AAA Your Driving Costs: The Complete Data Reference
AAA puts the average cost of owning and operating a new vehicle at $11,577 per year, or $965 a month, at 15,000 miles per year. That works out to 0.7718 per mile. Depreciation is the single largest line at $4,334 per year — more than fuel and maintenance combined. Source: AAA Your Driving Costs 2025.
What AAA measures, and what it does not
AAA’s Your Driving Costs study models a new vehicle bought and held for five years, driven 15,000 miles a year, and financed with a five-year loan and 20% down. The figures are national averages built from manufacturer data, insurance quotes across all states, and fuel prices over the study period. They are not a quote for your car in your ZIP code — they are the benchmark everything else gets measured against.
The study splits cost into two groups. Ownership costs accrue whether you drive or not: depreciation, insurance, finance charges, and licence, registration and taxes. Operating costs scale with distance: fuel and maintenance. That distinction matters because it tells you which costs a shorter commute actually reduces.
The 2025 national average, component by component
| Cost component | Annual | Group |
|---|---|---|
| Depreciation | $4,334 | Ownership |
| Insurance (full coverage) | $1,694 | Ownership |
| Finance charges | $1,131 | Ownership |
| Licence, registration, taxes | $813 | Ownership |
| Ownership subtotal | $7,973 | — |
| Fuel | $1,950 | Operating |
| Maintenance, repair, tyres | $1,656 | Operating |
| Operating subtotal | $3,605 | — |
| Total, all-in | $11,577 | — |
AAA Your Driving Costs 2025, 15,000 miles per year. Founder-eye-verified 3 July 2026.
Add the six components and you get $11,578. AAA publishes $11,577. The $1 gap is rounding — AAA rounds each component to the nearest dollar, so the parts do not reconcile exactly to the published total. We publish both figures rather than silently adjusting one to match the other.
Why AAA Shows Depreciation as the Largest Cost of Owning a New Car
Depreciation is $4,334 a year in AAA’s 2025 study — — of the $11,577 total, and larger than fuel ($1,950) and maintenance ($1,656) added together.
It ranks first for a structural reason. A new vehicle loses the steepest share of its value in the earliest years of ownership, and AAA’s model covers exactly that window — a new car bought and held for five years. Fuel and maintenance accumulate gradually; depreciation front-loads.
The reason drivers underestimate it is that it never arrives as a bill. Insurance is invoiced, fuel is paid at the pump, maintenance comes with a receipt. Depreciation is only realised at resale or trade-in, by which point it is the largest sum in the whole ownership period and nothing can be done about it.
| Cost | Annual | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Depreciation | $4,334 | — |
| Fuel | $1,950 | — |
| Insurance | $1,694 | — |
| Maintenance, repair, tyres | $1,656 | — |
| Finance charges | $1,131 | — |
| Licence, registration, taxes | $813 | — |
Shares computed from AAA Your Driving Costs 2025 components. Founder-eye-verified 3 July 2026.
Depreciation also carries the widest spread between vehicle categories. It runs $2,629 a year on a small sedan and $6,041 on a half-ton pickup — a spread of —. Choosing the category is a bigger lever on depreciation than anything you do after purchase.
Buying used shifts this maths, because the first owner absorbs the steepest part of the curve. AAA’s study models new vehicles only, so it cannot answer the used question directly — our new vs used total cost analysis covers that comparison with its own sourced figures.
Cost by vehicle category
The national average hides a — spread between the cheapest and most expensive categories. A small sedan and a half-ton pickup are not the same purchase.
| Vehicle category | Annual cost | vs national average |
|---|---|---|
| Small sedan | $8,380 | — |
| Hybrid (average) | $9,591 | — |
| Subcompact SUV | $9,917 | — |
| Medium sedan | $9,956 | — |
| Compact SUV (FWD) | $10,279 | — |
| Electric (average) | $10,682 | — |
| Midsize pickup | $11,867 | — |
| Medium SUV (4WD) | $12,584 | — |
| Half-ton pickup | $14,781 | — |
AAA Your Driving Costs 2025, 15,000 miles per year. Founder-eye-verified 3 July 2026.
Look Up Any Figure in the Study
Pick a vehicle category and a mileage tier to read AAA’s published figure for it, with the source line attached. Nothing here is modelled or estimated — the tool reads the same sealed constants the tables above are built from.
AAA Figure Lookup
Reads the sealed AAA Your Driving Costs dataset directly
How annual mileage changes the number
Fixed ownership costs get spread across more miles as you drive further, so the per-mile figure falls even as the annual total rises. This is the part most cost-of-ownership coverage leaves out.
| Annual mileage | Annual total | Cost per mile |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 miles | $9,995 | $0.9995 |
| 15,000 miles (study baseline) | $11,577 | $0.7718 |
| 20,000 miles | $13,220 | $0.661 |
AAA Your Driving Costs 2025. Founder-eye-verified 3 July 2026.
Driving 10,000 miles instead of 15,000 lowers the annual total by —, but raises your cost per mile from $0.7718 to $0.9995. The fixed costs do not go away; they just have fewer miles to spread across.
Where this data comes from
Issuer: AAA (American Automobile Association) — Your Driving Costs 2025
Canonical source: newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/
Study period: 12 months ending May 2025. Current edition; AAA publishes annually around September.
Receipt (26 of the 27 figures above): aaa-ydc-2025-brochure-readable-2026-06-14.pdf — SHA-256 95a73f7deb85026a541d67dc5203c60970af0888c039e0a28fde56028ad54f32
Receipt (fuel figure): aaa-ydc-2025-factsheet-newsroom-2026-06-14.pdf — SHA-256 0898752e7381b87f4f93389bc31f408acff29a50e912bbf077dd54945eabf265
Verification: every figure above was read directly from the source PDF and checked by the site’s founder on 3 July 2026 — national-average table, mileage-tier blocks, all nine vehicle-category columns, and the powertrain comparison. No figure on this page is transcribed from another website’s summary. Comparison figures (differences, spreads and shares of total) are computed in your browser from those same sealed values — none are typed in by hand.
We publish this because the numbers in circulation do not agree. Search for the five-year cost of a common sedan and you will find figures $15,000 apart across four established automotive sites, none of which show where their number came from. The point of this page is not that our figure is different — it is AAA’s figure, unchanged. The point is that you can check it.
Frequently asked questions
AAA’s Your Driving Costs 2025 study puts it at $11,577 per year for a new vehicle driven 15,000 miles annually — $965 a month, or 0.7718 per mile. That covers depreciation, insurance, finance charges, licence and registration, fuel, and maintenance.
Depreciation, at $4,334 per year — roughly — of the total, and more than fuel ($1,950) and maintenance ($1,656) combined. It is also the cost drivers think about least, because it never appears as a bill.
A small sedan, at $8,380 per year. The most expensive is a half-ton pickup at $14,781 — a gap of $6,401 a year, or about $32,000 over five years.
Yes. The 2025 edition covers the 12 months ending May 2025 and is the most recent published. AAA releases the study annually, typically around September. This page is refreshed in place when the next edition is published — the figures update, the URL does not.
About the Author — Ashvin J. Sonani
Founder & Lead Researcher at Cars.Zone. Digital marketer, data analyst and domain investor with 28+ years of internet experience, now focused on US automotive cost intelligence. Cars.Zone analyses are built from primary industry sources (AAA, Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, iSeeCars, Experian) for core cost data, with select supporting figures sourced from industry aggregators including Bankrate — each figure attributed to its named source and cross-verified before publication. No manufacturer or dealer relationships influence editorial content.