Maintaining a constant speed...

[Theophany]

No, it makes perfect sense. If you get paid per mile then you are buying the fuel, nobody else is.

Exactly, the payment and break even point is irrelevant.

I pay £60 for a tank of fuel. I'll drive the car dry. Within a week ~£160 is in my account to cover the fuel and general wear and tear accumulated for the mileage covered.

Whilst I have physically paid for the fuel at the point of receipt, I am reimbursed for it - it seems like you're arguing semantics in the name of pedantry here as the reimbursement is intended to pay the fuel cost and additional wear and tear.

To my mind, the break even point is entirely relevant because I am only out of pocket when the total cost of running the car exceeds the total reimbursements I receive for doing so in the course of my employment. That is when there is a net cost to me as I am worse off than I would be if I didn't have the car (or didn't use it for business). Any payment above what the car costs me to run is a net gain for the same reason.

This is why talking about my driving style's lower MPG being a net cost to me make no sense. There is an opportunity cost in that I have to make a trade off between a greater net gain via reimbursements and driving quicker, but a net cost it ain't because, barring a calamitous failure of some kind, the car can be well maintained, fueled, taxed and insured for significantly less than £4,000 a year (assuming a minimum 10k mileage at 40ppm).

I can't help but feel this has gotten way out of hand, despite being near enough irrelevant in the first place.

 

[Jez]

All of what you say doesn't matter one tiny bit. The break even point, the reimbursement rate, none of it matters.

What matters is how much you personally pay out for the fuel. You will get that fixed rate back regardless, if the car could run on air then you are even better off. Therefore it makes no difference whether you are paid per mile, or whether you are driving with no reimbursement at all, the fuel is still a direct cost to you.

I do not understand why you cannot see this? 3 people have pointed this out now

 

[Theophany]

All of what you say doesn't matter one tiny bit. The break even point, the reimbursement rate, none of it matters.

What matters is how much you personally pay out for the fuel. You will get that fixed rate back regardless, if the car could run on air then you are even better off. Therefore it makes no difference whether you are paid per mile, or whether you are driving with no reimbursement at all, the fuel is still a direct cost to you.

I do not understand why you cannot see this? 3 people have pointed this out now

Not seeing and disagreeing are different things entirely.

And that's about all I can be arsed to say about it, really.

 

[Jez]

You cannot call it a disagreement when the point being made is factual

 

[Howard]

I'm not sure how it can be disputed either, if you're going on a trip for work and putting an expense claim in for the miles driven, you're going to profit more from it the higher the average MPG you attain. It's pretty darned simple even to a simpleton like myself

 

[[TW]Fox]

Then surely if it goes without saying, then none of this should be an issue anyway? If you wouldn't pull out in front of a car clearly travelling much faster than you because you're doing the legal speed limit and that's that you're not on the receiving end of my complaint.

But whilst I am going past a line of traffic at 70mph which is doing 66mph people will invariably catch me up. I've not pulled out 'in front of them', though. But I am now holding them up and therefore fall into the category of people you are compalining about.

So opportunity cost then. Which is only a 'cost' if you perceive it to be one.

What? You can't just ignore opportunity cost - it exists and ruins your reasoning whether you pretend it doesn't or not.

This is why talking about my driving style's lower MPG being a net cost to me make no sense

Because the two transactions are independant. Your income from expenses does not change dependant on the amount of fuel you purchase. This is an income. Your expenditure on fuel *does* change based on how much fuel you use/purchase. This is a cost. The fact that you receive a seperate income which is intended to cover the cost doesn't mean you can simply forget what that cost is and not consider it a cost anymore.

You fill up with fuel. It costs say £80. You have spent £80 on fuel irrespective of whether you are subsequently reimbursed £200 or £200,000 or £200,000,000. If you use less fuel, you spend less on fuel and fuel has therefore cost you less.

It's like doing a job for a customer and not caring what you pay for materials 'as long as it breaks even with what the customer pays me for the cost of the work'.

 

[mick4545]

For a relaxing drive I use Adaptive CC. I Find a car doing the speed I want, approach 5mph faster than him, the ACC locks on and all I have to do is steer. The car in front does the speeding up\slowing down.

Its like the tractor beam on the Enterprise.

 

[HangTime]

This is true but coming up the M20/A20 yesterday I passed a few cars that were probably doing 75 with my cruise set to 80 ish and then a few minutes later they both flew past me - and then pull back inside me - WHY

I know what you mean but I think it is likely down to drivers treating different situations differently. So in your example some drivers be cruising along at 75, limited by the car in front. They want to overtake at some point, but are not in a rush to do so and choose to wait until the outside lane is clear rather than pull out in front of Teledude & friends who are creeping past them at 80. Then there will other drivers who will ALWAYS overtake immediately when they want to regardless of what traffic is outside them.

Also, bear in mind that for a lot of drivers there is probably a fairly big difference between their preferred cruising speed and overtaking speed. Of those drivers doing 75 probably a fair portion of them would not be averse to hitting 90mph in an overtaking manouvre. Then once they are up to 90, it may be easier to just keep on it and pass everything in the middle lane, rather than keep diving in and out, which can annoy people if they are leaving a proper gap to the car in front but it keeps getting filled. Then they get to front of the queue, and pull back inside Teledude

 

[SDK^]

For a relaxing drive I use Adaptive CC. I Find a car doing the speed I want, approach 5mph faster than him, the ACC locks on and all I have to do is steer. The car in front does the speeding up\slowing down.

Its like the tractor beam on the Enterprise.

It sure is awesome
The car I was in also had lane assist so automatically kept the car in the center of the lane. Along with an auto DSG box, auto lights and wipers it could drive itself