~$100,000 every 10 years is expensive, but I think even in a lot of countries with good public transport, there would be a large number of people who would consider paying $1,000 a month to be able to have a car if that was the only way to have one. It seems to me as though a lot families share a car quite widely too.

Even in countries without an expensive on-road tax, people do often choose to pay more than $10,000 a year in depreciation cost, rather than the option of buying a car that has already gone through the early, rapid depreciation. People also choose to get a car loan, again increasing the cost. I'm fairly uninformed whether the interest on those is significant.

Of course, the COE is in addition to depreciation and maintenance, and those are both also expensive in Singapore. Plus people buy the cars through loans. And, excluding everything I've said above, the cars themselves are very expensive to buy!

As an example, a 2.0L e:HEV Honda Civic is US$195,000 including the COE, so approximately US$90,000 without it. Looking on the US Honda site, it looks like the same car is under US$33,000. There must some on-road taxes in the US, and difference in specs, but that's a big difference in price, in addition to the ~$100,000 COE.

Even knowing they're expensive, there's something I still can't get over, seeing a 6-figure price across the windscreen of a base model (and knowing you don't get to take off any zeros when doing a currency conversion to what you're used to).

I said I never needed a car there :) I can get anywhere by cab in like < 30 mins so I never saw the need to have one. However there are plenty of ultra rich people living there and also many driving luxury cars. It's also a status symbol there(Credit card/Condo/Car).

despite the convenience of a well-run public transport system and uber-like services, the ease and freedom of owning your own transport is still hard to beat, and evidently worth the ~75k dollar COE. it removes the walk from bus/subway stations under the tropical/sun, humidity; and the wait (typically 5-10min) of waiting for your uber/taxi driver to showup and enduring the uber car smell (often heavily scented for some reason and triggers my allergic reaction) and someone else's music. and once you have children a car is almost a must.

in addition to all the other responses, owning a car in Singapore is also a status symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Cs_of_Singapore

A lot of people get a car when they have kids as taking grab with a car seat can be unwieldy. Also, COE wasn’t always $100K, many people are still on legacy COE when it was $30-$50K

One part: the people running the taxis and Grab also need to bid for slots.

And if you have kids, being able to leave stuff in your car is pretty useful, so you might want to bid.

Though I guess the main reason is: Singapore is rich, so that drives up the bidding.

The utility of a car in singapore is very different from other places. Yes, a car will get you faster from point A to point B in singapore when compared to public transport. But you can get a private hire car or a taxi which is just as fast and is probably much more convenient.

For many people in Singapore, a car's real utility is to signal status. More often than not, this status gets you real-life benefits. Such as increased dating success.

The price is high because there is sustained demand.

Hah! No but seriously. For a variety of reasons, owning a car in Singapore is a step change in QoL.

Infrastructure reasons:

- abundant parking at destinations (e.g. malls), home (HDB flats, condominiums) due to fairly generous car park lot mandates. IIRC, HDBs, where 85% of Singaporeans live, have until fairly recently had a 1:1 unit:lot ratio. Similarly for condominiums. A lot of these are progressively being scaled down especially near train stations, but buildings and giant multi storey parking lots are fixed infrastructure that will be around for decades. Abundant parking will be available for decades still.

- roads are wide and well maintained and well connected.

The experience:

- because the number of cars on the road are controlled through the COE system, the experience of driving is good. We get slow traffic but it is extremely rare that we get the kind of multi-hour jams that other countries experience.

- the door-to-door experience saves tons of time. In public transport, I walk (7m), wait for the train (3m), sit on the train (36m), get out at the interchange and walk to another platform (2m), wait for the train (2m), sit on the train (12m), exit and walk to my destination (11m). Total time: 1h14m. In a car, I walk to my car (2m), drive to my destination (35m), walk from the car park to my destination (1m). Total time: 38m. x2 for the return trip, and the car saves you a whole hour a day.

- the public transport experience is not so good if you have a family or are disabled. Don't even mention cyclists, culturally we spit on them here.

The status: - it's true, the car is a status symbol. You don't know it until you get into conversations where driving a "mere BMW" as opposed to a mercedes is looked down on, or when someone mentions that driving a hatch is "not appropriate" (to station). Sedans are still popular here because they're "executive". Yes, these are all real conversation points I've been in.

Combine all of the above and owning a car in Singapore means you save tons of time, is technically "affordable" after loans, and you get to feel like you made it. So there's huge pressure to get a car. And once you're hooked, it is very difficult to give it up.

Then you have other reasons, like Taxis and Grab compete with individuals for the COE, and parents who "made it" in the boom years buying cars for their kids, and foreign money coming in. But I don't know how big these effects are.

it's easy to want one