Personal Contract Hire (PCH)

Hire purchase is a way of financing a new or used car and usually involves you putting down a deposit and then paying off the rest of the cost of the car in monthly instalments.

A black box is a small GPS unit in a car that sends information to your insurance company, so that you can potentially pay lower premiums. 

Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) is a way of financing the purchase of a car, with repayments covering the amount of money that the vehicle is expected to lose over the length of the agreement (usually three years).

Depreciation is the difference between the value of a car when you buy it and what it's worth when you come to sell it.

Benefit-in-kind (or BIK) is a tax on employees who receive perks from their job on top of their salary. So, if you have a company car that you also have for private use, you’ll have to pay a BIK tax contribution.

When petrol or diesel burns in an engine, carbon dioxide gas – also known as CO2 – is the result.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of satellites that sends information about time and location to a vehicle’s navigation system.

Telematics technology uses information from a vehicle’s on-board computer along with GPS data to record how and where a car is being driven – for example, how fast it is going, how harshly the accelerator or brakes are applied, etc.

Commonly known as road tax or car tax, Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) is the annual tax that the owner of a vehicle has to pay to the government for it to be used (or parked) on public roads.

The list price of a new car is the recommended retail price. It is what buyers pay before various charges are added on that then add up to the on-the-road (OTR) price.