12-21-2017, 11:06 AM
I know this is a conversation that has gone around in circles before, but I thought I'd add my data point.
When we were shopping for our current vehicle (a Mazda5), I grabbed all of the used listings for our model on Kijiji and Auto Trader in Ontario and did a regression analysis looking at several factors that had a significant effect on the vehicle price.
On average, one model year newer was worth about $990, an automatic transmission was worth about $1815 more, the higher trim level had a $1690 premium and each additional kilometre reduced the value by $0.046 (this was based on a couple hundred data points and aligns pretty well with my intuition, so I use this as my marginal depreciation cost).
Over the first 35,000 km, maintenance costs have been $0.050/km. Unfortunately, I have not gotten as good of mileage as I hoped (probably due to driving mostly in town) and so fuel costs have averaged $0.102/km. I treat everything else as a fixed cost, i.e. required just to own the car (this includes depreciation due to model year, insurance, registration, parking, the winter rims I bought). So my actual marginal cost per km is about $0.046 + $0.050 + $0.102 = $0.198.
(For me, the fixed cost actually works out to about $0.161/km based on ~$2250/year and 14,000 km/year), so total cost is about $0.359/km. But the relevant number to this discussion is the marginal cost of $0.198/km)
When we were shopping for our current vehicle (a Mazda5), I grabbed all of the used listings for our model on Kijiji and Auto Trader in Ontario and did a regression analysis looking at several factors that had a significant effect on the vehicle price.
On average, one model year newer was worth about $990, an automatic transmission was worth about $1815 more, the higher trim level had a $1690 premium and each additional kilometre reduced the value by $0.046 (this was based on a couple hundred data points and aligns pretty well with my intuition, so I use this as my marginal depreciation cost).
Over the first 35,000 km, maintenance costs have been $0.050/km. Unfortunately, I have not gotten as good of mileage as I hoped (probably due to driving mostly in town) and so fuel costs have averaged $0.102/km. I treat everything else as a fixed cost, i.e. required just to own the car (this includes depreciation due to model year, insurance, registration, parking, the winter rims I bought). So my actual marginal cost per km is about $0.046 + $0.050 + $0.102 = $0.198.
(For me, the fixed cost actually works out to about $0.161/km based on ~$2250/year and 14,000 km/year), so total cost is about $0.359/km. But the relevant number to this discussion is the marginal cost of $0.198/km)