Are you the kind of person who likes to optimize every decision? Me too! That’s why I made this document to help you decide which Communauto plan best fits your needs. By entering details about how you plan to use your vehicle in an average year, this tool will help you:
Compare the costs of different types of trips.
Determine which plan is most cost-effective.
Decide whether Communauto is cheaper than owning a car.
This is not an official Communauto document
Due to the complexity of Communauto’s pricing, the calculation formulas in this document do not represent every possible discount and surcharge accounted for in Communauto’s
. As a result, the data contained within this document should be used as a point of reference when selecting a plan, not as a completely accurate source of truth.
How to use this tool
Add your intended usage. Get rid of the placeholder data on the
to determine the optimal plan and simplify the calculations a bit. You may want to get to know the caveats to better understand the full picture of what this tool can and can’t do.
Make your own copy. If you’d like to keep your data to revisit later or if you’d like to modify this doc, use the
Copy doc
button to create a duplicate on your own Coda account.
Share it! Know someone who might find this useful? Send them a link! And if this document saved you some money, feel free to
Why don’t the costs match Communauto’s trip calculator?
There are a few known situations where trips entered on the usage table won’t line up with Commuauto’s advertised trip rates. These are explained in the
. This should match the amounts listed on Communauto’s online trip calculator. To get the total cost, each trip is multiplied by its frequency to get the cost per year, and then all those amounts are added up and displayed in the
No. Communauto’s pricing has far too many special rates and fees to account for them all. This document represents the best I could reasonably do without requiring you to write the dates and times of every trip you were planning to make in a given year.
Is this an official Communauto document?
No, it’s just created by an avid Communauto user from Montreal.
How is depreciation calculated?
First, the remaining lifespan of the vehicle is calculated (expected lifespan minus current kilometers on the odometer). Then the depreciation per kilometer is calculated by dividing the purchase price of the vehicle by its remaining lifespan. Finally, that $/km value is multiplied by your intended annual kilometers (the total trips per year on the
if I’ve made a mistake on this: [principal amount] / ([term length] / 12) * (1 + [interest rate] / 100)
Could you please add XYZ feature to this tool?
Maybe! This document is in what I consider to be a completed state, so I won’t guarantee that I’ll fulfill requests to add features or additional calculations in the future. However, if you have an idea for some other way this data could be used to provide helpful insights, drop a comment on