Andre Lee bought a Kia Fort used to boost his career as an insurance agent in Singapore. In his mind, he saw himself crossing the city in his black Coupé, impressing potential clients.
“It’s the same as being dressed in formal clothes with leather shoes or wearing a rolex,” said Mr. Lee, 33, on the two -door car that he bought in 2020.
Mr. Lee paid $ 24,000 for the 2010 model, approximately five times so the car would have been included in the United States. Why the marking?
Singapore, a city-state of the island that is smaller than New York City, charges drivers thousands of dollars only for the right to buy a vehicle. Permits prices, which were introduced in 1990 to limit pollution and congestion, are established in an auction carried out twice a month. Permits for more powerful vehicles tend to be more expensive.
The price that Mr. Lee paid for his car, including permission, was on the cheapest side. Some drivers pay so many $ 84,000 for the 10 -year document, known as the Law certificate.
“Be of people who treat their vehicles better than their family because it costs more to maintain a car than a family sometimes,” Lee said. (His own family lent him money for Kia).
There are few reasons for many Singapureans to have a car. Most residents trust a public and affordable public transport system that extends to the island. Even the long trips cost less than 2.50 dollars from Singapore, or around $ 2, and transport platforms are abundant.
Even so, twice a month, candidates for car owners and distributors offer for a fixed number of permits determined by the Singapore authorities.
The country’s decades campaign to limit the ownership of the car has worked: there are about 11 passenger vehicles per 100 people there, well below more than 80 cars and trucks in the United States and approximately 75 for similar vehicles in Italy.
Singapore is not the first to tax cars as part of the efforts to address pollution and traffic. In 1989, Mexico City began regulating how many cars they circulate daily. London and Stockholm later introduced congestion prices. New York City continued this year, becoming the first in the United States to do so.
But none of those cities charge both drivers to have a car.
The most expensive permit in Singapore increased approximately 18 percent to more than $ 84,000 in March from the previous year. But the growing costs do not seem to have dissuaded sales. The Government raised $ 4.86 billion of permits sales in fiscal year 2024, almost 40 percent more than it had estimated.
For the richest residents of Singapore, who is home to a growing number of billionaires, disbursement tens of thousands of dollars for a car permit is not a big problem.
Su-Sanne Ching, which runs an import-export business, bought a Mercedes-Benz sedan to lead to herself and her parents. The permit cost you $ 60,000, increasing the general price to approximately $ 150,000. (A similar model in the United States would have cost its $ 48,450).
“I’m paying the price for convenience,” he said.
But for the middle class, especially for those who have children, the growing cost of permission forces a difficult choice.
Joy Fang and her husband bought an Avante Hyundai used in 2022 for $ 58,000, including permission, to transport their two children to school and nursery. The price of the car, almost twice the pre-permit price of a new model of that sedan, pauses it.
“It is definitely worth it when you weigh the cost against the frequency with which we really use it,” he said. Each month, the couple pays around $ 1,400, or more than 10 percent of their home budget, for the car, permit and other expenses such as road taxes, fuel and parking. To compensate for the cost, they reduced to eat and travel.
But the idea of ​​juggling with a stroller, two children and a variety of bags in public transport are made by Blanch.
“Honestly, I feel that we are trapped in a link,” he said.
Confronted with the alternative to become more Yakarta or Bangkok, other cities of Southeast Asia that regularly drown with traffic, Singapurenses prefer quieter roads, said Chua Beng Huat, a professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.
“We are not sitting in traffic for two or three hours just to go to work,” he said. Having an efficient public transport system also facilitates Singapurenses not to use a car, and he takes it when he needs to go to the center.
But he still has a SUV byd he uses to take his grandchildren in the city.
For other car owners, mathematics sometimes become too difficult to justify. Mr. Lee, the insurance agent, sold his Kia three years after he bought it. The maintenance, parking and fuel costs accumulated, and was not convinced that it had translated into more businesses.
These days, Mr. Lee mainly takes public transport. If you need to meet a client, borrow the Nissan Qashqai of her father.
“I had other priorities and I didn’t see that the car was the top of the list,” he said.
