Well, I can try to give the criteria till now (still work in progress, as I just began the research):
Must have:
family size - to get in comfortably 4 people, including luggage (and strollers, small bicycles optionally) for one week vacation.
reliable - dont want to break in the middle of nowhere with kids around. Also swiss garage prices are quite high, a reliable car would on the long run reduce the costs.
I would take the car for about 7 to 10 years
standard components for the car, so I can go to other third party garage for repairs
Options:
Option 1: Older car (budget 10k → 20k), small upfront investment, possible more operating costs (things might brake easier)
Option 2: 1 year old car (budget 20k - 40k), higher upfront investment, less operating costs (warranty, especially for a Kia with 7 years, taxes…). Selling after 7 - 10 years
Option 3: new low costs car (like Dacia). Selling after 7 - 10 years or more.
Flavors (consumption for 7 years vs the increased service costs):
standard hybrid car
plug-in hybrid car
What I did not calculate is the best option as an investment for this time frame, I will create an excel with these and put some sample prices in there to see the difference. Was wondering if someone already did all these calculations and I could reuse them to not start from scratch .
Is the service much higher for a hybrid car? I was also considering kia ceed combi or niro, but I imagined the service costs might be much higher, because of the hybrid engine.
don’t worry about consumption, it’s such a small part of your bill (<20% of all costs) that a consumption if 6 or 12 liters per 100km will not significantly change anything, cost-wise.
If you want to be environmentally friendly, by all means go ahead and buy… a Tesla. or a Toyota hybrid.
I don’t know from experience, since I dont have the hybrid car. Usually hybrid car allow the motor to always work in a good region where they are more efficient (so less heat) and because of that there are usual less problems, so they are more reliable.
But I don’t know per experience how much does it cost to do a “service”. I believe the cost are more or less the same, since they simply need to check the gasoline engine, and am not sure how much they touch the electric system.
you can try to search in forum etc
@arheom if you take my calculation above, 4000 CHF a year with 0kms driven. That gives you 350 CHF per month to rent a car, get a mobility or anything such (funny enough, or to get a GA). If you want to be flexible and savvy, don’t drive to work and don’t need the car to do shopping trips, consider not having an own one. It’s a liberation to now have a car (and its bills ;)).
I used mobility through a whole summer. It turned out we used the car 2-3 times per month (weekend trips with kids), so a mobility model is perfectly fine. If you want to do frequent ski trips in Wallis, that’s another thing then
Another option, which we ourself are currently using, is long time rental of an older car. We use plusdrive.ch.
We currently pay 500chf a month for a Opel Zafira. The 500 chf includes everything, except gas (and parking). 1250 km/month included. If there are any issues, the garage will fix it in their cost.
We have two kids and have most often been using mobility whenever we needed a car. We were not sure if we want/need a car, and what type of car. Currently renting this one for 6 months to see if we actually use a car enough that it makes sense to buy one.
Commute to work is done by e-bike or scooter, and trips within the city with the kids in a bike trailer or ÖV.
I guess user137 is assuming that you could buy a car for 3000CHF - the question is what that car would be like.
And also added all things on top of it (insurance, services etc.) - it wouldn’t be 3000 anymore.
I consider my car to be super-economical - both in terms of cost (of monthly leasing) and fuel consumption - and it still turns out to a bit less than 500CHF/month (all yearly costs and fuel included).
It will go down though once the leasing expires and I take it with me, because I will cut the insurance part.
I will also buy it out for the 50% of the actual price I could get for it on the market immediately; which cuts the “actual” cost over all this time down too.
But for me it brings value in terms of joy and freedom which is worth that (margin over public transport + often rentacar).
I use it pretty much every weekend, be it summer or winter, to go to the mountains; and do longer roadtrips here and there.
I’ve seen the cars on the platform are often around the 10-yrs mark. A 10-yrs car is basically worthless in CH (<5000 CHF) as the standing costs are so high.
Sure it’s an interesting value proposition with a maintenance insurance and road insurance bundled for your peace of mind. But I guess you could just buy something for 5-6k and sell it 5 years later for 2k, have minimal insurance on it and be much better off. Then you have a cheaper vehicle with no limits, albeit with more liabilities.
Our Renault has cost me 450 CHF a month everything included (garage, insurance, tyres, repairs) over the course of 5.5 yrs and 80t kms.
In the case of your renault is the 450 chf without fuel?
Because in that case again it make the case that GA is not that expensive at only 320 per months. You can drive lots of mobility to complement the GA if you need it with the rest of the money (130 chf + fuel costs not included)
that’s with everything, fuel included.
the GA is a wonderful thing as long as you don’t want to go skiing or hiking into remote areas AND if you are still single. Paying double for a family GA is not really economical anymore if you prefer being outdoors on most weekends (like a lot of people do).
yeah of course it would only make sense without fuel. How many km per month in average? How much did you end up in chf/km ?
I did multiple holidays outdoor with my family and on the train. Me with the GA, my wife half price and would pay the ticket, the kids for free. And for the longer holidays I would simply ship the equipment/luggage through SBB to the hotel/station, is quite cheap. 12 chf Station-to-Door. Cheaper than buying a larger car
Calculating running costs with fuel costs is a general fallacy.
Running costs include oil changes, tyres, brakes, cleaning, repairs and regular service.
The more you drive the more you need of these as well.
Spritmonitor output:
|Fahrzeugkosten in CHF/km|0,49|
||Zurückgelegte Strecke: 73.468 km (77.892 km bis 151.360 km)|
Spritkosten: 13,41 CHF/100km 72.135 km und 9.672 CHF
So about 0.50CHF/km all-incl.
Fuel only about 25% of that - 0.13CHF/km (avg consumption 9.17l/100km)
I’m also currently looking for a cheap family car.
I was wondering about the Skoda Fabia Combi, does anyone have any experience with it? It seems to fit the bill and is not too expensive.
Also slowly going in the market for a new family car…still unsure if I should look for a Kombi (passat / octavia) or a mini van (sharan/touran/ford galaxy plus).
I am quite puzzled from all the posts here because even if don’t use the car so much (one trip to buy groceries per week, plus 3-4 long distance trips per year, perhaps 5000 km per year) I can’t see the advantage of not having a car and using mobility or öv.
I drive a 2007 Golf and taxes/parking/assurance are around 1000 chf / year, surely cheaper and much more flexible than mobility / trains / rental cars…or what am I missing?
In most other places buying a 10 year old car for a couple of thousand and running it into the ground is the best strategy. Switzerland is unusual in that labour costs are so high that any small problem will cost hundreds or thousands of CHF to sort out. I used to have an old Golf. Eventually I had to sell it because several small mechanical issues meant I was spending several thousand a year on a 3000CHF car.
I made a spreadsheet that told me that using mobility would be cheaper so used that for a bit but it was too annoying for me to have to plan in advance to book cars and not be flexible about when to bring them back.
In my opinion the optimum strategy is to buy a car that’s done 20,000-50,000kms and run it for around 5 years until it’s done near to 100,000 then get rid of it before it becomes a money pit.
In this model reliability isn’t so important because almost any car will run fine to 100k so get a budget brand. Dacia are the obvious one because they are considerably cheaper than anyone else. Skoda and Seat are both fine but a bit more expensive.
The “buy a Toyota and drive it till the wheels fall off” plan is an american idea that just doesn’t work in Switzerland. They are a niche car to start with here and even minor repairs will be worth more than the car.
By reading and partipating to this forum, you confirm you have read and agree with the disclaimer presented on http://www.mustachianpost.com/
En lisant et participant à ce forum, tu confirmes avoir lu et être d'accord avec l'avis de dégagement de responsabilité présenté sur http://www.mustachianpost.com/fr/
Durch das Lesen und die Teilnahme an diesem Forum bestätigst du, dass du den auf http://www.mustachianpost.com/de/ dargestellten Haftungsausschluss gelesen hast und damit einverstanden bist.
.
