This projects showcases a simple car affordability calculator written in python which compares the monthly ownership cost of two cars. The following factors are considered:
- fuel: local gas price, typical miles driven, fuel economy
- maintenance: 1-5 year expenses, 6-10 year expenses
- loan: down payment, interest rate / credit score, term length
Purpose: The purpose of this project was to practice coding in Python (creating a simple terminal app, reading from a csv, calling a public api with requests library.)
Many assumptions were made about the details required to calculate cost. Check out the design doc for more details.
This project uses poetry to manage dependencies.
poetry installVisual Studio Code
Select the python interpreter (it should be ./.venv/bin/python)
Terminal
Activate the environment. Run poetry shell while in the root of the repository.
The calculator will ask for a few details. To provide details about the car to the calculator, we take advantage of the API provided by https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ws/. Given a vehicle ID, we can obtain information about the make, model and combined highway and city fuel efficiency (or equiavlent for electric vehicle). To find the vehicle ID of a specific vehicle navigate to https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.shtml and search for a specific vehicle. Note the vehicle ID in the url.
poetry run python app.py############################################
Welcome to the Car Affordability Calculator!
############################################
Overview: This calculator allows you to compare the monthly expected costs of
two vehicles. two vehicles. Vehicle data is pulled from FuelEconomy.gov and
maintenance costs are pulled from a local database.
Select a car on https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.shtml and look at the
URL to find the car id.
###################
Vehicle Information
###################
Vehicle 1 information
-----------------------
Enter car ID (default: Nissan Leaf 46973): 46337
Enter price (default: $30000): 35610
Vehicle 2 information
-----------------------
Enter car ID (default: Nissan Leaf 46973): 46212
Enter price (default: $30000): 43990
################
User Information
################
Enter weekly miles (default: 192): 320
Enter gas price per gallon (default: 3.365):
Credit Score Range
1 . 300-500
2 . 501-600
3 . 601-660
4 . 661-780
5 . 781-850
Enter credit score (1-5): 5
################
Loan Information
################
Enter down payment (default: 0.0): 10000
Enter loan term in months (default: 60):
##############
Recommendation
##############
Vehicle Details
+---------+--------------+------------------------------+
| Details | FORD Mustang | TESLA Model Y Long Range AWD |
+---------+--------------+------------------------------+
| MPG | 25.0 | 122.0 |
| Price | 35610.0 | 43990.0 |
+---------+--------------+------------------------------+
User Data
+----------------+---------+
| User Data | Value |
+----------------+---------+
| Weekly Miles | 320.0 |
| Loal Gas Price | 3.365 |
| Credit Score | 781-850 |
| Down Payment | 10000.0 |
| Interest Rate | 4.75 |
+----------------+---------+
Monthly Costs
+---------------+--------------+------------------------------+
| Monthly Costs | FORD Mustang | TESLA Model Y Long Range AWD |
+---------------+--------------+------------------------------+
| Fuel | 172.29 | 35.3 |
| Loan Payment | 528.21 | 701.04 |
| Maintenance | 12.25 | 7.08 |
+---------------+--------------+------------------------------+
Recommendation: Purchase FORD Mustang for $35610.0
Explanation
-----------
1. Loan payment is lower for FORD Mustang
2. Overall monthly cost is lower for FORD Mustang
Credit to PragmatiCoders for ispiration for the problem. Check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PragmatiCoders to learn about Data Engineering.