To think car ownership is out of control in the UK

OK, fair comment, but I've put in 20k annual mileage and still plenty of cars for £300 or under.

Can I also ask are you in a household whereby only one adult works? Or somewhere with good public transport. The 1 car per household suggestion means you are penalising households where 2 adults work and need to travel to work (in the vast majority of areas in UK where public transport is pretty much non existent and/or extremely expensive)-what is your suggestion there? That one just gives up work or they both get shift work?

What is the mileage limit on the cheap ones? High mileage users pay a lot more for the same car.

All your suggestions discriminate against those who can’t afford to live in a house with a driveway! Your suggestions would ultimately make the rich richer and poor poorer seeing as only people who have enough space for their cars could travel further for things like work and to socialise/have a better quality of life by going the gym etc. It also assumes everyone has access to good public transport which I can assure you in the county I live in is incredibly short supply! Barely any routes that don’t run often and finish early in the day!

Arent we all what make up the bigger picture?

Someone mentioned cycling. I wouldnt cycle on UK roads, we drive our bikes to bike trails. The roads are pitted, heavily cambered, huge drops in tarmac at the edge into undergrowth, not lit well, cars passing fast and too close.

Walking, I like to walk but many roads round here dont have pavements and are unlit. Roads with street lighting light up the road, they dont light up the pavement, the pavement at night is in deep shade unless you are right under a street lamp, paving all broken and dangouers and you cant see it, let alone the dog shit.

Its a good points about toilets on long public transport journeys, train journeys rarely have toilets working, no toilets at the station working (locked up) no toilets at bus stops, rarely at bus stations but bus stations are often just a car park for buses, not an action building with resources in it

In my car on a long journey, I can stop off at toilets, anywhere I like, supermarkets, shopping centres, find toilets on my toilet app. I can drive to them

Our only public transport option is one bus every 2 hours that takes us to the nearest 2 towns (not even the city). This bus stops at 6pm. We have no choice but to have a car each.

Just google for car leasing firms. Lots for under £250, some under £150. Where were you looking if you couldn't find one for under £475??

My life would be very restricted if I didn't have a car. We have a pisspoor bus service (first bus after 9am, last bus back from town at 5.45 and a 2-hour gap in the afternoon when the bus is doing the school run, no buses on Sundays).

I'd also have to give up my job: I'm an essential car user and have to see clients at multiple sites across an entire (mostly rural) county and the neighbouring city. A journey I can do in 60 minutes in the car would take 2 hours minimum by public transport. All my colleagues are in the same boat.

A visit to my elderly mother in law would involve a bus, a train and another bus at her end, impossible on a Sunday and fuck knows how long that would take. I can do the 38 mile journey in under an hour by car; to a friend's 19 miles away, 1.5 hours by bus and a 1.5 mile walk to her house,30 minutes door to door by car.

Clearly, it's very different for people who live in cities with decent public transport and have friends in the same city, have kids in local schools and jobs that are based in just one location. But even then they may need a car to get to family and friends who don't live in the same city, or for hobbies that take place outside the home.

And how do people who don't have cars manage to take stuff to the tip? I've often wondered.

Oh…. And where am I getting the £3k to put the charging point in?! Ffs!

I’ve been driving 7 years and have had 2 cars. The 01 mini, an 06 polo and now my Toyota cross…. Which is by the way a hybrid.

the older the car the MORE Preventative maintenance you need to do! The mini cost me £1500 in the last year! It was worth £400!

are you actually being serious!!

Get an ev and charge it on the overnight tariff.

You will pay zero tax. You will pay less in maintenance.

EVs make most sense when you are doing high mileage.

If you are cost conscious then I think buying new makes little sense. Cars lose the most money when you drive them off the forecourt. If you are worried about warranty go for something like a Hyundai which has a 5 year guarantee and you could buy one a couple of years into that.

I think part of the problem there is that individual tickets tend to be expensive, whereas season or multi-buy tickets reduce the cost drastically. There are also schemes which reduce family costs further e.g. family rail cards or in Scotland children are entitled to travel on public buses for free.

No actually. That was the cheapest car that was NEW.

the car before was a 19 year old 2001 mini! It was falling apart!

I needed something new so I didn’t have to worry about fixing it! It’s a 1.1 so is relatively cheap in the sense of petrol…. We just do a lot of miles.

what would YOU suggest I brought!!

Your choice to lease a car costing £475 per month. There are lots of cars you could have leased for half that. Smaller/cheaper cars would also cost less in terms of fuel, insurance etc.

Also, I work in one area and my husband works in another….. 50 miles away. We both have to work to pay the bills so we both need a car!

honestly. I can’t see why you’re moanining.

“How cheap car ownership is?”

are we on the same planet?

its £475 a month for my car. £65 on Insurance a month, £13 on tax a month. £200 in petrol a month.

I get £1200 a month from my job! (Hubby also works and works hard so we have his income too!)

I live in a small cul-de sac of 8 homes. All of us park on our drives, except for one family that use the turning circle as a parking spot. As the kids have grown we have gone from: Parent's car on their drive, eldest son's car in the turning circle. Then: two cars on the drive, eldest son's girlfriend's car in the turning circle. We are now at: three cars on the drive, eldest and second son's cars on the drive next to their parents, eldest son's girlfriend still in the turning circle. Two more teenage kids to go, I can't help but wonder where they intend to park.

Not being unreasonable at all OP. Car ownership outside of London has been increasing year on year. And if it continues then it will cease to be convenient as there'll be more congestion, road damage and pollution. If everyone drives, nobody moves. As well as public transport, walking and cycling for shorter journeys has to be prioritised and discouraging car usage. A previous poster said there used to be amenities in their village but now there's not. And high streets across the country as ghost towns, that's because the default is to hop into the car and drive. Sometimes that's cost based but most of the time it's just convenience. If you don't use local amenities they'll disappear. We need to stop thinking car first and build infrastructure that gives people options. Found some stats on car ownership below. If we assume this trend continues it's going to be a very sorry picture in 20 years, given the population is aging so per capita there's more cars per adults.

www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/number-cars-great-britain#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20households%20in%20England,every%20household%20has%20a%20car.

I think cars have become more unaffordable, but I'm guessing people are living beyond their means. I bought a second-hand car a year ago, felt like I paid way over the odds for what I got compared to purchasing my previous car. I'm on a terraced street but luckily most residents are like me and are a 1-car household. I would use public transport where I can, but it's really expensive and I'd have to walk a mile and a half to the nearest bus stop. If we could fix public transport, I'd imagine a lot more of us would give up cars.

I couldn't afford to buy a decent car outright. If I'd bought it on HP I'd probably be lumbered longer to have kept the payments down.

But if you had bought it you could have got rid of it now...

I have my car on PCP thankfully as it means I can get rid easily at the end of the term. I have a Mazda 2 Hybrid (e.g. Toyota Yaris) and want to trade it for an older, non hybrid as although it’s economical I don’t drive it enough (apparently) and the stupid thing has already had a new 12v battery when it was 6 months old. For once not owning the car suits me!

This is just patently wrong and is an excuse i ALWAYS see on these threads from people who just want to buy a Sportage or Discovery Sport and claim "there's no smaller cars available any more".

We had a Sportage. I didn’t think it was a particularly big car. According to its V5, it was an estate car. We changed it because it wasn’t a 4x4.

If you're using PCP you're not buying a car. I don't want to pay £250 a month for three years to rent a car which isn't big enough for my 6'7 son to also drive, which won't fit four or five adults when needed, won't fit my dog (large breed) in the boot and all my holiday luggage (UK holiday). I'll stick to my nearly ten year old small-size Volvo which should last me another appro 300k miles. DH will probably also keep his vintage restoration along with his eleven year old run-around which gets used a few times a month for work, and DS1 will keep his car which he uses to travel 25 miles each way to work. If you can come up with a better solution for us which involves a super-mini and/or public transport, I'd be delighted to hear it (did you see the movie Downsizing??).

Are they, though? It all goes to illustrate part of the bigger picture, i.e. why many of us are unable to ditch our cars as we're not adequately served by public transport...