Most drivers underestimate the real costs of running their car, according to the latest study by the Economic and Social Research Institute.<\/p>\n
It surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 800 motorists across Ireland.<\/p>\n
The majority of participants (72%) underestimated their annual motoring costs “by a substantial amount”.<\/p>\n
They were first asked to give their figure indicating how much they personally spent on owning and running their car (that excludes vehicle purchase and depreciation).<\/p>\n
The median estimate was \u20ac2,000 per year.<\/p>\n
However, actual costs added up to almost \u20ac3,000, or 50% higher that the estimate.<\/p>\n
Fuel was the largest single reported expense, with a median annual cost of \u20ac1,560.<\/p>\n
Other expenses included insurance, motor tax, parking, tolls and maintenance.<\/p>\n
The annual cost also hugely depends on a vehicle type, researchers found.<\/p>\n
Drivers of electric vehicles reported annual running costs close to half those of drivers of petrol or diesel cars, the ESRI said.<\/p>\n
Owning an EV costs around \u20ac1,560 per year, compared with \u20ac2,715 for petrol cars and \u20ac3,546 for diesel cars.<\/p>\n
“These findings show that most motorists are not aware of how much their car costs them each year,” said Dr Shane Timmons, Senior Research Officer at the ESRI and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n
“When people think about motoring costs, they focus on the most visible expenses, especially fuel, but overlook other costs that add up over time.”<\/p>\n
Dr Timmons added that improving awareness of the full cost of car ownership could “help people make more informed transport decisions”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most drivers underestimate the real costs of running their car, according to the latest study by the Economic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-625075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}