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Let's say a gallon of gas costs $4 and your car gets 40 MPG. So $1 gets you 10 miles if you only consider gas (which very many people do, even if you think they shouldn't - much maintenance is imagined as time-based, and this is not entirely wrong - cars do decay even if you don't drive them, and insurance only rarely considers your odometer and only coarsely if so).

Wear and tear is generally assumed to be roughly equal to gas costs on well-maintained roads, depending on a lot of varying assumptions of what to include. So, 5 miles.



Adding depreciation, recurring costs such as insurance, parking, perhaps even opportunity cost from capital allocated in a depreciating asset. It starts to not look that cheap.


Lots of those things are relatively fixed, so it’s a “use the car today” question, not a “do I buy a Car” ideation.


Marginal cost of a mile is about 20-40c including wear and tear. If you've got a car already that's all that matters


If you already have access to a car, the marginal cost of driving an extra mile is low.




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