Thanks in large part to affordable gasoline prices, the average annual cost to own a new car is the cheapest it’s been so far this decade, falling to $8,558 according to the 2016 Your Driving Costs study conducted by the AAA in Orlando, Florida. That comes out to 57 cents for each mile driven based on both variable expenditures (fuel, maintenance, repairs) and fixed costs (insurance, license and registration fees, taxes, depreciation, finance charges), based on driving 15,000 miles per year.
“American drivers can expect to save hundreds of dollars in fuel costs in 2016,” says John Nielsen, AAA’s managing director of automotive engineering and repair. “Fortunately, this annual savings more than offsets the moderate increases in maintenance, insurance, finance charges and other costs associated with owning and operating a vehicle.”
Owners of minivans and SUVs likewise watched their per-mile ownership costs drop over the past year and are now down to an annual average $9,262 and $10,225, respectively.
— Jim Gorzelany