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Additional costs

As always in life, there are a lot of additional costs waiting just around the next corner. If you want to lease a car in Germany, here are the typical things that will show up!

1. Costs for transportation/ getting the car
2. Car registration
3. Winter tires
4. Service/ maintenance
5. TÜV (Car inspection in Germany (New car after three years, then every two years)
6. Costs for driving more km’s than defined in the contract
7. Insurance
8. Vehicle taxes
9. The costs for parts that are broken, damaged, or worn out, that are not in accordance with the car giving back specification

Sure, sound actually like a lot of extra things, right? But well, let’s talk about them in more detail.

Costs for transportation

In order to get your car, you need to pay those costs. Either you pick the car up at the OEM’s facility, which costs less, or you let the car getting delivered to your local dealership or even to your home. It costs between 600€ and 900€ but always depends of course. The longer you have a car, the smaller is the impact of those costs on the whole deal.

Car registration

Sure, the car needs a number plate! The police needs to know where they can send the images they made of your new car driving too fast. Those fees are of course not really high, but they exist and in the end you need to pay for it! Those fees are pretty much having a similar impact as the costs for transportation. The longer you will have the car, the smaller the impact.

Winter tires

As the golden standard, new cars are always equipped with summer tires! But, at least in Germany, you need to have winter tires if the weather conditions demand them. Therefore, you will most likely need them! Most of the dealerships can make you a good offer, where you will pay a certain amount of money every month for getting them. But for sure, you can also buy them somewhere else!

Service/ Maintenance

A car is a machine and a machine needs maintenance! That’s the end of the story! Depending on the time period you will lease the car, you need to pay more or less for the maintenance costs. Sure, the dealerships are offering service packages to cover those costs, but it makes not always sense to get them. Just ask how many services the car will need in the time of having it. Then you can calculate the costs and figure out if it makes sense to have the car for that long, or not and if you want the dealership to cover the costs, or not.

TÜV

If you will have a brand new car for longer than two years, you will need to pay for the TÜV after 36 month. Sure, it’s not a lot of money. But money is money, right?

Costs for driving more

In the average contract, there is a km tolerance of around plus/ minus 2500 km’s. Meaning that you can drive 2500 km more or less without anything going to happen. But, if you will drive less that, you will get some money back. (Calculated by a certain amount of money for a single km. Most of the time you will get around 3 Cent for each km until you hit the barrier of 10.000 km’s less than the defined amount of km’s in the contract) and if you will drive more, you will need to pay for that (Most of the time with a price of 9 Cents for a single km).

Insurance

Depending on the contract, you need the golden standard, a fully comprehensive insurance. And believe it or not, but this can be quite expensive for new cars. Just ask your insurance company and add the costs to the list. Sometimes, the dealership can also offer an insurance package. Just figure out if this is worth the price or not.

Vehicle taxes

Every vehicle in Germany pays a certain amount of tax a year, depending on a lot of different factors. It’s not much, but can vary from car to car. For example, hybrids or electric vehicles are very cheap, but cars with big engines are really expensive.

The costs when giving the car back

The car you will be driving doesn’t belong to you. Therefore you need to care for it. Certain indicators of use and wear are ok, but not all. There is a definite collection of rules that defines what is ok and what is not. Just ask your dealership, they will give you the information. Things you need to consider are for example tires, brakes, scratches and other damages.

Ok, sounds like we got the basics covered! Now comes the interesting part! How to figure out if a deal is in fact worth its money or not.

See you next time!