Since the pandemic, a growing share of Americans are technically “car owners” but barely drivers at all, with Yale Climate Connections reporting that many Americans now do not drive in a typical week. That shift has fed a popular myth that a car that mostly sits in the garage is safer and ages more slowly. I have found the opposite is often true: low use quietly harms tires, batteries, fuel systems, and even your safety, unless you treat a rarely driven car as something that still needs regular care.
Tires Lose Pressure and Age Faster Than You Think
Even if a car hardly moves, its tires are not on pause. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, says tires naturally lose air over time and advises checking pressure at least once a month when the tires are “cold,” meaning the vehicle has not been driven for at least 3 hours. That slow bleed matters more on a car that sits, because no one is feeling vague steering or braking changes that might prompt a check. Underinflated tires flex more, build heat once the car finally does hit the road, and can compromise grip or even contribute to a blowout.
Age is just as big a threat as mileage. NHTSA notes that tire aging is driven by how and where a tire is used, how it is stored, and environmental factors such as heat, ozone, and ultraviolet light. A car that spends long stretches parked outdoors can see its sidewalls dry, crack, or harden as rubber compounds react with oxygen and sunlight. Even a low-mileage car parked in a hot driveway or near electric equipment that generates ozone can end up on structurally tired rubber long before the tread wears out, which means “I barely drive” is not a defense against having to replace old tires.
Your Battery Drains and Degrades in Storage
The battery is usually the first part to complain about low use. A federal technical handbook from Primary explains that lead-acid batteries deteriorate in storage through sulfation, where lead sulfate crystals harden on the plates when a battery sits partially discharged. Without regular charging from the alternator, that buildup can reduce capacity and make the battery less able to crank the engine, especially in cold weather. The handbook also stresses that storage and maintenance practices have a direct impact on how quickly this degradation sets in.
Major consumer auto guidance from AAA, described here as Major, reinforces that batteries deteriorate over time and that deterioration can accelerate when a vehicle remains unused for extended periods. Major recommends using a battery maintainer for cars that will sit, because a maintainer keeps the charge in a healthy range instead of letting it slowly fall into the zone where sulfation becomes permanent. For plug-in hybrids that owners forget to charge or drive, coverage of what happens if you do not plug in a hybrid car on BGR shows how even advanced electrical systems still rely on basic battery chemistry that does not like long, idle stretches.
Fuel Turns Bad and Separates Over Time
Gasoline also has a shelf life that short trips and long parking spells can quietly exceed. Guidance from Maine’s Primary environmental agency advises not storing gasoline more than 30 days unless a stabilizer is added, even though that document is written for cans in a garage rather than fuel tanks. The same chemistry applies inside a parked car: lighter components evaporate, gums and varnish can form, and starting becomes harder. On a rarely driven vehicle, that process can begin before the owner has burned through a single tank.
Ethanol blends add another risk. A Land grant university fact sheet explains that ethanol in gasoline absorbs water and can undergo phase separation, where alcohol and water drop out of the fuel mixture and sit at the bottom of the tank. The Land guidance states that even straight gasoline should not be stored more than “60” days without stabilizer chemicals and says that longer storage often calls for draining the fuel system. While that document focuses on small engines, the same separation and corrosion issues can affect fuel pumps and injectors in a seldom-driven car that spends months with the same aging tank of gas.
Idling in the Garage Builds Deadly CO Risks
One of the most persistent myths among low-mileage drivers is that idling a car in the garage “to keep it healthy” is a harmless workaround. Primary indoor air guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency warns that carbon monoxide can build to dangerous levels in enclosed or even partially open spaces, and it explicitly says to never run a vehicle inside a garage, even with the door open, because toxic gas can seep into the home through walls and doors. The EPA factsheet stresses that carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, so people may not realize they are in danger until they are already disoriented.
Public health data from the CDC, cited in a Primary toolkit, say carbon monoxide kills more than “500” Americans each year and highlight running vehicles or fuel-burning tools in or near garages as a recurring cause. Occupational safety guidance from Primary NIOSH adds that high concentrations from gasoline engines can overcome people without warning and that having used a device before without incident can create false confidence. That combination of physics and behavior makes the “I just let it idle for a few minutes” ritual one of the most dangerous habits low-use drivers can have.
Short Trips Hurt Efficiency and Engine Health
Low-mileage driving often means a pattern of very short trips rather than no trips at all, and federal energy data show that this is a punishing way to use a car. The Department of Energy’s Authoritative Energy Saver explainer reports that for a conventional gasoline car, city fuel economy is about 15 percent lower at 20°F than at “77°F,” and that it can drop as much as 24 percent for short 3 to 4 mile trips. The same guidance notes that idling to warm up the engine delivers 0 MPG and wastes fuel that could instead be used to gently bring the car up to temperature while driving.
That pattern also affects mechanical wear. When a car only runs for a few minutes, oil may not fully warm and circulate, moisture in the crankcase has less chance to evaporate, and the exhaust system may retain condensation. While the Authoritative document focuses on fuel economy, the physics behind its MPG drop explain why a car that lives on short hops to the store can feel sluggish and use more fuel than the odometer suggests. For post-pandemic drivers who mostly shuffle locally, the result is a vehicle that costs more per mile to operate and still never really gets the “exercise” that keeps components in their best range.
Beyond Mechanics: Insurance, Pests, and Hidden Costs
The financial side of barely driving can be just as counterintuitive as the mechanical side. Coverage analysis from NerdWallet describes pay-per-mile car insurance options that base part of the premium on how far a car actually travels, which can lower costs for drivers who log very few miles. At the same time, reporting on what happens if you skip coverage, such as the overview at Money.com, warns that going without insurance entirely can expose owners to legal penalties and catastrophic out-of-pocket costs even if they rarely drive.
Inactivity also invites non-mechanical problems. A feature on Reader’s Digest from RD.com describes how rodents can move into parked vehicles, chewing wiring and nesting under hoods when a car sits undisturbed. Another RD.com piece on whether a car can lose its horn from disuse highlights how corrosion and lack of operation can silence components that most drivers assume will always work. Popular Mechanics, cited here as Popular Mechanics, adds that oil change intervals are based on time as well as miles, since lubricants age and collect contaminants even in low-use cars. Together with the Yale Climate Connections finding that many Americans do not drive regularly, these reports suggest that a “garage queen” still needs scheduled attention, just on a different calendar than a daily commuter.
For owners who barely drive, the real choice is not between maintenance and neglect but between planned, targeted care and surprise failures. The science behind tires that quietly lose air, batteries that sulfate in storage, gasoline that goes stale, and exhaust that fills a garage with carbon monoxide shows that inactivity is its own kind of stress. Treating a low-mileage car as a machine that still lives in time, not just in miles, is the difference between a vehicle that is ready when needed and one that betrays its owner at the worst possible moment.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
