Andre Lee bought a used Kia Forte to boost his career as an insurance agent in Singapore. In his mind, he saw himself zipping across town in his black coupe, impressing potential clients.
“It’s the same as being dressed in formal wear with leather shoes, or wearing a Rolex,” Mr. Lee, 33, said of the two-door car he bought in 2020.
Mr. Lee paid $24,000 for the 2010 model, about five times what the car would have been listed for in the United States. Why the markup?
Singapore, an island city-state that is smaller than New York City, charges drivers thousands of dollars just for the right to buy a vehicle. The price of the permits, which were introduced in 1990 to limit pollution and congestion, rises with a car’s value.
The price Mr. Lee paid for his car, including the permit, was on the cheaper side. Some drivers pay as much $84,000 for the 10-year document, known as a certificate of entitlement.
“I know of people who treat their vehicles better than their family because it costs more to maintain a car than a family sometimes,” Mr. Lee said. (His own family lent him money for the Kia.)
There is little reason for many Singaporeans to own a car. Most residents rely on an expanding and affordable public transportation system that stretches across the island. Even long journeys cost less than 2.50 Singapore dollars, or about $2, and ride-hailing platforms such as Grab are plentiful.
Still, twice a month, aspiring car-owners and dealers bid for a fixed number of permits determined by the Singaporean authorities.
The country’s decades-long campaign to limit car ownership has worked: There are about 11 passenger vehicles per 100 people there, well below an estimated 82 cars and trucks in the United States and 67 in Italy.
Singapore is not the first to tax cars as part of efforts to tackle pollution and traffic. In 1989, Mexico City started regulating how many cars circulate daily. London and Stockholm later introduced congestion pricing. New York City followed this year, becoming the first in the United States to do so.
But none of those cities charge drivers as much to own a car.
The most expensive permit in Singapore rose about 18 percent to more than $84,000 in March from a year earlier. But rising costs don’t appear to have deterred sales. The government raised $4.86 billion from permit sales in the 2024 fiscal year, almost 40 percent more than it had estimated.
For the wealthiest residents of Singapore, which is home to a rising number of billionaires, shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for a car permit is not a big deal.
Su-Sanne Ching, who runs an import-export business, bought a Mercedes-Benz sedan so she could drive herself and her parents around. The permit alone cost her $60,000, raising the overall price to about $150,000. (A similar model in the United States would have run her $48,450.)
“I am paying the price for convenience,” she said.
But for the middle class, especially those who have children, the rising cost of the permit forces a difficult choice.
Joy Fang and her husband bought a used Hyundai Avante in 2022 for $58,000, including the permit, to ferry their two children to school and day care. The price of the car — nearly twice the pre-permit price of a new model of that sedan — makes her pause.
“It’s definitely not worth it when you weigh the cost against how often we actually use it,” she said. Each month the couple pays about $1,400, or more than 10 percent of their household budget, for the car, the permit, and other expenses like road taxes, fuel and parking. To offset the cost, they cut back on eating out and traveling.
But the thought of juggling a stroller, two children and assorted bags on public transportation makes her blanch.
“Honestly, I feel like we’re caught in a bind,” she said.
Confronted with the alternative of becoming more like Jakarta or Bangkok, other Southeast Asian cities that are regularly choked with traffic, Singaporeans prefer quieter roads, said Chua Beng Huat, a professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.
“We’re not sitting in traffic for two or three hours just to get to work,” he said. Having an efficient public transport system also makes it easier for Singaporeans to not use a car, and he takes it himself when he needs to go downtown.
But he still has a BYD SUV that he uses to take his grandchildren around town.
For other car owners, the math sometimes gets too hard to justify. Mr. Lee, the insurance agent, sold his Kia three years after he bought it. The costs of maintenance, parking and fuel were piling up, and he wasn’t convinced that it had translated to more business.
These days, Mr. Lee mostly takes public transport. If he needs to meet a client, he borrows his father’s Nissan Qashqai.
“I had other priorities, and didn’t see the car being top of the list,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/world/asia/car-certificate-singapore-luxury.html
