"Make your current car your last car", says Green Party Cllr; Man has bike nicked outside Wetherspoons after finishing 400km charity ride; Ineos "not quite on it this year" says Wiggins; Cycling not popular on Tinder + more on the live blog

I thought the opposite, PCP and lease deals usually allow you to walk away at the end with no penalty so many people are essentially renting their cars.

The lease/PCP deals will allow people to better visualise the costs of their car as it is essentially a fixed fee every month rather than a nebulous depreciation.

With trips to the office now far less frequent for many people the 'cost per trip' of those deals has risen significantly.

At £300/month it's about £7/trip if you're commuting 5 days a week. If you're only commuting 2 days a week that rises to over £18/trip.

At that level public transport and even taxis could become cheaper alternatives let alone active travel.

I think this campaign has real potential to reduce car ownership.

Agree, you can walk away at the end of the deal and it's essentially renting, but people then just walk into a new deal on a new car as very few will just stop running a car altogether. That just puts more cars available to be on the road. Every three years seems to be common, so that's potentially four cars over a ten year period. Purchase outright or with a loan people would keep them much longer due to the personal investment, and probably assess whether they need one at all?

Indeed, PCP faces people with a choice after three years between paying a lump sum they don't have, or rolling over into a new car. No surprises that they take the feasible option over the seemingly impossible. Very few seem to have the imagination to refinance the lump sum, pay it off monthly and get off the treadmill.

My point was that the three year cycle gives people a regular opportunity to review their need for a car.

If you own a car outright and it's sitting unused it's hard to visualise the monthly depreciation costs, if every month you have £300 taken out of your bank account to cover the car you're not using it becomes a lot easier.

Given the huge shift in working patterns that has just taken place I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people come to the realisation that their transport needs can be met far more cheaply in other ways. For example, if you and your partner are now both working from home full time you definitely don't need two cars.

It won't be an instant thing but I think we may very shortly see the peak in UK private car ownership.

Potentially a means to anecdotally measure that would be how long it takes to spot a new 70 reg on the road ?

FWIW I think it's hard to walk away from a PCP deal with no car & not just keep renewing, as whilst it highlights you've been paying X amount for years and ended up with nothing,like renting a flat, it feels like you are losing whatever the value of the car was,or costs to replace. I might be using my car alot less and riding way more but ultimately I still feel I need a car. Its not PCP anymore I've had it for nearly 10 years,but I've used PCPs in the past,and would consider them again if I felt I could afford it.

If your car is 10 years old and owned outright then your cost of ownership is likely to be pretty low anyway.

When I changed from a job with a 40 mile commute to one with a 5 mile commute I realised that it made no sense to own a car as I'd be commuting by bike.

I added up all the costs associated with car ownership including depreciation, it ran to thousands of pounds per year.

It meant I could afford to rent cars when I needed one, take taxis when I needed to, pay for train and bus tickets as required and still save nearly £1000 per year.

Indeed, hopefully some people will see the light, but then I'm not sure how many people will continue to work from home once covid is fully over. I can see people choosing a mix, with a few days in the office as humans do need some social interaction, thus necessitating a continued need for private transport. Multi car families/relationships could reduce numbers, but otherwise we are all too reliant on them, myself included despite living in a London suburb with 24hr public transport. I couldn't imagine being without one and was in the market for a new one pre covid, but my wife and I have decided that a few more years in the Nissan note we've had for 12 years won't do any harm, especially as the kids treat it like a rubbish bin.

Where I work, there seems little appetite to come back to the office. I think we will see people in perhaps 2 or at most 3 days a week (that is until they see their heating bill for the winter!)

But as I mentioned earlier a few days in the office will hugely increase the cost per trip compared to full time in the office.

If I was effectively paying £40/ day everytime I drove to the office I'd be looking at cheaper alternatives. This might include taxis, public transport, active travel or car clubs.

A lot of very big companies have announced that they are downsizing their offices considerably, once working from home has been established the it's a simple accounting question.

Does the productivity increase from office working justify its much larger cost? I don't think it will.

Whereas most of my colleagues are not keen, our management is. In spite of our productivity going up since we've all been working from home, they can't get the thought that we might be doing our washing on work time out of their tiny minds...

Depreciation is an accounting concept though. You have either bought the car as planned from savings and hence it is a sunk cost or you are repaying the £300 on a loan so you see that in the same way to the pcp.

If you own the car outright you have an asset which can be sold.

In this case the value of that asset is decreasing constantly but there is no obvious clue that this is happening. There is an ongoing cost to ownership in that your asset becomes progressively less valuable.

If you own the car there is also no defined end point like there is with a pcp or lease.

There is no ongoing cost. You decided to buy the car in year 1 and you used your savings to do that. In accounting terms, you wrote it off to revenue in year 1.

You can run your own balance sheet and P/L if you want, but cashflow is all that matters.

If you don't consider asset depreciation a cost.

I would suggest that it is sensible to do so.

If an easily liquefiable asset decreases in value by £5k it is essentially the same as £5k disappearing out of your bank account.

You are absolutely right.

I think the problem is that people don't analyse their finances very well.  My favourite is when people 'had to change their car' because it was beginning to cost them too much in repairs.  When you ask about the repairs it turns out to be about a months payment on the new car they have just aquired.

Car purchase and ownership for most people is emotional not rationale..... unfortunately.

New phones on contracts are the same scenario.

Photo is taken from their JG page. Can't see where Road.cc could have got the info from to caption it from. Even the completion post shows two from behind so not easy to see which ones. 

I'm going to pretend I don't know what you're talking about.

My kids' school has managed the double whammy of passing on the govt recommendation to "walk or cycle to school if you can", and to park at a distance from the school if driving in -  while at the same time (a) stating that bikes and scooters must not be brought onto the school premises, and (b) doing nothing to actually stop everyone driving into the little cul-de-sac appraoch to the school, and parking all over the pavement.

So yes, my children, who have always cycled to school, are now in practice prohibited from doing so.

brooksby wrote:

Quote:

"Walk or cycle to school if you can", say the government

And how many schools have we read articles about over the last couple of years which have banned - or have created unjustifiable hoops to jump through as regards - travelling to school by bike?

And local authorities which put in cycle lanes one day and take them out the next.

brooksby wrote:

Quote:

"Walk or cycle to school if you can", say the government

And how many schools have we read articles about over the last couple of years which have banned - or have created unjustifiable hoops to jump through as regards - travelling to school by bike?

My son cycled to and from school for the few sessions he had there before the end of last term. He was amazed at how quick it was compared to taking the bus. But with his new term starting this Friday, he says he'll take the bus. 

The problem for him is that there's just nowhere safe for him in the school to lock up the bike.