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Running a car costs much more than people think — stalling the uptake of green travel

Car owners underestimate total vehicle costs. Giving consumers this information could encourage the switch to cleaner transport and reduce emissions.
  1. Mark A. Andor

    1. Mark A. Andor is a senior researcher in behavioural, experimental and environmental economics at the RWI — Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Essen, Germany.

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  2. Andreas Gerster

    1. Andreas Gerster is a postdoctoral researcher in economics at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

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  3. Kenneth T. Gillingham

    1. Kenneth T. Gillingham is an associate professor of environmental and energy economics at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

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  4. Marco Horvath

    1. Marco Horvath is a postdoctoral researcher in environmental and resource economics at the RWI — Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Essen, Germany.

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A woman checks her car between rows of red petrol pumps at a petrol station

A petrol station in Berlin. On average, drivers accurately judge fuel costs but severely underestimate all other expenditure. Credit: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Private cars are responsible for about 11% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions. That’s the greatest share in the transport sector, which accounts for 24% of emissions overall1. Petrol and diesel cars are associated with many other harmful effects, such as air pollution, congestion and accidents. It is clear that these cars must be largely removed from the roads to achieve sustainable mobility.

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Nature 580, 453-455 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01118-w

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 09 May 2022: This Comment omitted small fixed costs (for example, for parking and vehicle inspections) in some of the calculations. These would reduce the published figures for car ownership, annual CO2 emissions and fuel-price increase by about 6% each and the increase in electric-vehicle uptake by 2.3%, but would not affect the overall conclusions of the analysis.

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