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Comment by Ma8ee | Hacker News Reader

I don’t talk about Tesla. I am talking about a small car, electric or not, that cost a fraction to buy, drive, insure and will be easier to park. And then renting for that fishing trip or long road trip when your small car won’t do.

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I looked at this for a fun car to use at the weekends twice a month but it wasn't cost effective.

To rent for a weekend:

    - Rental: £300 (dependent on the car, but £300 was the cheapest)
    - Fuel: £100

To do it twice a month, between April and October would cost £5,600. Instead I picked up a fantastic car for just under £10,000 with less than 50,000 miles on it.

Man Maths has me at (over 12 months):

   - Depreciation: £500
   - Maintenance: £1500 (includ. tires)
   - Insurance and tax: £750
   - Fuel: £1000

which is £3,750 v.s. £5,600.

One small tip for renting cars is to look around at a few rental places, ideally in lower-traffic or lower-population areas. £300 for a weekend seems pretty high (but comparable to e.g. renting from the local airport here), whereas I could take an Uber to an Enterprise just outside of town for ~$30 and get a "premium" car for $140 for the weekend (48 hours at $70/day).

This is for renting sports cars (fun cars) for weekend use. Enterprise and the like don't have such cars available in the U.K, it's more of a specialist market.

If you actually use the cat like that twice a month for a big part of the year it of course makes sense to buy one. But most people use the car for that fun drive maybe twice a year (even though they of course dream about doing it all the time when they buy their expensive car).

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