car-tco
Compare the total cost of car ownership across buy-new, buy-used, lease, and keep-your-current-car — depreciation, insurance, maintenance ramp, and fuel over a real horizon, not just the monthly payment. Use when asked should I lease or buy a car, is it cheaper to keep my old car, what does this car really cost per month, or new vs used total cost. Produces the ranked scenario totals, per-month true cost, the assumption ledger, and the not-modeled list.
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill car-tco --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Car TCO Skill Cars are sold on monthly payments and owned on total cost — and the two rank options differently. Depreciation (the biggest cost of a new car) never appears on a statement; maintenance (the biggest fear about an old car) is usually smaller than a year of new-car depreciation. This skill compares buy-new, buy-used, lease-forever, and keep-current on the same total-cost basis over the same horizon. ## What This Skill Produces - **Ranked scenario totals** — every requested scenario over the same horizon, cheapest first - **True per-month cost** — total ÷ months, the number to compare against the payment the dealer quotes - **The assumption ledger** — depreciation curve, maintenance ramp, insurance deltas, all labeled - **The not-modeled list** — financing interest, jurisdiction taxes, reliability luck ## Required Inputs Ask for these if not provided: - **Which scenarios to compare** — any of: new price, used-equivalent price, lease terms, current car's value + annual maintenance - **Horizon** — years they realistically keep cars (default 8, labeled); short horizons flatter leasing, long ones flatter buying - **Miles per year** and rough fuel/energy cost (defaults 12,00
- What This Skill Produces
- Required Inputs
- Programmatic Helper
- Framework: The Payment Illusion Rules
- Output Format
- The Ranking
- Reading the Ranking
- What This Model Ignores
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
python3 scripts/car_tco.py --new-price 38000 --used-price 24000 --lease-month 420 --keep-value 9000 python3 scripts/car_tco.py --new-price 38000 --keep-value 9000 --keep-maint 1800 --horizon 6 --json
What does the car-tco skill do?
Compare the total cost of car ownership across buy-new, buy-used, lease, and keep-your-current-car — depreciation, insurance, maintenance ramp, and fuel over a real horizon, not just the monthly payment. Use when asked should I lease or buy a car, is it cheaper to keep my old car, what does this car really cost per month, or new vs used total cost. Produces the ranked scenario totals, per-month true cost, the assumption ledger, and the not-modeled list.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill car-tco --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills, a repository with 1,255 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.