Despite the misgivings and “bad driver” status of a red plate (off-peak) car in Singapore, for those who are shrewd and willing to spend time (and some money) on the conversion, doing a scheme conversion from your normal car to an off-peak one can net you huge benefits and cash savings as well. Want to learn more? Read on!
Why Convert?
Good question. For me, it’s a lifestyle alignment decision. I hardly drive to work, as my office is 5km away from home. The only time I need to drive to work is when I go for my gym sessions on Wednesdays, and the bulk of my driving is either after work, or on the weekends whole day. Thus I am compelled to do the conversion.
My feelings about “hurting” or damaging the car with the hole-cutting for the red plate seal is regrettable, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Get over the emotional hump, and you will “free your mind”, as quoted by Morpheus.
Busting Myths
I get a varied response when I tell others that I am planning to convert my car scheme, and some of them are entirely nonsensical, so here’s some of the myths/rumors that I have been told/advised:
- “Converting normal car to ROPC car not worth if it’s less than 5 years left” – Partially true. This is because of the maximum amount of rebate you get ($22k). You will only get $22k if you convert a car from the normal scheme to OPC scheme from between 6 months to 1 year from the start of the COE date.
- “ROPC car very troublesome, need to buy the day license. If forget to buy, how?” – False. Everything is online nowadays, and even more so thanks to COVID-19 (I still have gripes with LTA’s online services, but that’s another story for another post). You can buy an electronic day license (aka “e-day” license) online for an OPC car, without logging in – all you need is the car owner’s last 4 characters of his/her NRIC. Payment can be done by PayNow or credit/debit card. Forgot to buy after you drove out? You have 24 hours to buy the e-day license, until 2359 hours the next day (aka “T+1 settlement” in stock market lingo). If you REALLY forgot about it, you need to declare usage with LTA within 5 days of use (aka T+5 days), and pay a $30 fee.
Doing Math Homework
Of course, the math needs to check out if you are doing a conversion. Luckily, LTA provides a service called “Enquire Weekend Car/Off-Peak Car Conversion Fee” where you can get an estimate on how much cash you’ll receive if you convert your normal car to an ROPC car. Typically for a bread and butter car, here’s how much you will save (based on my COE category A car’s numbers):
- Road Tax – I save about $500 annually
- COE Rebate – LTA will credit me $1,100 every 6 months my car is under the ROPC scheme, with a minimum of 6 months
Given the ~$2,700 a year I am saving, that works out to ~$56.25 saved per week. This means that if I don’t drive > 2 to 3 times a week on weekdays, I will save more money if I convert my car to the ROPC scheme. However, there are other more obvious costs to factor in, such as season parking, ERP, and petrol as well. Here’s my numbers:
- Season Parking at office – $80/month. Usually for office workers parking at the office is covered by your company, but mine doesn’t, as it is an SME, and I pay directly to the MCST of my office building.
- Petrol – $21/month. This is calculated based on the current price of RON 95 petrol is $2.75 (rounded to nearest 5 cents), and since my car is a hybrid car, my mileage is about 21 km/l based on my driving pattern.
- ERP – $0/month, since I don’t pass through any ERP gantry, given my office is so close to home.
All in all, there is a net reduction of car maintenance costs a month, assuming that my lifestyle doesn’t change much for the next 4 years that my car is still “entitled” to be in Singapore. All things being unchanged, ceteris paribus, looking at the long-term, I stand to save a lot of money, and that is good enough for me to do the conversion.
At this point in time, some of you dear readers might say things like “Oh, cannot afford ~$60 a week in expenses for your car? Don’t bother converting, don’t even buy a car!”. My short answer would be “your lifestyle is your lifestyle, my lifestyle is my lifestyle”. My long answer would be “to support Singapore’s car-lite initiative, save money, and optimize usage of the car, conversion to OPC is necessary, and the long-term effect is that I save more money than you, with minimal changes in my lifestyle”. Therefore, it is imperative to monitor, track and (most importantly) control expenditure and the running costs of car ownership in Singapore. If you think $60 a week is affordable to you, what about $60 x 52 weeks = $3,120 a year?. That’s the price that people who own cars on the normal scheme are willing to pay to maintain their quality of life. The question is now about who’s the real miser now – one who saves on operating costs of a car, and splurges on expensive dinners occasionally, or one who eats cheap food almost every day and foolishly affords $60 a week on car expenses? I’ll let you decide. Most importantly, I would like to highlight that the ROPC scheme is not for everyone. It may or may not suit your lifestyle, and dissuading someone to convert to ROPC despite the facts and figures presented is being disingenuous.
Still interested? It’s time to…
Show Me The Money
Now that a decision has been made, I need to set aside some money for the conversion process, which is broken down into these amounts:
- Car insurance – typically $0 as there is no need to buy a new insurance policy starting on the day of the conversion, if you are doing it 100% online with your SingPass login.
- Red car license plates – about $100
- Workshop labor, welding, license plate pinning and parts – about $160
- Vehicle inspection, sealing pins purchase & sealing service – about $35
- LTA conversion fee and road tax – about $250 as you’re paying $100 to LTA for the conversion, and about $150 as road tax for the next 1 year. Do note that the conversion is immediate, so best to avoid doing the conversion in the evening/night.
This works out to about $1500 for myself, being a “new” driver (“new” because I drove rental cars before owning one)
My ROPC Conversion Experience
So my experience was pretty smooth – typically most people would choose a Saturday to do it, but I did it on a Friday instead (and I paid for the e-Day license on the day itself too!) since I was on “WFH”, and I didn’t want to take the risk of running into a problem with the workshop/inspection centre being open for half a day on Saturday. My timeline of the conversion process is laid out as below:
- D-5: Placed an order for the red plates to be collected 2 days later, and got a recommendation from the signcraft shop for a certain Workshop Guy (let’s call him WG) to do the welding and pinning (more details about WG on D-Day)
- D-4: Logged in to the web portal of my current insurer and submitted a request to cancel the insurance on D-Day. Bought a new car insurance policy online from another insurer which takes effect on D-Day, since my current insurer doesn’t refund/rebate me a portion of the premium when I do the conversion, and also just in case the LTA website goes offline or has errors. So I saved even more money by changing to a new insurer – about 20% of the premiums I paid to my previous insurer will be refunded to me!
- D-3: Collected the red plates and arranged for an appointment with WG to do the welding and pinning on Friday.
- D-Day: Did the ROPC conversion in the morning, and paid the $20 e-Day license for the day. Drive down to WG’s workshop to do the plate pinning and welding. Turns out that WG’s service is “all-in-one”, and he will valet my car to the inspection centre for me! This is why the cost turned out to be a bit higher, but I am OK with it since I have a busy “real job”, and needed that 1 to 2 hours’ time to actually do some work (note that my “real job” is a software engineer, and not actually a delivery driver). The only problem was finding a quiet cafe/kopitiam/food court to work at, since typically light industrial areas don’t really have much of a conducive environment to do “office work”. I somehow managed to find a cafe nestled among the car workshops as a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of industrial activity.
Thus my little adventure was over, complete with the return of my car, old car license plates, and a “seal of approval” letter from the inspection centre.
Closing Notes
I found that the most interesting part of the process was the “all-in-one” OPC car valet service, as I feel that it could be improved to be a “to-your-doorstep” service, with higher fees of course. Not efficient in terms of car turnover rate, but it makes up for that shortfall with higher fees. I would definitely use the “to-your-doorstep” service, as I don’t want to waste my time driving to the workshop, and then hunting for a place to wait for 1 to 2 hours, but what’s done is done. Perhaps some enterprising hustlers can run this service on Carousell?