Break it down.
Average insurance cost is $1655
What is the average car insurance cost in Ontario? Learn about average car insurance costs by age and region.
www.thinkinsure.ca
Average distance driven is 16k km per year.
kms per year, average mileage, average kms per year, average kms driven per year,
www.thinkinsure.ca
Let's allow a very fuel efficient small car that averages 7L/100km, and a current average fuel price of $1.65/L. That works out to $1848 per year for the average distance driven.
We're already up to $3500 without considering maintenance, depreciation, or finance costs.
A 10 year old Honda Civic with 200k km on it goes for about $10k. Let's optimistically assume you can get another 10 years out of it. That is $1000/year in depreciation. Of course, trying to push a ten year old car to 20 years in service and 360k km is also going to come with not insignificant maintenance costs. I think $1k per year is optimistic unless you are a mechanic and do all the work yourself (and keep in mind, we're talking about the broad population of low income working people, not the unicorn gearhead that keeps cars on the road to 500k km).
That's $5.5k per year.
Please show your math in how owning a car is much cheaper than this. I suppose it's possible for some people who have very low insurance, and drive very little, to spend less.
You can play mental games all you want about 'paid off cars'. You have your purchase price, your disposition price, and your ownership duration. First minus second divided by third is your annual ownership cost in depreciation. Not even counting the finance costs (if any) or opportunity cost of tying up cash in a depreciating asset vs investments.
Yes, cars can be relatively inexpensive if you don't use them. But the cost per km can get quite high. $250 in gas at 7L/100km and $1.65/L is about 2000 km per year.
We're talking about working low income people who 'need' cars to commute.