Depreciation is the biggest line in what AAA says it costs to own a new vehicle, at $4,422 a year, and it outweighs fuel by a wide margin even with gasoline averaging $4.152 a gallon. Add insurance, financing, fees, maintenance and tires, and AAA’s 2026 annual driving-costs study lands on $12,863 a year for the average new vehicle, with half-ton pickups at the top of the range at $16,449.
The yearly average works out to about $1,072 a month, $35.24 a day or roughly 86 cents for every mile driven at 15,000 miles a year. The spread underneath it is where the household decisions get made.
Seven categories, from $9,259 to $16,449
AAA’s 2026 fact sheet says the estimate covers five years and 75,000 miles, built from proprietary methodology and data from sources including Vincentric. The study looks at 34 top-selling models across seven categories, with a sales-weighted average MSRP of $39,376. CarPro’s table of the AAA figures converts the per-mile costs to annual dollars at 15,000 miles.
A small sedan costs $9,259 a year (61.73 cents a mile) and a medium sedan $10,555. Subcompact SUVs run $10,752 and compact SUVs $11,670. Midsize pickups cost $13,089, medium SUVs $14,447, and the half-ton pickup tops the list at $16,449, which is $1.0966 for every mile. AAA puts the half-ton at about $1.10 a mile, 48 cents more than a small sedan, or roughly $7,191 more per year, which adds up to nearly $36,000 over five years of ownership. The small-sedan figure is the only one in the study under $10,000 a year.
Depreciation, insurance and fuel
The cost mix explains why the sticker price alone misleads. Beyond the $4,422 for depreciation, AAA’s fact sheet lists $2,098 for insurance, $1,184 in finance charges and $802 for license, registration and taxes. Fuel runs 17.3 cents a mile and maintenance, repairs and tires 11.7 cents a mile; at 15,000 miles that is roughly $4,356 combined.
Fuel is also where the study’s inputs moved most. Regular gasoline averaged $4.152 a gallon over the 12 months through May 2026, up 31.8 percent from the prior study, and home electricity for charging averaged 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, up 7.8 percent. Robert Sinclair, senior manager of public affairs at AAA Northeast, said in the AAA Northeast copy of the release that the new format lets consumers “more easily compare total ownership costs across powertrains.”
Hybrids, electric vehicles and last year’s $11,577
This year’s edition adds electrified models to four of the categories, and the powertrain tables give a different ranking than the category list. In medium sedans, a hybrid costs $10,204 a year, a gasoline car $10,582 and an electric car $13,662. Compact SUVs come to $11,201 for a hybrid, $11,656 for gasoline and $11,888 for electric. For medium SUVs, hybrid is $13,698, electric $14,332 and gasoline $14,431. For pickups, hybrid is $16,117, gasoline $16,626 and electric $17,414. Hybrids cost less than comparable gasoline models in all four categories.
Electric vehicles do win on fuel. Adrienne Woodland, a spokesperson for AAA The Auto Club Group, said EVs offer “about 66% to 70% lower fuel costs” than gasoline vehicles, but the savings are often offset by higher depreciation, financing and fees. For the electric medium sedan, charging costs $712.50 a year while depreciation is $6,786, against $3,330 for the gasoline sedan, and the electric sedan costs 29.1 percent more to own overall.
The $12,863 average cannot be read as a jump from last year. AAA’s 2025 release put the average at $11,577, down $719 from 2024, but that study covered 45 models in nine categories, and the 2026 edition reshapes the sample to 34 models in seven. AAA says the two years should not be compared directly, and the gap between them cannot be called an increase. The same cost series in 2024, covering 45 vehicles, came to just under $12,300, as AAA Oregon/Idaho’s Matthew Conde reported then.
The study’s own answer on where the money goes is depreciation, not fuel. At $4,422 of a $12,863 average, the value a vehicle loses accounts for about a third of the yearly bill, more than fuel at 17.3 cents a mile and more than maintenance, repairs and tires combined at 11.7 cents. A buyer who keeps a vehicle the full five years pays that amount every year before a mile of gasoline is counted, and AAA’s own director of automotive research, Greg Brannon, said in the 2025 release that consumers “should factor in all the expenses involved before making any commitments.”
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
