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How mileage works with car subscriptions

April 20, 2023

How mileage works with car subscriptions

If you’re considering taking out a car subscription, one aspect you might be wanting to know more about is how the mileage works. In this post, we’re looking at this in more detail and comparing how mileage is handled in a car subscription versus a traditional car lease.

Understanding mileage with car subscriptions

With both traditional car leasing and car subscriptions, the mileage you do each month or year is important, because it will be used to calculate the value of the car at the end of the contract. That’s why you’ll always have a mileage limit written into your contract, whichever car subscription provider or lease solution you go for.

With a traditional car lease, mileage allowances are usually based on the number of miles you drive each year, and excess mileage fees can add a substantial amount to what you end up paying at the end of your contract. However, you’ll be able to roll unused mileage over to the next year.

With a car subscription, mileage allowances are per month. Some car subscriptions, including Drive Fuze, include as many as 1,000 miles a month as standard, with the option to add extra miles onto your subscription if you think you’ll need them. This gives you the peace of mind that you won’t be met with any extra charges.

Drive Fuze’s mileage policy

As mentioned, Drive Fuze subscriptions include a generous 1,000 miles a month as standard, which is more than that of many other providers. Typically, mileage allowances range from around 750 miles a month to 1,000. Some providers will let you roll over unused mileage, while others won’t.

Most providers will also allow you to include additional mileage packages as an optional extra that you can add to your subscription when placing your initial order, or as an upgrade once your subscription has started. This is worth doing if you think you’ll regularly need more than 1,000 miles a month – for instance, if you have a long commute.

To give you an example of how much this extra mileage might set you back, let’s take a standard vehicle, such as a Vauxhall Crossland 1.2 Turbo. The basic price for 1,000 miles a month is £499 per month, but if you wanted an additional 500 miles a month, the price would increase to £532. You’d also be able to downgrade back to the standard 1,000 miles if you found you weren’t using the extra mileage.

This flexibility in mileage limits for car subscriptions can be really useful if your needs change unexpectedly – for example, if your child starts university and you’re regularly making the long trip to visit them or drop them off, or you get a new job and have to commute a bit further.

Cost of exceeding mileage limits

If you use more than the agreed number of miles in a given month, you are likely to receive charges for excess mileage. These vary depending on the provider, with typical fees ranging anywhere between 20p and £1.25 per mile. The fees are often higher for less fuel-efficient cars.

These costs can add up over time if you’re regularly exceeding your mileage limits, and if you’d prefer the certainty of knowing what you’ll pay each month, it’s best to add some extra mileage to your allowance so that you stay within your agreed limit. As we’ve already seen, an extra 500 miles on a medium car amounts to around an extra £33 per month.

When calculating how much extra mileage you’ll need, think about all the trips you do in a week or month and add up the miles for two or three months to work out the average. With a flexible Drive Fuze subscription, you’ll always be able to add on additional miles if you think you’ll need them – and remove them when you don’t.

How to track mileage with Drive Fuze

At Drive Fuze, we want to help you avoid excess mileage costs, so we track your mileage using a telematics device. This allows us to keep track of mileage information and other metrics in real-time, and it’s a technology commonly used for keeping track of a fleet of vehicles.

You’ll also be able to keep track of your mileage yourself, with your starting mileage listed on your contract. The easiest way to track your monthly mileage is simply to reset your tripmeter on the first day of each month so that you can keep a running total of how far you’ve driven each month. 

There are several benefits to being able to track mileage in real-time, and not just because it helps you stay within the mileage limits you’ve agreed on. For example, it can be useful if you own a business and need to keep track of mileage for your expenses. It’s also great for keeping you environmentally aware, as it makes you more conscious of how many miles you’re doing and where you could have avoided a journey.

You can make the most of your monthly mileage limit by driving economically, which will also save you money on fuel. You’ll find that sat nav apps such as Google Maps can work out the route with the fewest miles. Finally, if your provider allows you to roll your unused mileage over to the next month, you can be savvy and ‘save up’ miles for a month when you know you’ll be doing more.

Conclusion

Excess mileage charges can add a lot to what you end up paying for a car, but with Drive Fuze’s generous standard mileage of 1,000 miles a month, with the option to add more, you’ll never need to worry about additional fees. For extra peace of mind, always read the fine print to make sure you’ve understood the terms of any car subscription you sign up for.

If you’re looking for a flexible and hassle-free alternative to traditional car leasing and the strict mileage that comes with it, browse our cars to find out more about our car subscriptions.