How can you have a conversation about this while excluding maintenance, insurance, and gas?  Those costs are the bulk of the costs associated with car ownership.

+1

toincoss, it seems that only want to discuss the cost of the ownership of the car itself, not the actual operating cost. But that makes little sense. If this is the only metric you want to go by, you could logically get a car from a scrap yard which is worth zero, needs huge amounts of maintenance and guzzles gas like there is no tomorrow. If you want to make a properly informed decision you need to take all costs into account in order to weigh them against each other. For example if you drive a lot, the gas mileage is important, but if you drive only rarely, it does not matter very much.

Also, if we want do discuss the actual cost of the purchase price specifically, you need to compound it (to take the missed investment opportunity into account): Let's assume you had the car for 10 years. You spent 24k$ in year 0 and recovered 4k$ in year 10. Assuming average returns of 7% annually, the 24k$ would have become about 47k$ in year 10. So the actual cost was 43k$, leading to an average cost of 0.33$/mile.

For the record: My total cost (including compounding and an estimate for depreciation) of my current car has been 0.27€/km or 0.48$/mile (but then, gas is much more expensive here).

I estimate that the total cost of my bike has been 0.01 or 0.02€/km or so ;)

[toincoss]

Certainly a true cost per mile figure would include all these additional measures like gas, maintenance, opportunity costs and what not. But these are also variable costs and thus, everyone would have a vastly different cost per mile figure. If everyone reported a different way of calculating this, then the data isn't very useful. So...I thought I would just keep it simple.

Personally, for my next vehicle, I want to make sure I can beat my cost per mile figure within a reasonable amount of time. If it's going to take me 15 years to do better than my previous car, then I probably shouldn't be buying this car.

[Syonyk]

The variable costs are kind of the point, though.

A Prius is likely to cost less over 150k miles than an old diesel pickup, even if the pickup is cheap to buy.

[AJ]

If I'm reading this right, you are really asking,"What's Your Depreciation Cost Per Mile", correct? That might make a more accurate title. Though, I am very interested in everyone's true cost.

Our depreciation cost on our last vehicle (2000 Suzuki Esteem) was 4.4 cents per mile. I expect our current one (2001 Prius) to be under 2 cents per mile when we finish with it.

[AJ]

In the future, what cost per mile should I aim for?

This will not be a useful metric on it's own - it only matters in context of the other costs. For example, you took a $20k depreciation hit on your TC. I would have been the buyer you sold it to for $4k, driven it for 200,000 miles, and had a per mile depreciation expense of a penny. If you look at depreciation out of context, I would have blown you out of the water. BUT, my maintenance and repair expenses would be much higher. So who comes out ahead? The only way to find out is to estimate/calculate the true costs.

[toincoss]

If I'm reading this right, you are really asking,"What's Your Depreciation Cost Per Mile", correct? That might make a more accurate title. Though, I am very interested in everyone's true cost.

Our depreciation cost on our last vehicle (2000 Suzuki Esteem) was 4.4 cents per mile. I expect our current one (2001 Prius) to be under 2 cents per mile when we finish with it.

Yep, depreciation cost per mile is more accurate.

In the future, what cost per mile should I aim for?

This will not be a useful metric on it's own - it only matters in context of the other costs. For example, you took a $20k depreciation hit on your TC. I would have been the buyer you sold it to for $4k, driven it for 200,000 miles, and had a per mile depreciation expense of a penny. If you look at depreciation out of context, I would have blown you out of the water. BUT, my maintenance and repair expenses would be much higher. So who comes out ahead? The only way to find out is to estimate/calculate the true costs.

Yes, I agree. In fact, a full list of cost per mile figures would be super interesting. Alas, I didn't keep those records and can only guestimate.


This thread by TheGoblinChief is very illuminating. Spoiler Alert: he calculated his bike CPM to be greater than his car CPM!  $0.43 for bike vs $0.37 for car and it looks like he includes a bunch of variable costs.

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/throw-down-the-gauntlet/track-your-transportation-cost-per-mile!/msg385341/#msg385341