Cost of Ownership Calculator

[Wandering Albatross]

Does anyone know of any particularly good cost of ownership calculator? I've seen one from Edmund's and I was wondering if there was another one with additional fidelity. More options would be nice.

Thanks!

[Wandering Albatross]

I'm looking for something like this Edmund's calculator but with more details. Anyone have any idea?

http://www.edmunds.com/apps/cto/CTOintroController

[Philip1]

interesting the Prius is more expensive to own than most compacts with the exception of the Suzuki Reno the reno has a TCO $30 higher than a Prius go figure.... Not that I'll ever own either one.. the Civic Hybrid is $2k cheaper than the PRIUS in TCO hmmmm.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Hmmm, Was telling me a new Kia Rio was 15K, and it depreciated nearly 6K in the first year, but if I buy a year old one, it would cost me 12K...

Wish there was a way to remove the depreciation cost actually, because it's not actually going to have to come out of your pocket to run the car in the first year. I'd be likely to want to drive it until it drops, so I don't give a crap about depreciation.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Come to think of it I guess with showing ownership costs of 40-50c a mile on the new compacts I was looking at, it does make those 35c a mile charges for exceeding mileage on a leased vehicle seem reasonable.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

Originally Posted by RoadWarrior

Wish there was a way to remove the depreciation cost actually, because it's not actually going to have to come out of your pocket to run the car in the first year. I'd be likely to want to drive it until it drops, so I don't give a crap about depreciation.

I completely agree about depreciation cost. I also use a different insurance strategy than most since I buy inexpensive cars: just get the legally required liability. Since I could afford to replace my car if it got seriously damaged (not that I'd be pleased about it), why pay for insurance? The premiums are worth more than the risk, or else the insurance company would lose money! Admittedly I also drive very little, and very safely, and live in an area with very low traffic and crime. That helped me feel better about trying it.

You can always look at the "details" page for the models you're considering and the put the data into a spreadsheet. If I made such a spreadsheet, would anybody use it? I could make it in google documents so it'd be available online.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

One thing I noticed when researching my last car is that some cars are tuned to lower their 5 year TCO, but go to hell after that. The Chevy Aveo seems to be in this category as after 5 years their repair costs increase a lot. Se be careful relying too much on the 5 year TCO!!

[GasSavers_maximilian]

I just made a TCO spreadsheet in google documents that you can use to adjust the TCO numbers from the Edmunds calculator.

You can weight each value and also add a constant to each one. Say, for example, that you think repair costs are too high in the Edmunds estimate. Well, you could multiply all its repair numbers by 0.5 and then add $200. Why you'd want that exactly is beyond me, but I wanted a balance between power and ease of use. You can also type in the miles per year you expect to drive. This only scales the fuel costs. Edmunds assumes 15,000 mi/yr in their TCO, FYI.

The spreadsheet is user editable, so you can enter the values you want. I have a few cars in there right now just as an example. Hope it's useful to some of you, although I realize it's still pretty crude and that having to enter the Edmunds data is annoying. Better than nothing! For some reason the cell comments only show up in the correct place when you go to edit it. They're piled on at the end like footnotes when just viewing.

Oh, yeah, I guess I should have a disclaimer or something:

This spreadsheet is available in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

I hate that crap.

This is my first google spreadsheet that was more than trivial (not to mention intended to be viewed by others), so let me know if it can be improved.