I recognise the site is about driving costs, ignoring what a car costs to own; but depending on what plates stick to that car, it can make a significant difference. Denmark already tops the list in petrol prices, but unmentioned (largely because it's irrelevant) is that cars have a 150% registration fee attached to them, before the annual ownership fees.

I have a 1998 Citroën Xantia Activa V6, it costs ~1450 EUR a year to keep it on plates. Yes, its due to its fuel economy, but since I only drive it occasionally, it's hardly doing damage to the environment. I also have a 2011 Citroën C1, which only costs ~95 EUR a year. Of course, I was truly unhappy about these costs, I would take the Xantia off plates; however, it's more an observation: due to the high fees for merely owning a vehicle, a lot of car owners are encouraged to drive. And that's just the annual fees, buying a new car is such an investment, that it would feel a mistake to not drive it (I assume, I have never bought a new car).

I'm speculating of course, but it seems to me that these fees on car ownership encourages more driving. I'd love to have data from countries with lower (or no) fees, and how much people are driving per car. There is a reason Danish politicians about talking about replacing it with road pricing, or at least a mix.

▲

himata4113 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I'll preface this by saying that I am not debating whenever this is good or bad.

The point here is to make car ownership inconvenient and unaffordable so any implication that it encourages more driving is false by default as there will be less cars on the road to begin with.

	▲	SOLAR_FIELDS 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think both you and parent can easily be correct simultaneously. It is possible for both of these things to be true: there being less cars on the road and people who are in the remainder of cars on the road driving more than they would normally had the taxes been lower. Whether the latter offsets the former to a significant margin appears to be the matter of debate implied here.

▲

heikkikalliokos 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes very interesting point: we only count the cost of the trip itself, not owning the car. Registration and annual fees are a whole other layer, and Denmark might extreme case, tough Netherlands isnt much better.

I don't have data on driving per car versus ownership fees, but it would be a interesting comparison, and it fits with why road pricing keeps coming up in Denmark.

▲

Arodex 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for keeping care of that Citroën Activa. A car that must be preserved for its historical and technological significance.

https://youtu.be/lZXaexvA7p0

https://youtu.be/EZ_3HRMy2js

▲

Lagoon3384_SWE 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]