Replacement cycles seem to be at the top of fleets’ agendas at the moment with some firms pushing new car orders out to as much as six years.

At Fleet News, we now benchmark on four years/80,000 miles rather than three years/60,000 miles, so I wanted to see whether it made our Volvo V50 1.6 DRIVe SE any more cost effective.

The Fleet News running cost database – available at www.fleetnews.co.uk/running-costs – had the answer in seconds.

Over three years, our frugal fuel user costs 35.2 pence per mile, but extending for a year brings this down to 33.35ppm, which includes about £1,400 of extra depreciation over the additional 20,000 miles.

Including fuel, SMR and the extra depreciation, the additional year will cost £5,560 for the V50 to stay on the fleet for a bit longer.

But it certainly won’t be outstaying its welcome, as the financial benefits of this model compared to a standard 1.6-litre V50 keep piling up.

There is £35 VED instead of £120 for the non-DRIVe, a strong residual value prediction and predicted fuel economy is 62.8mpg against 56.5mpg.

However, in the first 2,000 miles I have achieved a maximum of 53mpg. It is up from 51mpg in the last test, but unless I improve over the 80,000-mile life of the car, it could mean an extra 235 gallons of fuel, or £1,100 more than budgeted using its official mpg figure.

This isn’t the first car to fall short of its official predicted fuel economy, but I feel duty bound to try to get close to the official figure, both for the planet and my pocket.

The V50 is winning friends in the fleet market.

David Graham, who runs the E.ON fleet, has seen several V50s delivered to drivers. He said: “Drivers are concerned about their carbon footprint and they will seek to get into environmentally-friendly products.”