









Source: Automotive News

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By Solandri on 9/30/2011 6:42:41 PM , Rating: 3
Car sharing is another area where electric cars would be very successful, rent a car for a couple hours for ~20$, pay close to nothing in fuel and get your errands done.

This is something that's puzzled me too. People see $20 to use a car for a day's errands and think "Are you nuts?" They compare to using their own car "for free", and ignore the costs of actually owning the car.

If you buy your car for $25k, use it for 60k miles, and sell it for $10k, that's $0.25 per mile. A $35 oil change every 3500 miles adds $0.01 per mile. A $600 overhaul every 15k miles adds $0.04. $120 annual license and registration adds $0.01 assuming 12k miles/yr. And $400 for new tires after 50k miles is another $0.008. $600 insurance for a year would be $0.05. Add in misc expenses (e.g. car washes) and all told you're looking at about $0.40 per mile to own this car.

Gas at $3.50/gal and 28 mpg is $0.125 per mile. So owning the car costs more than 3x as much as the gas you put into it. Financially, most people should be more concerned about the car's ownership costs than its gas mileage.

Combined you're looking at about $0.525 per mile to drive a car you own. In other words, $20 will get you about 38 miles in a car you own. I'm not saying short-term rental is for everyone. But it seems to me renting $20 only on days you actually need a car, or $50-$75 for a weekend getaway, would make a lot of financial sense for many people. Except people don't think of this because they view any miles they put on a car they own as "free".

