13/02/2026
Cars will be even more expensive now.
It’s not only the buying price that matters. Depreciation affects the selling price. By reducing the parf rebate significantly , it means cars, especially expensive cars with high ARFs, will depreciate rapidly, with almost zero value after 10 years.
This means one needs to be rich enough to not care about re-sale values.
This is indeed the intention of the government as it wants a car lite society.
However , a car lite society just means that it will be wealthy people who own the few private cars.
The rich-poor gap will become even more obvious and resentment will grow.
There will be a lot of unhappiness as the only the rich have access to what is a common consumption good in other countries.
The alternative is to let everyone have cars and for everyone to sit equally in traffic jams. Rich or poor. Specific lanes could be reserved for buses, ambulances and other special vehicles.
What is more likely to solve this conundrum is autonomous vehicles. Everyone gets on and off these robot cars when they need so nobody actually needs a car. Private cars will be rare. But even then the rich will probably have their own autonomous cars , unless private ownership is banned.
For now , the higher depreciation of cars will put cars out of reach of even more people.
Except for cheap Chinese EVs with low ARFs and are already depreciating to zero now anyway.
Be prepared for the roads to be full of mediocre PRC EVs like BYDs , Zeekrs etc.
Ref: Calvin cheng
