The No-Car Calculator
The car feels essential, but what does owning it really cost once you count depreciation, insurance, fuel, parking and the return you forgo on the capital tied up in it? See what going car-free would compound into, how many rental trips a year that buys, and what the slower commute pays you per hour.
All figures are in today's money: every rate on this page is real, i.e. above inflation. Why?
The Car
Driving & Fuel
Car-Free Life
Returns & Horizon
| Metric | P10 | P50 | P90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| True Car Cost €0.73/km all-in | – | €731/mo | – |
| Car-Free Cost transit + rentals + rideshare | – | €267/mo | – |
| Liberation Fund at 10yr Going car-free wins, savings invested at 5% | €52,292 | €66,066 | €88,856 |
| Monthly Advantage car-free minus owning | – | €464/mo | – |
What each choice actually pays
Where your wealth after 10yr lands under each choice: going car-free in the upper panel, keeping the car in the lower one. Keeping the car leaves you the car at its resale value, the same in every scenario; going car-free leaves you that plus the invested Liberation Fund, so its spread is the market's. Both panels use exactly the same buckets, x axis and y axis, so a bar compares directly with the bar below it. The Liberation Fund row above is the difference between the two.
- Upper panel (Going car-free): The share of scenarios in which going car-free finishes in each range.
- Lower panel (Keeping the car): Keeping the car ends at the same value in every scenario (€10.5k) because it carries no market exposure, so it is drawn as one line on the same x axis instead of a 100% bar, which would flatten the panel above.
- point at the chart: Hovering or tapping anywhere on the chart names the bucket under the pointer and, for each side, the share of scenarios that finish inside it, below it and above it (the three add to 100%). Dragging across the chart with the mouse zooms to what you selected.
- clipped tail: The ‹ and › percentages at the ends of the axis are the scenarios finishing outside the drawn range, each after a ■ in its side's colour. Up to 1.0% of one side's scenarios sit outside it; they are counted in every number on this page, just not drawn here.
The Liberation Fund
- Liberation Fund P10–P90 · 80% of scenarios: The middle 80% of simulated futures: 1 run in 10 ends above this ribbon and 1 in 10 below it.
- Liberation Fund P25–P75 · middle half: The middle half of simulated futures: a quarter end above it, a quarter below.
- Liberation Fund median (P50): The median (P50): half of all simulated futures end above this line, half below. It coincides with the solid line.
- solid = median (P50) path: The solid line is the median (P50) path. Because returns compound, the arithmetic mean sits ABOVE the median: a few very good runs pull the average up.
The solid line is the deterministic fund (the median path); the emerald fan is its P10–P90 range under a modelled return with volatility σ = 15%. Only the invested cash saving is randomised; depreciation is added flat. The solid line is the median (P50) path: half the modelled outcomes finish above it and half below. The mean sits above it: because lognormal returns are right-skewed, the tail of very good outcomes pulls the average up.
The "but I need it for trips" test
The annual saving alone buys this many extra rental days beyond the 20 already budgeted, before the car even pays for itself.
101
extra rental days/yr
What the slow way pays per hour
Going car-free costs you about 110 extra hours a year in travel time (30 min × 220 days). The money you save works out to this much for every one of those hours. That is often more than a typical net wage, and it's tax-free.
€51/hr
saving ÷ extra travel time
Owning totals €8,770/yr: €1,950 depreciation, €1,470 fuel and €1,500 forgone return on the car's capital. Going car-free totals €3,200/yr: transit pass, 20 rental days and rideshare.
Straight-lined depreciation
D = (30,000 − 30,000 · s/100) / 10
- V: car value today
- s: resale value at horizon, as % of V (clamped 0-100)
- N: horizon, in years
Annual cost of owning
Own = D + 1,200 + (12,000/100)·7·1.75 + 12·125 + 900 + 250 + 30,000·r/100
- D: depreciation (see above)
- I: insurance, per year
- km: distance driven per year
- f: fuel consumption, L/100km
- p: fuel price per litre
- Pk: parking, per month
- M: maintenance & repairs, per year
- T: road tax / registration, per year
- V: car value today
- r: market return %, the forgone return on the capital tied up in the car
Annual cost of going car-free
Free = 12·85 + 20·55 + 12·90
- Tp: transit pass, per month
- Rd: rental days per year
- Rr: rental rate per day
- Rs: rideshare/taxi, per month
Liberation Fund
- CashPot: the (Own − Free − D)/12 monthly cash gap, compounded monthly at the market return, CashPot(0) = 0
- D: depreciation (see above)
- N: horizon, in years
Car-free usually means a slower door-to-door trip. At 30 extra minutes over 220 trip days, that's 110 hours a year. Dividing the yearly saving by those hours gives an implied hourly wage of €51. That is what riding transit effectively pays you (tax-free) for each hour of extra travel time. A negative figure means car-free is both pricier and slower.
How the scenarios work. The single 5% return is the median, compounded rate. The fan and distribution above model the invested saving as compounding at a lognormal return with median 5% and volatility σ = 15% (the global Volatility set in the header), calibrated so the median of the distribution equals the deterministic line, which is why that line sits in the middle of the fan. Depreciation is still realised flat, so only the compounding cash pot varies; at σ = 0 the fan collapses onto the single line.
Depreciation is straight-lined over the horizon (real cars depreciate front-loaded). Opportunity cost is a flat annual charge on today's car value and does not shrink as the car depreciates, which is a deliberate simplification. Every figure here is real (inflation-adjusted): all costs on both sides are held constant in today's money, and the global Market Return the Liberation Fund compounds at is itself a real return, so the comparison stays like-for-like without a separate inflation input. Non-financial factors such as convenience, weather, rural access and kids' logistics are not priced.
Assumptions behind every figure: how this site models the market →
Every model leaves things out. Here is what this one does not see:
- No middle-ground ownership is modelled: car-sharing clubs, subscription services or one shared household car. The choice is framed as strictly own-vs-car-free, when many households capture much of the saving through a workable middle path, so the binary framing can overstate the real gap on offer.
- Maintenance is a flat annual figure with no allowance for a single large repair (transmission, accident damage) hitting all at once, which understates owning's true cost in a bad year. Insurance is also held flat even though premiums typically decline as a car ages and its replacement value falls, which overstates owning's cost in later years. Which effect dominates depends on the car's age and condition.
- Rideshare and rental-day pricing are entered as fixed per-use rates with no surge pricing, seasonal demand or unavailability at exactly the times a car would have been most useful. Real car-free costs at those moments run higher than the flat rate modeled here, so the car-free side's true cost is understated.
- No second-order life effects: going car-free can also open up cheaper housing or job choices closer to transit, an upside the model can't credit. So the car-free side's real financial advantage is likely understated, not just its sticker cost.