Calculate the True Cost of Driving Your Vehicle

An independent research tool that calculates driving costs using official U.S. government data. Fuel economy ratings and fuel prices sourced exclusively from the EPA via FuelEconomy.gov.

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

Calculator data source: FuelEconomy.gov (U.S. Department of Energy & Environmental Protection Agency)

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. This calculator's data is 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. Our articles draw on additional official sources; see our full list of data sources.

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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Explore Our Articles

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

03 Estimated Driving Cost

Total estimated fuel cost

Click any value to adjust parameters.

Per Mile--

Per Month--

Per Year--

Per Day--

Beyond Fuel: Typical Ownership Costs

Vehicle Comparison

Cost Over Time

Cumulative fuel cost for both vehicles at your current settings. Solid line is the point estimate at today's fuel price; shaded band is the interquartile (25th–75th percentile) range from 1,500 bootstrap-resampled historical fuel-price scenarios.

Efficiency

Where Each Vehicle Ranks in Its Class

Year-by-Year Cost

What Would Change the Gap Most

How much your annual mileage, driving mix, and fuel prices could widen or shrink the cost gap between these two vehicles

Uncertainty: Does the Cheaper Vehicle Stay Cheaper?

Key Takeaways

04 Fuel Cost Timeline

Fig. 1: Running total fuel cost over your ownership period, at today's flat fuel price. For the probability range around this estimate, see Section 09's Monte Carlo simulation. Hover any point for that year's exact figures.

05 Cost Sensitivity

Driving Mix Impact

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

Fuel Price Scenarios

Fig. 3: Cumulative cost under varying fuel price levels over ownership period

06 Vehicle Efficiency Profile

Fig. 4: Fuel efficiency spectrum: city, highway, and your effective rating

EPA Fuel Economy Score

EPA Greenhouse Gas Rating

EPA CO₂ Tailpipe Emissions

grams per mile

0 g/miLowAverageHigh

EPA-measured direct tailpipe emissions

Fig. 7: Cost per mile vs. CO₂ per mile, by EPA vehicle class - median of each of the 12 classes (bubble size = number of vehicles), with a fitted trend line and correlation across classes. Your vehicle is marked at its own actual cost and emissions, not just its class median.

Where You Rank

Fig. 8: Fuel cost per mile (at fixed reference prices) across 1,166 real MY2026 vehicles from EPA/DOE's Fuel Economy Guide database, grouped by body-style class. Boxes show the 25th-75th percentile, whiskers the 5th-95th, the white tick the median. Your class is highlighted with your vehicle marked at its actual cost/mile.

07 Yearly Cost Table

08 EPA Comparison

Fig. 9: Annual fuel cost compared across three different bases - EPA's rating for this specific vehicle, your own driving parameters, and EPA's rating for an average new vehicle.

Cost Uncertainty

The uncertainty simulation resamples historical gasoline price changes. This vehicle does not run on gasoline, so its cost does not move with those prices and there is no gas-price range to simulate. Your estimate above is based on the electricity price you set.

09 Cost Uncertainty

Fig. 5: Monte Carlo simulation of cumulative fuel cost, resampling 75 years of real annual U.S. gasoline price changes (1950–2025) across 1,500 simulated paths. Faint lines are a sample of 60 individual simulated paths; bands show the 10th–90th and 25th–75th percentile range at each year.

Outcome Distribution

Fig. 5b: Histogram of the 1,500 simulated final-year outcomes, with a Gaussian kernel density estimate (Silverman bandwidth, solid) against a Normal distribution of the same mean and variance (dashed). The blue diamond marks your calculator's flat-price estimate against the full simulated range; its position moves with your vehicle, years, miles, and mix.

Cumulative Probability

Fig. 5c: Empirical CDF (solid): the probability your cost is at or below any given value, against a Normal distribution of the same mean/variance (dashed). The blue diamond marks exactly where your calculator's own estimate falls on this curve.

Historical Price Trend

Fig. 5d: The full 76-year nominal gas price series (1950–2025: DOE AFDC through 2023, EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook annual averages for 2024–2025), fit with an ordinary-least-squares trend on a semi-log axis (solid), with a 95% prediction interval band. The dashed region projects that same trend through your ownership window (shaded) and re-runs your vehicle's real fuel consumption against it. This is an extrapolation, not a forecast.

Tail Risk: Value at Risk & Expected Shortfall

Fig. 5e: Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional VaR / Expected Shortfall, computed directly from your 1,500 simulated outcomes above. These are standard quantitative risk-management metrics: VaR is a loss threshold at a confidence level; CVaR is the average outcome given you're already past it, the harsher number VaR alone doesn't tell you.

10 What Actually Moves Your Total Cost

Fig. 6: Tornado diagram: the swing in total fuel cost from a ±20% change in each input, holding all others at your current settings. Bars are ranked by impact, largest at top.

11 Fuel Price Risk Score

--/100

Fig. 10: This site's own Fuel Price Risk Score - not an EPA or government rating - mapping your vehicle's price exposure share against its cost-per-mile percentile among all 1,166 MY2026 vehicles tracked here.

Sources

Fuel Economy Data. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency & U.S. Department of Energy. “Fuel Economy Guide.” FuelEconomy.gov. https://fueleconomy.gov
Vehicle Data API. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. “FuelEconomy.gov Web Services.” https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/ws/index.shtml
Fuel Prices. U.S. Department of Energy & U.S. EPA. Current fuel price data provided through the FuelEconomy.gov API. https://fueleconomy.gov/ws/rest/fuelprices
EPA Fuel Economy Ratings. U.S. EPA. Vehicle fuel economy ratings, greenhouse gas scores, and CO₂ tailpipe emissions measured under EPA test procedures (city, highway, combined). https://www.epa.gov/fuel-economy
EPA SmartWay & Emissions. U.S. EPA. Greenhouse gas rating (1 to 10 scale) and smog rating for all rated vehicles. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles
Methodology. Combined MPG calculated using EPA harmonic mean formula: Combined = 1 / ((%City / CityMPG) + (%Highway / HighwayMPG)). All cost projections use current EPA fuel prices applied uniformly across ownership period. No inflation modeling or future price speculation is applied.
Cost Uncertainty Model. U.S. Department of Energy, Alternative Fuels Data Center, "Average Annual Retail Price of Gasoline, 1950–2023," extended through 2025 using EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (September 2026 edition, Table 2) annual average regular gasoline retail prices for 2024 ($3.31) and 2025 ($3.10), since no newer AFDC edition of that specific series exists yet. The Monte Carlo simulation in Section 09 resamples the 75 real year-over-year percentage changes in this combined series (with replacement) to build a probability distribution of cumulative cost, rather than assuming a theoretical distribution shape or fixed scenario percentages. The accompanying trend regression, Value at Risk, and Conditional VaR figures are all computed from the same simulation output and the same combined 76-year nominal price series.
Vehicle Ranking (Fig. 8) and Cost vs. CO₂ by Class (Fig. 7). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency / U.S. Department of Energy, Fuel Economy Guide vehicle database (Data/vehicles.csv, refreshed September 2026 edition), model year 2026: 1,166 vehicle configurations with a valid combined MPG/MPGe figure across gasoline, hybrid, EV, and PHEV powertrains for Fig. 8, and 841 non-EV configurations with a valid tailpipe CO₂ figure for Fig. 7. Combined MPG/MPGe figures are converted to cost per mile using fixed reference fuel and electricity prices for a consistent, comparable basis across fuel types.

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.