How much should petrol/diesel cost us?

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Deleted member 26715

Guest
Wow! that is interesting and will throw a few spanners in the works, we all know that a 30,000 mile 3 year old car is worth more than a 130,000 mile one, as we know this is how they work out contract prices.

I can only find news relating to early return.
They will just change the contracts, but it's all about the fact that the finance is about a finite amount, they then cannot charge extra.
 

BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
In real terms, after taking into account the effects of inflation, fuel is cheaper now than it was in the 1970's. And yet people moan about how expensive it is! So yes, it needs to go up.

When you also factor in that 95% of all private car purchases are now PCP, meaning people never actually own the car outright, they merely pay £300-£500 pm and then after 3 years, roll it over to get a new car, the whole system merely encourages people to use their cars more and more.

It needs radical thought to engineer a way out.
For some of the 1970’s fuel prices were artificially high due to Gulf tensions.
The cheapest PCP deals have quite restricted annual mileage.
 

Electric_Andy

Heavy Metal Fan
Location
Plymouth
The cheapest PCP deals have quite restricted annual mileage
They're often not expensive or limiting. 2 of my colleagues have 7k miles built into the price, but extra miles are 5p/mile. So in their words "Even if I do 1k miles extra in the year, it'll only cost me 50 quid". That's clearly run-around territory, but I guess if you do 20k a year you'd state that at the start and pay the extra monthly.

I agree with what someone said upthread; cars have been marketed as status symbols and sexy, shiny things for ages, so I don't think anything will chnage soon.
 
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Deleted member 26715

Guest
They're often not expensive or limiting. 2 of my colleagues have 7k miles built into the price, but extra miles are 5p/mile. So in their words "Even if I do 1k miles extra in the year, it'll only cost me 50 quid".
You'd think that wouldn't you, but that is not the case, when you hand the car back they give you a value of the car, if it has more miles than agreed they mark the car value down as well. I suspect this is the way forward for them as above there has been a court case against Mercedes where they cannot charge extra for excess mileage but they will have to get the depreciation back somehow
 
D

Deleted member 26715

Guest
Typo:
Everyone should liVE in a city. Its more ecological.
Can I politely ask you to go do something unspeakable to yourself, I would rather not live than have to love in a city
 

vickster

Legendary Member
Typo:
Everyone should liVE in a city. Its more ecological.
Why?
Surely it means thus that all food grown in the country would have to be transported to everyone living far away in urban conurbations rather than more rural dwellers being able to get food locally? And the people producing the food and doing the transporting would have to travel from the city where they are forced to live to work on the farms which wouldn't be very ecological? This might be okayish in a smallish country like the UK or Belgium, but less great in big ones like the US, Russia and Australia say? Or am I missing something here?
 
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mustang1

Guru
Location
London, UK
Btw maybe we should tax cyclists on carbon bikes. Recycling those bike
The increased use of heavyweight Chelsea tractors are part of why potholes are getting worse! Ban them first, fix roads after, else you're pouring taxes into holes in the ground which will reopen quickly.

Replacing those heavy SUVs with even heavier electric cars ain't gonna help though.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
And that is the root of the problem. No matter how "Green" people claim to be, they only want measures taken that don't impact on them personally. It's east to shout about banning cars when you don't drive or flying when you don't need to fly anywhere, but the inconvenient truths are ignored and not even commented on in many cases.
Inconvenient truths, like most of the people arguing against cars do actually have access to one and are making small short-term sacrifices (usually of time or money) by not using it to travel. We still pay the fixed costs and depreciation and shoot but we're hoping that the long term benefits both to our own health and society in several will outweight the costs. But of course we argue for societal changes so people aren't penalised for not driving 4x3m single-user vehicles unnecessarily, so local government doesn't dictate that access to a car is essential and structure its services to be difficult to access otherwise, so our streets become more fun places to be.

So the changes we advocate would actually affect us in several ways (some good and some bad) but I can understand why refuseniks like to either pretend low-car households don't exist or call us hypocrites for having a car key while calling for less car use.

Higher fuel prices and reduction of some of the fixed prices would encourage more car households to go low-car. The problem would be that then reduces the incentive or break point where it becomes worth going no-car to replace the high fixed costs with higher variable costs from hiring when needed.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
I agree with what someone said upthread; cars have been marketed as status symbols and sexy, shiny things for ages, so I don't think anything will chnage soon.
Can we subvertise them by likening them to sexy, shiny things from adult private shops? That used to happen more when I was young, with the buyer of something like a sports car being asked if they were compensating for, er, anatomical inadequacy by buying something usually driven like a cock. I've not heard that sort of thing for ages but that may just be because I've not worked in factories for ages. Anyone else think it's died out?
 
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