Car Maintenance Costs

Car maintenance costs continue to rise despite new technologies. Repair customers have enough to worry about with car expenses and getting a square deal. Following is an interesting slant to lower car maintenance costs taking off in Asia...

You've heard of car pooling, why not car-sharing. Car-sharing will slice car maintenance costs down to a minimum--in Asia anyway. Could it catch on elsewhere?

Motorists turn to car-sharing...

SINGAPORE: With Certificate of Entitlement (COE) prices now back on an uptrend, many people may reconsider getting a car.

A growing number of Singaporeans are giving up their cars altogether, opting to car-share instead.

59-year-old retiree Thong Chee Hong and his wife do not travel as much as they used to.

So, a day after scrapping his car in August, they joined Honda's Diracc car sharing scheme.

The couple says they like the convenience of having a car whenever they need it, without having to deal with cost factors such as road tax, petrol, car maintenance and repair bills.

"I would generally spend $500 to S$600 on average per month in owning a car. However, when I came on this programme, I'm now spending on average only about $200 a month, taking into consideration six to eight times of driving per month," Mr Thong says.

Users of this system can receive and return the cars at 16 ports, the majority of which are located within the Central Business District.

But as the fleet grows, the plan is to have more of these ports at residential areas.

Mr Thong says he is also swayed by the use of Honda's environment friendly hybrid cars which run on an electric motor and a petrol engine.

Hisao Kobayashi, Managing Director, Honda ICVS, says: "Whenever the number of vehicles gets more, there are congestion problems and noise problems. We would like to provide other alternatives to our so-called users. If you use the car a little bit less, why don't you use car sharing?

This car-sharing scheme is complementing mass transportation like MRT, buses or taxis."

-Dominique Loh, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/index.htm

A fabulous idea to save money on car maintenance costs, gasoline, taxes...etc. Could it also solve traffic issues? Pollution?

In the mean time click the following link in order to take control of car repair prices!

-Ted Olson
RepairTrust
Empowering the Car Repair Customer