True Cost of Driving Calculator

Estimates the fuel and ownership cost of a specific vehicle, model year 1984 to present, from EPA fuel economy ratings, current DOE and EIA fuel and electricity prices, and BLS and BEA ownership-cost data.

01 Vehicle

Year

Make

Model

Trim

02 Your Numbers

Ownership Period

Miles per Year

Driving Type

Your State (optional)

City MPG

Hwy MPG

Comb MPG

Vehicle to Compare

Year

Make

Model

Trim

Vehicle ratings and current fuel prices: FuelEconomy.gov (U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency). Rankings and comparisons are drawn from the model year 2026 Fuel Economy Guide at 2025 reference prices. Other sources are listed under Methodology.

Disclaimer. All figures are estimates for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, or purchasing advice. Actual costs vary based on driving habits, geographic location, vehicle condition, market conditions, and other factors. Fuel economy, emissions and current fuel prices come from the U.S. EPA and DOE through FuelEconomy.gov; price histories from DOE and EIA; typical ownership costs from BLS and BEA. True Driving Cost makes no warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of these estimates. See Methodology for every source and formula.

About True Driving Cost

True Driving Cost is a free vehicle fuel cost calculator that uses official U.S. government data from the EPA via FuelEconomy.gov. Select any vehicle from 1984 to present, enter your driving habits, and see your estimated total fuel cost with interactive charts and detailed breakdowns.

The calculator computes fuel costs using EPA city and highway fuel economy ratings weighted by your driving mix (the EPA harmonic mean formula), multiplied by current fuel prices from the U.S. Department of Energy. It supports gasoline, diesel, E85, electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrids.

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Read our full methodology for details on data sources, formulas, and assumptions.

Estimated Driving Cost

Total estimated fuel cost

Click any value to adjust parameters.

Per Mile--

Per Month--

Per Year--

Per Day--

Summary

01 Ownership Costs Beyond Fuel

02 Cost Over Time

Fig. 1: Cost of ownership by year. Fuel is calculated for your vehicle at today's price held flat; depreciation and other costs are national averages from section 01. Hover a bar for the figures.

03 Cost Sensitivity

Driving Mix Impact

Fig. 2: Total fuel cost as city/highway driving ratio varies from 0% to 100%

Why: Effective Fuel Economy by Mix

Fig. 2b: This vehicle's own EPA city and highway ratings, and the effective rating at every mix between them -- the mechanism behind the cost curve above.

Fuel Price Scenarios

Fig. 3: Cumulative fuel cost if past runs of annual price changes (from the price history of your vehicle's fuel) are applied after the first year, against holding today's price constant. Lines show the lowest, median and highest of all historical runs.

Fig. 4: Swing in total fuel cost from a ±20% change in each input (a ±20-point change for city share), holding the others at your settings. Bars are ranked by size of the swing.

Efficiency and Emissions Profile

Fig. 5: City, highway and effective fuel economy at your driving mix

EPA Fuel Economy Score

EPA Greenhouse Gas Rating

EPA CO₂ Tailpipe Emissions

grams per mile

0 g/miLowAverageHigh

EPA-measured direct tailpipe emissions

Fig. 6: Cost per mile against CO₂ per mile for the median of each EPA vehicle class (bubble size is the number of vehicles), with a fitted line and the correlation across classes. Your vehicle is plotted at its own cost and emissions.

Rank in the EPA/DOE Fuel Economy Guide

Fig. 7: Fuel cost per mile at fixed reference prices across 1,162 MY2026 vehicles, by EPA class. Boxes span the 25th to 75th percentile, whiskers the 5th to 95th, and the tick is the median. Your vehicle is marked at its own cost per mile.

EPA Comparison

Fig. 8: Annual fuel cost on three bases: EPA's rating for this vehicle, your own parameters, and EPA's rating for an average new vehicle.

04 Monte Carlo Simulation

The price simulation applies historical annual price changes from the second year onward. A one-year ownership period has no later year, so there is no range to simulate.

04 Monte Carlo Simulation

Fig. 9: Monte Carlo simulation of cumulative fuel cost across 1,500 paths. Year 1 is priced at today's price; each later year applies annual price changes taken from randomly chosen 3-year runs of your vehicle's fuel price history. Faint lines are 60 sampled paths; bands show the 10th–90th and 25th–75th percentile at each year.

Outcome Distribution

Fig. 9b: Histogram of the 1,500 simulated total costs at the end of the ownership period, with a Gaussian kernel density estimate (Silverman bandwidth, solid) and a normal curve with the same mean and variance (dashed). The marker shows the flat-price estimate, which assumes no price change after year 1.

Cumulative Probability

Fig. 9c: Empirical cumulative distribution (solid) of the simulated total cost, with a normal distribution of the same mean and variance (dashed). The marker shows the percentile at which the flat-price estimate falls.

Historical Price Trend

Fig. 9d: Nominal annual price history of your vehicle's fuel (regular gasoline, diesel or residential electricity), with an ordinary-least-squares trend on a log axis (solid) and its 95% prediction interval. The dashed section extends the same trend through your ownership window (shaded). This is an extrapolation of the fitted line, not a forecast.

Tail Risk: Value at Risk & Expected Shortfall

Fig. 9e: Value at risk (VaR) and conditional value at risk (CVaR, also called expected shortfall), computed from the 1,500 simulated total costs. VaR is the cost exceeded in the stated share of paths; CVaR is the average cost across those paths.

05 Historical Price Exposure

Your Fuel Bill, by Era

06 Fuel Price Risk Score

–/100

Inputs used in this report

Formulas

Effective fuel economy = 1 ÷ (city share ÷ city rating + highway share ÷ highway rating), using the EPA city and highway ratings and your driving mix.
Fuel cost = miles ÷ effective miles per gallon × price per gallon. Battery-electric vehicles: miles × kWh per mile (EPA city and highway energy ratings, weighted by your mix) × price per kWh. Plug-in hybrids: EPA utility-factor split between electric and gasoline miles.
Depreciation applies the BLS annual depreciation rate for each vehicle age to the price shown, compounded year by year. Insurance, maintenance and repairs, registration and other charges, and finance charges are BLS per-vehicle averages (household spending ÷ vehicles per household).
Historical replay applies each run of consecutive annual price changes in the price history to today's price after year 1. The Monte Carlo simulation takes each later year's change from randomly chosen runs of 3 consecutive recorded years of the same history, which keeps the year-to-year persistence that prices show (1,500 paths, fixed seed).

Limitations

EPA ratings are laboratory-based label values; real-world fuel economy differs with speed, weather, load and driving style.
The base estimate holds fuel prices constant. The replay and simulation show how the estimate would change if past annual price changes recurred; they are not forecasts, and the histories are nominal annual averages of 30 to 75 changes.
Gasoline history is used as the reference series for other liquid or gaseous fuels. Diesel and electricity use their own histories.
Other ownership costs are national averages that blend all vehicle types and ages. They do not depend on your mileage.
Rankings compare against the model year 2026 vehicles in the EPA/DOE Fuel Economy Guide at fixed reference prices, with plug-in hybrids blended 50/50 between gasoline and electric operation. Your own estimate uses your prices and the EPA utility factor.
Battery-electric vehicles are not ranked for in-class CO₂ per mile: EPA reports zero tailpipe CO₂ for every EV, so an in-class rank would be uninformative. In-class MPGe is ranked separately against other EVs in the same body-style class (not pooled with gasoline MPG), and only shown where at least 10 same-class EVs appear in the MY2026 guide.

Sources

Vehicle ratings and current fuel prices. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy, FuelEconomy.gov web services (vehicle records, EPA scores, tailpipe CO₂, national average fuel and electricity prices). fueleconomy.gov
Reference distributions and rankings. EPA/DOE Fuel Economy Guide vehicle database, model year 2026. Reference prices: EIA 2025 annual averages (regular, midgrade, premium, diesel) and EIA Monthly Energy Review Table 1.6 (electricity).
State fuel prices. EIA weekly retail regular gasoline prices, latest week in the data (state series where EIA publishes one, otherwise the PADD region or sub-region).
Price histories. DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center, average annual retail price of gasoline (1950–1991), then EIA annual U.S. regular gasoline retail price (1992–2025); EIA annual U.S. No. 2 diesel retail price; EIA Monthly Energy Review Table 1.6, residential electricity price and CPI-U (1960–2025).
Ownership costs. BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey (insurance, maintenance and repairs, registration and other charges, finance charges, vehicles per household); BLS depreciation rates by vehicle age; BEA NIPA Table 7.2.5S, average price of a new car or light truck. Every figure and its file and cell are listed on the methodology page.
Fallback fuel prices. Used only if live prices cannot be loaded: 2025 EIA annual averages, and April 2026 national averages for E85, compressed natural gas and propane from the DOE Clean Cities and Communities Alternative Fuel Price Report.

Disclaimer. All figures are estimates for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, or purchasing advice. Actual costs vary based on driving habits, geographic location, vehicle condition, market conditions, and other factors. All data sourced exclusively from the U.S. EPA and U.S. DOE via FuelEconomy.gov. True Driving Cost makes no warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of these estimates.