Talk:Economics of automobile usage

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Where is the list of the automobile budget of the world, or of particular countries or regions? Shouldn't there be list saying how many trillions of dollars or euros went for such items as fuel, roads, insurance, vehicles, maintenance, and other major components? Jim.henderson 16:31, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Information can only be in Wikipedia if someone puts it there! If you know enough to add this table then I'm sure it would be a good thing. My only concern would be that this data would get out of date fairly quickly and it would be hard to relate the costs to relative income, etc. After all, it's one thing for an American car owner to have to pay $30 for an oil change when that represents maybe twice his/her hourly pay - for someone living in (say) Nigeria who might only earn $30 per month. SteveBaker 17:01, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
So, for a gross or rough understanding of major components of the cost of motoring in the world or in one country or continent, make a list for one year (2000 would do) and don't attempt difficult adjustments. I don't know whether Nigerian statistics are more throrough, up to date or easily available than American or Japanese ones, but there ought to be something somewhere that says fuel at some particular time and country was 20% or roads were 5% or whatever it is. It's the kind of thing an encyclopedia does, seems to me. Detail and currency are pleasant qualities, but not demanded by an encyclopedia. And of course, I'm speaking as a consumer of Wikipedia, not an editor since I don't know where to find this information.
Jim.henderson 17:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
There is no distinction between 'users' and 'editors' of Wikipedia - it's a community effort. If you have useful information - add it! But requesting that something should be added does no good unless someone steps up to do it. SteveBaker 00:07, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes indeed. A few minutes ago I linked bus to a few relevant articles, and last night added some material about crossbar switches since I know something about those topics. What bothers me about Wikipedia is the frequent lack of economic perspective. We learn the internal workings of cars, ships, schools, computer protocols, etc, but not how they fit into the rest of the world. Rarely does anyone say what percentage of the world economy, or that of India or whatever, is in hospitals or railways or computer manufacture, or what percentage of purchases by hospitals are computer services, or what fraction of the cost of a computer is in its semiconductors or power supply, or how much of insurance payouts go to road accidents and hospitals. There is very little sense of how the world fits together, including cars.
Gripe, grumble and snarl; I'm as guilty as my fellow editors in these regards but there must be people in the world who know about such things.
Jim.henderson 01:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem with economic data (and I think, the root problem with this page) is that they are not common across all countries - or stable over time - so any page you write about this stuff tends to be way out of date and irrelevent to a vast percentage of our readership. This page is worse still because it depends critically on the type of car you run. You'll argue that 'rough' numbers are better than nothing - but I have to disagree. Let's look at how large the error margins are:
My MINI Cooper for example - does not seem to have depreciated at all! After 32,000 miles and two years of ownership, it's Kelly book value here in the USA is just $200 less than I paid for it - my previous MINI sold for $800 less than I paid for it - also after 2 years and 28,000 milea. So depreciation is NOT the huge fraction of cost of ownership it would be for (say) a Kia Spectra - which loses 40% of it's value in the first mile you drive it. It also depends greatly on how long you keep your car. My 1963 Mini cost it's original owner about $900. 43 years later, it's easily worth $15,000. So how big is the error here? Well, if it's the difference between a Kia and a MINI - then we're looking at depreciation over two years of ownership being between 2% and 40% of the cost of the car.
Similarly, gas consumption is very variable between vehicles. As a fraction of the cost of ownership of a Prius hybrid, it's pretty tiny - as a fraction of the cost of a Hummer H2 - it's significant - but it also depends on what milage you do. My mother drove her Fiat Uno less than 1000 miles in two years. My wife put 80,000 miles on hers over the same period. So if someone drives 1000 miles in a 50mpg Prius over two years with gas at $2 per gallon they'll spend $40 on gas. If they drive 80,000 miles in a 10mpg Hummer H2, they'll spend $16,000 on gas. So as a percentage of the cost of a $20,000 car, we could be looking at between 1% and 80%. But that's here in the USA with gas at $2. What about in UK with gas at $6 per gallon? Now it's between 3% and 240%!!!
Repairs, gas prices, insurance and depreciation varies dramatically between countries too - in the UK, cars rust quickly and gasoline is $6 per gallon. Here in central Texas, gas is $2 per gallon and cars don't rust - ever. But in Texas, the cost of insurance is outrageous. In the UK, it's fairly cheap. Cost of labor for doing repairs in Californian car dealerships is now around $150 per hour. In Nigeria - with $30 per month pay scales for car repair guys - maybe $0.50 per hour is a good number. So if you car needs 20 hours in the shop over two years - then the regional difference is between 15% of the cost of a $20,000 car in California down to 0.01% in Nigeria.
Lifestyle matters too. I love my car - I put it though the car wash ($6) twice a week. That's 200 times over 2 years. I spent $1200 on car washes! That's more than I spent on depreciation! Since services are free on the MINI and all repairs were under warranty, the cost of car washes was bigger than any of my other costs except fuel...and that only just!
So how can this article ever come close to reflecting some kind of truth? Personally, I'm tempted to nominate it for WP:AfD. SteveBaker 16:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, on the individual level, the hundreds of millions of cars have many different cost structures. It might be pleasant to do statistics, saying there are a million cars on which insurance and washing together are more costly than fuel, while for the rest, fuel is the higher cost. Obviously such a bottom up survey approach would be very expensive and nobody's going to do it for the whole world.

But look at it from the top down. One man's expense is another man's sales, and most of the cost of cars, gasoline, insurance and other other major expenses go to a hundred or so giant world wide corporations. Parking and repairs, no, but those are a much smaller part of the big picture. A quick glance at total annual sales figures shows that the biggest car companies are each two to five times bigger than the correspondingly ranked oil companies, and only a minority of oil becomes motor fuel, so clearly for the world as a whole, cars cost more to buy than to fuel. Yes, there is depreciation, but that's merely the annualized cost of a lump sum purchase, hence needn't be studied separately for a city or country or world.

That's the kind of truth an article about the economics of automobile ownershop can reflect. It can present totals for countries and the whole world. Someone ought to be able to nail down these figures to a precision of 10% or better, for some specific past year. Yes, the situation in India is changing faster than in Japan, so the specific year is more important there, but for the whole world it doesn't change so fast and especially the ratios among the various costs don't change much from year to year. Jim.henderson 04:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that the data will come about bottom-up, and we'll get at the top-down. That is, the bottom-up view has been muddied by the marketing requirements of both the new-car and the used-car industries. The top-down just hasn't had the attention that is needed which would not be unlike actuarial thinking. Is the car more complex than a human? Yet, insurance companies make many determinations based upon the human lifespan. We could do the same thing for cars; could we not have technology improvements, such as the hydristor, where we can knowingly extend an auto life's and at the same time make improvements that have both a private and public benefit side? There is one issue: a 2005 version of some vehicle has many more features than does a 1994 version (the seat-warmer can be really nice when it's 0F outside). My question is whether the MINI Cooper owner will still be enamored in 10 years? I used the Suburban as it represents types of vehicles (the car longevity page mentions high-mileage clubs) that have proven service lives going over 50 years. Personally, I have taken more than one 15-year-old vehicle coast to coast (US). By the way, there is a similar problem with computers. When will we get the packaging that persists while we just swap components on the buss? jmswtlk 19:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] FIXME

There are some problems with my recent changes.

I've given this figure of 70-75%, but that takes simplistic assumptions of fixed-vs-variable.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6523.0Appendix22003-04?opendocument&tabname=Notes&prodno=6523.0&issue=2003-04&num=&view= gives some stats on income in .au. Citing HILDA seems to be incorrect: I did that based on some other article that cited HILDA, but I can't see the basis of that fact/citation when I read the pdf file at http://www.melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/statreport.html.

I think it's a good idea to use per-week costs as the RACV tables and the above-referenced income tables do rather than per-year costs as the article currently gives: it seems that people quantitatively understand per-week figures better (i.e. seem better able to appreciate whether something is cheap or expensive from weekly figures than from yearly figures).

At least some of the RACV tables, there's an anomoly in that the component columns don't seem to sum to the Total column. Try reading the methodology (http://www.racv.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/Internet/Primary/my+car/advice+%26+information/car+operating+costs/running+costs+assumptions+and+methodology) to see if that explains it.

Pjrm 07:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is this about?

The article seems to jump about between two topics: The cost of ownership to the individual - and the cost of car ownership in general to society. These two concepts (which are very different) are mingled together in a way that makes little sense. SteveBaker 17:06, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Benefits and neutrality

The introduction says the benefits of automobile ownership are high, but the article only gives details about the costs. This does not seem well-balanced. -- Beland 19:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Balance? Why pick on benefits and costs. We also need to make sure that the view on the subject covers the necessary cultural range (not solely UK or US). The 'economics' would then be dependent upon those differences. Too, many lean more toward the 'costs' side than not of economics, from my experience.
Almost everyone that I've met who has driven a car knows and appreciates the benefits (it's a de facto standard for personal transportation); it's one of those phenomenal things (to be discussed further). Of course, I've met many who didn't want to drive for various reasons.
I don't agree with the assessment. But, to be fair, let's itemize the benefits of ownership, though I didn't see any imbalance there myself. Perhaps, I felt that the benefits were obvious - except these are arguable. Some of the 'costs' are only now becoming apparent.
If we open this up, then we also need to extend the costs: such as what MADD deals with, pollution, road rage, animal carnage, ... it really is a very big list.
Personally, I found this page compelling in that the automobile is an important piece of modern life and may continue to be. The auto has lasted more than 100 years; to what it'll evolve is anyone's question. And, the page started to address 'private' and 'public' costs albeit without a good discussion of the benefits or of the relationship between these two (the SUV's owner's benefit of speeding through a parking lot, and assuming the right-of-way over pedestrians (not considering the comfort of anyone outside the shell provided by the SUV), in the rain is a large potential cost to people walking in deep water in the same lot trying to get to shelter while dodging these beasts that can maim fairly severely.) How far do we take this? jmswtlk 20:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to "Economics of automobile usage"

This article should be moved, since it deals with automobile usage in general, not just ownership. Not all automobiles are owned by their users - see Vehicle leasing, car sharing, car rental, etc. Cambrasa 19:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)