Parkers Cost of Motoring Tool

Uriel · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:35

Have had a play with this: http://car-costs.parkers.co.uk/

Seems handy and it's estimate of my current car's overall costs seems to be pretty close to what I'm actually getting.

Not sure where all the data comes from but takes into account estimated fuel, depreciation, tax, maintenance and servicing. You can take into account purchase price and loan interest if you desire. Falls apart a bit for cars older than 9 years but for newer stuff seems good.

May be an 'objective' answer to all those "should my girlfriend get a diesel for the empeejees - she's doing 5k a year" threads...

[TW]Fox · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:38

Looks totally crap.

Estimates my car will cost per month £10 in 'interest' (What?) and £0 a month in repairs and servicing. Completely free to service and no repairs whatsoever. How accurate. Absolutely no allowance for costs like tyres either, so perhaps they are free too?

All in all it calculates the per mile cost of my car at about half what it really is.

Looks like the sort of tool that will help convince everyone that what they really need is an old Audi or something.

Uriel · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:41

[TW]Fox;21612292 said:
Looks totally crap.

Estimates my car will cost per month £10 in 'interest' (What?) and £0 a month in repairs and servicing. Completely free to service and no repairs whatsoever. How accurate.

Looks like the sort of tool that will help convince everyone that what they really need is an old Audi or something.

You can turn off interest (set to 0%).

I think when cars get to about 10 years old the servicing and repair estimate falls apart (when I tried projecting 10 plate cars for 8 years it suddenly set servicing and repairs to £0. 7 years was fine). There may be a mileage limit too.

Insurance is not automatic but you can add in premiums.

Janesy B · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:46

Looks misleading.

BinnsY · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:49

It seems to miss an awful lot. Including insurance and all the other bits and bobs I've worked out my running costs at about £250 a month. Parkers puts it at nearly half that.

Uriel · 3 Apr 2012 at 21:50

Nevermind. It's too easy to make it **** up if you're not paying attention.

Too many holes at the moment (depreciation, servicing and repairs all randomly reset to £0 when you go over certain undefined or poorly defined thresholds). Insurance is automatically £0 but you can manually set it.

Could be vastly improved with a little work I think.