Analysis updated April 16, 2026
Most car-buying advice focuses on sticker price or monthly payment. Neither answers the question that matters: how much does each mile of transportation actually cost?
IAVTA uses a metric called Cost Per Mile Remaining (CPMR). It takes every ownership cost, including purchase price, financing, insurance, fuel, maintenance, repairs, and state fees, adds them up, and divides by the vehicle's estimated remaining lifetime miles. The result is a single number in dollars per mile.
A $15,000 car with 50,000 miles left might cost more per mile than a $30,000 car with 150,000 miles left, once insurance, fuel, and repair costs enter the picture. CPMR captures that tradeoff. It treats a car as what it is: a machine that converts money into miles.
This kind of comparison has not been available to consumers before. Dealerships show monthly payments. Review sites show sticker prices. Five-year cost-of-ownership calculators come closer, but they ignore what happens after year five. CPMR accounts for the full remaining life of the vehicle, which makes it especially useful for comparing vehicles across different ages, price ranges, and body styles.
Purchase price from millions of real vehicle transactions. Financing at current rates from FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) with 10% down. Insurance projected over remaining life from new-car annual premiums and age-based decay curves. Fuel from EPA fuel economy and current national gas prices. Maintenance and repairs from industry service data, scaled by vehicle age. State fees using population-weighted national averages for taxes, registration, and inspection.
Look up any vehicle to see its full cost breakdown
The chart below shows the median CPMR across over 1,100 vehicles in the dataset, analyzed at the trim level by model year across over 36,000 individual trim-year entries. Data is collected for each for millions of individual vehicle listings and transactions. Lower means cheaper per mile of remaining life.
The conventional wisdom goes something like this: buying new is always a bad deal, five years old is the sweet spot, and the cheapest option is to buy the oldest car that still runs. The data tells a different story.
The trend line drops steeply from the oldest model years (2006-2010), where high mileage, rising repair costs, and short remaining life push CPMR above $0.60/mi. It bottoms out around 2015-2016 near $0.46/mi, then barely rises through the newest model years. A brand-new 2025 vehicle, at $0.56/mi, costs only about 20% more per mile than the cheapest year on the chart.
That small gap surprises most people. The reason: new cars have their full lifetime of miles ahead of them, which spreads the higher purchase price across 200,000+ miles. They also carry lower insurance rates for the first few years, need fewer repairs, and come with manufacturer warranties. Financing rates for new cars run lower than used-car rates. All of these factors compress the gap between new and lightly used.
Across all vehicles with enough data to compare, the median "best year to buy" is only — years old. And — of vehicles have a brand-new CPMR within 10% of their absolute cheapest year. The "never buy new" rule costs more than it saves for nearly half of all vehicles on the road.
The most important takeaway from this chart is the flat section. From roughly 2013 to 2024, the median CPMR barely moves. A 12-year-old car and a 2-year-old car cost about the same per mile of remaining life. The real penalty shows up at the extremes: cars older than 15 years, where repair costs and short remaining life dominate, and the very newest models, where the purchase price has not yet had time to depreciate.
The rest of this analysis breaks down these trends by vehicle type. The shape of the curve changes significantly from category to category.
The SUV category covers — non-luxury sport utility vehicles, from compact crossovers like the Honda CR-V to full-size trucks like the Chevrolet Tahoe.
The SUV curve follows the general pattern but flattens earlier. CPMR drops from $0.75/mi in 2006 to around $0.38/mi by 2016, then stays remarkably flat through the newest model years. A 2026 SUV at $0.44/mi costs only about 15% more per mile than the cheapest year on the chart.
Compact crossovers drive this flat section. Models like the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Hyundai Tucson have low purchase prices, good fuel economy, and long expected lifetimes. Their CPMR stays nearly constant whether bought new or a few years used, because the purchase price drops roughly in proportion to the miles consumed.
Full-size SUVs behave differently. The Chevrolet Tahoe, Ford Expedition, and Toyota Sequoia carry higher purchase prices, burn more fuel, and cost more to insure. Their curves tend to show a more pronounced dip in the 5-8 year range, where depreciation has done more work but the vehicle still has substantial life remaining.
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Even within the SUV category, individual models can look very different. The chart below overlays a few examples.
The — sedans in the dataset form the cheapest vehicle category overall.
Sedans show the flattest curve of any category. From 2013 to 2025, the median CPMR stays between $0.30 and $0.35/mi, a range of about $0.05. A 2024 sedan costs $0.33/mi. A 2015 sedan costs $0.31/mi. The difference is two cents per mile.
This flatness reflects a simple fact: sedans are inexpensive to buy, fuel, insure, and repair. A new Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic starts under $25,000, gets 30+ MPG, and routinely lasts 200,000+ miles. Even at the new-car price, spreading those costs across that many miles produces a low CPMR. Once the car is a few years old, the purchase price drops, but the remaining-mile denominator drops too. The ratio stays nearly the same.
The oldest sedans (2006-2010) show higher CPMR not because they cost more to buy, but because repair costs climb, insurance per remaining mile increases, and the denominator shrinks. A $5,000 sedan with only 30,000 miles of life left absorbs its costs across far fewer miles than a $22,000 sedan with 200,000 miles ahead of it.
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The — pickup trucks in the dataset include everything from compact trucks to heavy-duty 3500-class workhorses.
Pickups cost more per mile than any other non-luxury category. The median bottoms out around $0.57/mi in 2022, roughly 70% higher than the sedan floor. Older model years above $1.00/mi are not unusual, especially for heavy-duty trucks.
The curve shows more volatility than sedans or SUVs, particularly in the older years. This reflects the heavy-duty/light-duty split. A Ford F-150 at the half-ton level behaves differently from a Ford F-350 Super Duty. The 2500 and 3500 class trucks carry 2-3x the CPMR of their 1500-class counterparts. They cost more to buy, more to fuel, more to insure, and more to repair. Their lifetime mileage is similar, so the higher costs flow directly into higher CPMR.
For light-duty pickups, the story is more encouraging. Models like the Toyota Tacoma, Ford Maverick, and Hyundai Santa Cruz achieve CPMRs in the $0.36-$0.42/mi range, comparable to mid-range SUVs. The Maverick and Santa Cruz are relatively new entrants, and their strong CPMR numbers come partly from good fuel economy (both offer hybrid powertrains) and moderate purchase prices.
The only luxury pickup in the dataset is the Lincoln Mark LT, a short-lived premium version of the Ford F-150. With limited production years and premium pricing, it sits well above the non-luxury truck averages.
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The — luxury SUVs in the dataset span from near-luxury crossovers to six-figure flagships.
Luxury SUVs show a steep drop from 2006 ($1.16/mi) to about 2014 ($0.54/mi), then level off between $0.55 and $0.67/mi through the newest model years. The floor is higher than non-luxury SUVs ($0.54 vs $0.38), and the curve at recent model years tilts upward more noticeably.
The upward tilt in recent years reflects higher new-car prices. A new luxury SUV commonly starts at $45,000-$65,000, compared to $28,000-$40,000 for a non-luxury equivalent. That extra $15,000-$25,000 in purchase price spreads across the same number of miles, pushing CPMR up. Insurance costs scale with vehicle value, which adds another layer.
A subset of luxury SUVs blurs the line with non-luxury pricing. The Acura RDX ($0.42/mi), Lexus UX ($0.40/mi), and Acura MDX Sport Hybrid ($0.40/mi) all achieve CPMRs comparable to mainstream SUVs. These vehicles combine moderate pricing, good reliability (and therefore longer lifetimes), and reasonable fuel economy. At the other end, the Rolls-Royce Cullinan at $3.13/mi and Lamborghini Urus at $2.29/mi show what happens when $300,000+ purchase prices meet high insurance and maintenance costs.
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The — luxury sedans in the dataset cover the widest CPMR spread of any category.
The median luxury sedan curve drops from $0.85/mi in 2006 to about $0.54/mi around 2014-2015, then gradually climbs back toward $0.70/mi for the newest model years. The trend carries a steeper recent-year uptick than other categories, reflecting rising prices at the premium end of the market.
The spread within this category is enormous. At the low end, the Acura ILX ($0.32/mi) and Acura Integra ($0.38/mi) cost less per mile than many non-luxury sedans. They achieve this through moderate pricing, reliable drivetrains, and long expected lifetimes. At the high end, the Maybach 62 at $7.05/mi and Rolls-Royce Phantom at $5.50/mi carry CPMRs 20x higher than the cheapest luxury sedan. Purchase prices exceeding $200,000, combined with expensive insurance and specialized maintenance, produce these figures.
Mid-range luxury sedans land between these extremes. A BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, or Lexus IS typically runs $0.50-$0.65/mi. The European brands tend to run slightly higher than the Japanese luxury brands, primarily because of higher repair and maintenance costs after the warranty period ends.
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The — pure battery-electric vehicles in the dataset make up — of all vehicles tracked.
Long-term reliability and longevity data for battery-electric vehicles is still limited. Most BEVs on the market have fewer than 10 years of real-world ownership history, and battery degradation patterns are not yet well understood at high mileages. CPMR calculations for BEVs rely on brand-level lifetime mileage estimates calibrated primarily from gasoline vehicles, which may overstate or understate actual BEV lifespans. The older model years on this chart have small sample sizes and represent very different technology than today's vehicles.
The BEV curve starts at $0.60/mi in 2010 — the earliest year with enough data — then drops sharply to $0.30/mi by 2014, driven by early, inexpensive models like the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Kia Soul EV that cost almost nothing to fuel. From 2014 through 2019, the median hovers between $0.30 and $0.38/mi, often undercutting the all-vehicle average.
Starting around 2020, the curve reverses and climbs steeply: $0.43/mi in 2020, $0.50/mi by 2022, $0.54/mi in 2024, and $0.77/mi for 2026. This reflects the flood of new, higher-priced BEVs entering the market — vehicles like the Rivian R1S, BMW iX, and Mercedes EQE SUV — whose sticker prices have not yet depreciated. As these vehicles age, their CPMRs will likely compress downward, following the same pattern as every other category.
The most important caveat: CPMR assumes each vehicle will reach its estimated lifetime mileage. For gasoline vehicles with decades of data, those estimates are well-calibrated. For BEVs, they are educated guesses. Battery replacement costs, degradation curves, and long-term reliability remain open questions that could shift these numbers significantly in either direction. Treat the BEV chart as a snapshot of current economics, not a settled conclusion.
The — hybrid vehicles in the dataset (traditional hybrids and plug-in hybrids) make up — of all vehicles tracked.
Hybrids tell a consistently strong value story. The curve drops from $0.85/mi in 2006 to $0.41/mi by 2015, then holds remarkably flat: it stays between $0.41 and $0.52/mi through every year from 2015 to 2026. That flatness rivals sedans for the most consistent value across model years.
The reason is straightforward: hybrids combine moderate purchase prices with low fuel costs. A Toyota Prius or Honda Insight achieves 50+ MPG, which cuts fuel cost per mile roughly in half compared to a conventional sedan. Plug-in hybrids like the Ford Fusion Energi and Kia Niro Plug-in Hybrid reduce fuel costs even further by running on electricity for short trips. These savings compound over the vehicle's lifetime and show up directly in a lower CPMR.
Hybrids also benefit from strong reliability track records, particularly among Toyota and Honda models. Longer expected lifetimes mean more miles in the denominator, which pushes CPMR down. The Honda CR-Z ($0.23/mi) and Toyota Prius c ($0.24/mi) are among the cheapest vehicles to own per mile in the entire dataset, regardless of category.
The same data quality caveat applies to plug-in hybrids as to BEVs: battery longevity at high mileages is not yet well-established, though the smaller battery packs in PHEVs face less stress than full BEV packs.
This analysis covers — vehicle models with data from model years 2006 through 2026. Charts show two lines per category: the least expensive trim (best-case cost per mile) and the most expensive trim (worst-case) for each model at each age. Category medians represent the midpoint across all vehicles in that group. Use the controls above the first chart to toggle cost components, switch between dealer and private pricing, or override the expected vehicle lifetime.
CPMR calculations include purchase price, financing at current rates from FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis), insurance projected over remaining life, fuel at current national prices, maintenance and repair costs scaled by vehicle age, and population-weighted national average state fees. Years with fewer than three vehicles in a category are excluded from the trend line.
Every vehicle in this analysis has its own detailed page on IAVTA. Click any vehicle name to see its full cost breakdown, individual trim comparisons, and interactive chart.
Want to see the numbers for a specific vehicle?
Every vehicle in the dataset has a full cost breakdown, trim comparison, and interactive chart.