Could a scooter be your second car? An honest look at the numbers

A second car is one of the most expensive things on an Irish driveway, and a lot of its trips are short ones with one person in it. Here's what it costs, and which trips an eScooter can take over.

What a second car really costs

Keeping an average car on the road costs about €608 a month with a typical car loan: about €266 in repayments, plus about €342 in running costs before depreciation (OUTsurance Ireland, 2025). Most of that you never see at the pump:

Source: OUTsurance Ireland, 2025, average petrol/diesel car; running costs excluding depreciation, €4,099 a year, shown per month and rounded. Loan: average car loan €13,233 (BPFI, Q1 2026) repaid over 5 years at 7.7% APR, about €266 a month. A smaller second car costs less, but the insurance, tax and NCT still arrive every month.

What it actually does all day

Look at a week of second-car trips and a pattern shows up: the commute across town, the shop, the gym, the errands. Short trips, often with just the driver on board.

Those are exactly the trips where a car is at its worst: cold engine, a queue at the lights, a hunt for parking at the other end.

If most of its trips are short and solo, your second car is a very expensive way to move one person.

Where an eScooter does the job

You stand, the motor does the work, and you arrive with no need to change. When you get there, it folds and comes inside. Road-legal eScooters can use roads and cycle lanes in Ireland, up to 20 km/h, from age 18, wearing a helmet and high-vis. No tax, insurance or licence needed, and everything we sell for Irish roads is supplied to that spec.

• Café runs and errands: the LOCO Lite, our lightest at 14 kg, with a 21 km LOCO-tested range.
• Any weather: the LOCO Motion Pro is IPX7 waterproof, and replaced free if water ever gets in.
• Longer trips and hills: the PURE Air 6 Pro+ Suspension gives 38 km realistic range and climbs gradients up to 19%.

How to decide

• Note every trip the car makes for a week, with the distance and who's in it.
• Count the short ones you make on your own. Those are scooter trips.
• Book a free test ride to feel how the scooter rides.