OREANDA-NEWS. October 09, 2013. At the Tartu Motoshow, SEB Liising conducted test drives in order to compare the fuel consumption rates advertised by manufacturers with actual rates.

There were 50 cars in the event’s test drive area, 11 of which were put forward by the dealerships in the category of economical vehicles. After a combined distance of 11.5 km of city driving and motorway driving, four cars out of 11 had managed to keep fuel consumption under 4 litres per 100 km.

According to Ainar Leppanen, manager of SEB Liising, car sellers were able to debunk the myth that the factory fuel consumption figures are not attainable in real life situations. The lowest fuel consumption (3.7 litres per 100 km) was achieved by the passenger vehicle Peugeot 308 (Allure 1.6 e-HDI, 85kw), followed by Peugeot 2008 (Allure 1.6 e-HDI, 84kw) and Renault Captur (Zen Energy 1.5 dCI, 66 kw), both with the result of 3.8 litres per 100 km, followed by the Skoda Octavia (HB Ambition 1.6 TDI, 77 kw) with 3.9 liters per 100 km.

“As fuel prices have been rising a lot lately, interest in more economical vehicles has also been going up,” commented Ainar Leppanen on the number of this year’s contestants. “There are more and more customers who, before purchasing a car, think through all the auxiliary costs of owning a car, besides the lease payment, and with increasing frequency the final decision is made based on the estimated total cost.”

Based on the cars in Motoshow’s eco-experiment, SEB Liising has made some calculations with the data from the dealerships and RSA Kindlustus and estimated the total average monthly expenses on lease payments, insurance, fuel, and maintenance, taking into account today’s prices and the yearly driving distance of 30,000 km.

The average cost structure looked like this:
Lease 50%
Fuel 34%
Insurance 9%
Maintenance 7%

A greener car can provide significant budget savings. According to SEB’s analysis, when compared to an older car, a more economical car can save more than EUR 1,000 per year in fuel, insurance and leasing payments. These savings would equal a quarter of the purchase price of the car over a period of four years.