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

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

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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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Supplementary Information

  1. Survey design and results

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