Real Deal: How Much Does It Really Cost To Own A Car In Singapore?

Do you live in Singapore and planning to buy a car? Before anything else, answer this question. Do you know the real price of owning one? If you don’t, here’s a rough estimation, get you calculator and compute all the expenses that comes with having a ride.

Down Payment

Open market value or OMV of the car is an essential factor when calculating how much the down payment will be if you’re applying for a car loan. You’d be eligible for the maximum Loan-to-Value of 60% of the vehicle’s price tag if your OMV is S$20,000 or less. This means DP will be 40%.
But if OMV is more than S$20,000, DP will be 50%, because you’ll be entitled for a maximum LTV of 50%.

Total Car Loan Cost

Monetary Authority of Singapore or MAS implemented 5-year tenure in car loans. So, to abide that restriction you will have to increase your monthly amortization. 
So, subtract the down payment from your car’s purchase price. With the difference you get add the 2.28% interest, and then the result will be the total of your car loan cost. Just divide that to 60 mos. (5 years) to know your monthly amortization.

Car Insurance

If you happen to be a safe driver with a 10% No-Claim Discount (NCD) if you don’t get into any trouble every year (up to the maximum 50%) and given the S$3,600 initial car insurance annual premium with excess S$1,000 for comprehensive policy that’s S$24,520 (factoring NCD) in 10 years.

Road Tax

Your dealer might be paying a year worth of your road tax but you still have to brace yourself. Land Transportation Authority factors the road tax in Singapore by:
S$950 + 1.5 (1,911 – 1,600) X 0.782 = a road tax of S$1,108 (In case it’s a Mercedes-Benz E-200 AVANTGARDE with 1991cc engine capacity) because road tax is calculated based on your car’s engine capacity. So that’s S$9,972 as your overall cost of paying the road tax.

Gasoline

With the gasoline, your expenses may differ depending on changes of your yearly mileage. But let’s say you drive about 19,000km a year and your car has 16.7km per liter of petrol as average fuel consumption rate, then that’s S$26,213 for the cost of petrol in total. Considering 3% yearly price hike on gas, on the S$1.95 cost per liter of 98UL petrol, due to inflation.

Maintenance

Car servicing in Singapore could easily exceed S$300 per trip and you have to do it every 6 months to ensure your vehicles’ good condition for 10 years. You also have to keep in mind that rising cost of services and mechanical reliability of your car play a huge part on your car maintenance expenses.

So, with your car’s price tag and all the computations above from all the requirement of owning a vehicle, you probably have a pretty good idea on how much does it really cost to own a ride in Singapore. I say think about it a million time before you decide.