The ‘whole-life cost’ of a vehicle refers to the cost of acquiring, managing, running, and maintaining a car or van for the entire length of a contract or however long you wish to retain that vehicle.

What makes up the whole-life cost of a vehicle?

Whole-life costs cover much more than the purchase price, or monthly rental paid as part of a lease agreement, so when you are putting together a monthly or annual budget you need to make sure you account for all of these and more importantly, ensure that your vehicle supplier does too.

The following considerations are applicable to both individuals and businesses.

Purchase price

This is not the manufacturers retail price, it’s the price you actually pay for the vehicle, including any discounts you have managed to secure. You may pay cash or you may finance a percentage of that figure.

Fuel costs

Fuel costs can be worked out based on the mileage that your vehicle will do each year and there are many fuel cost calculators available. Although calculators can’t account for how a vehicle is driven, they will give you a guideline cost to put in your monthly and annual budget.

Service, maintenance and repair (SMR)

There are a variety of costs that will come under SMR, some being more easily predicted than others. SMR costs are provided by manufacturers and there are a number of ‘whole-life cost calculators’ which pull data from specialist third parties to give a pence-per-mile cost, based on a predicted annual mileage. These costs will include regular servicing needs, replacement tyres, wear and tear replacement parts; such as brake pads, bulbs, and filters. For cars doing higher mileages, you may make a contingency for more expensive items such as brake discs and shock absorbers.

Damage costs

Vehicles get damaged, whether it be unaccountable dents and scratches or more serious collision damage. It’s impossible to predict damage but historic invoices may give you an indication of how much to budget for damage repair.

If you have purchased your vehicle or have it on a finance lease for example, the choice to repair damage is yours. However, if you have taken a vehicle on a contract hire agreement you will have to repair anything that is deemed to be above BVRLA fair wear and tear guidelines. You may choose to repair vehicles on your insurance policy, but it may impact your insurance renewal cost.

Breakdowns and replacement vehicles

If you don’t have breakdown cover and replacement vehicles as part of your supplier contract then you will need to account for this. Even new cars can be prone to breakdowns. Similar to damage, this can be hard to predict, however, historic data may give you an indication of how likely this is to happen again, particularly with high mileage vehicles.

Vehicle excise duty (VED)

VED or what is often referred to as ‘road tax’ is another fixed cost although it may be included in your monthly payments, depending on how you financed your vehicle. Annual increases in VED charges can increase your annual costs. In 2017 and 2018, the government made significant changes to VED charges which hit diesel and high value vehicles particularly hard. VED is based on a car’s CO2 emissions which denotes its banding.

Finance costs

Unless you are paying cash for a vehicle, there will be interest associated with financing costs to account for.

Insurance

You will either insure a vehicle individually or add it to a fleet policy. Whichever the case, this cost needs to be taken in to account. The more vehicles you acquire then the higher your fleet insurance premium may be. Any claims on your insurance policy may also affect insurance costs.

Residual value and depreciation

This is often not considered a cost at all and yet it is in fact one of the biggest costs if you have chosen to purchase a vehicle with cash or finance. The residual value refers to the value of the vehicle when you have finished with it. Depreciation is the difference between the cost of the vehicle when you purchased it and the value of the vehicle when you are finished with it. As the vehicle may sit as an asset on your company accounts, you will need to know this value.

Further considerations when calculating whole life costs for both individuals and businesses:

For individuals

Company car tax

If your company provides you with a company car then you are responsible for BIK (benefit in kind) at their PAYE tax rate. This is calculated based on the car’s CO2 emissions.

For businesses

If you purchase vehicles, you can deduct a percentage of the value from your profit before tax in the year it’s purchased. There’s generally three options for new cars based on CO2 emissions:

Leased/rented vehicle tax relief

If you lease or rent your vehicles you can deduct a percentage of the monthly rental payments from the company’s profit before tax. The percentage is based on CO2 emissions:

VAT

VAT is added to all vehicle associated costs, but the amount that can be claimed back varies depending on the vehicle and its uses.

Summary

It can seem like a daunting prospect trying to understand the true whole-life cost of vehicles, and can sometimes be overlooked. There are also many suppliers in the industry who will look at your budget and use it entirely on the acquisition cost of a vehicle and not account for all the factors above.