Fuel Cost by Vehicle Age: NHTS and EPA Data Compared

Key Findings

A vehicle 12–15 years old costs an estimated $2,514 per year to fuel: the highest of any age group and about $942 more than a vehicle 0–3 years old ($1,572).
The gap isn't about how much newer cars are driven. Vehicles 4–15 years old are actually driven more per year (14,400–16,000 miles) than brand-new vehicles (12,100 miles); the extra fuel cost comes from lower fuel economy at the time those vehicles were built.
Vehicles 25 years or older cost the least to fuel of any group ($1,728/year), because they're driven far less, typically as a secondary or occasional-use vehicle.
About 45% of vehicles on U.S. roads today are 0–7 years old; only about 12% are 20 years or older.

Source: Federal Highway Administration/Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file; U.S. EPA Automotive Trends Report, fleet fuel economy by model year.

Contents

Introduction
How Far Vehicles Are Driven, by Age
Fuel Economy by the Era a Vehicle Was Built
Estimated Fuel Cost by Vehicle Age
The Age of Vehicles on U.S. Roads Today
Methodology and Caveats
Data Sources

01 Introduction

A vehicle 12–15 years old costs an estimated $2,514 per year to fuel: the highest of any age group and about $942 more than a vehicle 0–3 years old. Does an older car cost more to fuel? The honest answer requires two separate government datasets that aren't normally put side by side: the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which measures how many miles vehicles of different ages are actually driven each year, and the EPA's Automotive Trends Report, which measures how fuel-efficient the vehicle fleet was in the model year each of those vehicles was built. This article combines them to estimate fuel cost by vehicle age, and the answer turns out to be more interesting than a simple "yes."

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey; U.S. EPA, Automotive Trends Report

02 How Far Vehicles Are Driven, by Age

Using the 2022 National Household Travel Survey's public-use vehicle file, weighted to be nationally representative, average annual mileage doesn't decline steadily with vehicle age. It rises through early middle age, then falls off for the oldest vehicles.

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file (vehv2pub.csv), variables VEHAGE and ANNMILES, weighted by WTHHFIN

Fig. 1 Average annual miles driven, by vehicle age group. Hover a bar for the exact figure and sample size. 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file, weighted average

Vehicle Age	Avg. Annual Miles	Survey Vehicles (n)
0–3 years	12,100	2,931
4–7 years	15,244	3,740
8–11 years	14,365	2,796
12–15 years	15,999	1,852
16–19 years	14,343	1,433
20–24 years	11,693	992
25+ years	10,682	727

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file. Weighted average annual miles (ANNMILES) by vehicle age (VEHAGE), using household weight WTHHFIN. Records with invalid or missing VEHAGE/ANNMILES excluded (213 of 14,684 total vehicle records).

Why the middle-age peak? NHTS doesn't ask why a vehicle is or isn't driven heavily, but the pattern is consistent with common sense: brand-new vehicles include a disproportionate share of second or occasional-use vehicles, while vehicles past about 20 years old are disproportionately kept as low-mileage backups rather than daily drivers. Vehicles in their prime working years, roughly 4 to 15 years old, are more likely to be a household's primary, highest-mileage vehicle.

03 Fuel Economy by the Era a Vehicle Was Built

A vehicle's fuel economy is fixed at the time it's built: a 2012 model year vehicle gets roughly 2012-era fuel economy for its entire life, regardless of what year it is now. The EPA's Automotive Trends Report tracks fleet-average fuel economy by model year back to 1975; the figures below are the same fleet-average-by-model-year data used in this site's Average MPG by Year article, mapped here to the approximate model year of each NHTS vehicle-age group (2022 survey year minus the group's midpoint age).

U.S. EPA, Automotive Trends Report: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Fuel Economy, and Technology since 1975

Vehicle Age (in 2022)	Approx. Model Year	Fleet Avg. MPG
0–3 years	~2020	25.4
4–7 years	~2016	24.7
8–11 years	~2012	23.6
12–15 years	~2008	21.0
16–19 years	~2004	19.3
20–24 years	~2000	19.8
25+ years	~1994	20.4

EPA, The 2025 Automotive Trends Report (EPA-420-R-26-001), Table 2.1: Production and Fuel Economy for Model Year 1975–2025 (same series used in this site's Average MPG by Year article). Every value above is Table 2.1's own exact annual figure for that model year; no interpolation is needed, since Table 2.1 reports every year individually.

The 2004 dip is real, not an error. Fleet-average fuel economy actually bottomed out around 2004 (19.3 MPG) before recovering: a documented, temporary reversal driven by rising truck and SUV market share, before CAFE standard increases took effect later in the decade. It shows up here as vehicles 16–19 years old having slightly worse fuel economy than vehicles several years older.

Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.

Use the Calculator

04 Estimated Fuel Cost by Vehicle Age

Combining average annual miles (NHTS, by age) with fleet-average fuel economy (EPA, by approximate model year) at a reference price of $3.30 per gallon (the same price used consistently across this site) produces an estimated annual fuel cost for each vehicle-age group.

Calculated: Annual Miles ÷ Fleet Avg. MPG × $3.30/gal, using the figures from the two tables above

Fig. 2 Estimated annual fuel cost by vehicle age, at $3.30/gallon. Hover a bar for the exact figure. Calculated from NHTS mileage and EPA fuel economy data, see tables above

Vehicle Age	Annual Miles	Fleet Avg. MPG	Est. Annual Fuel Cost
0–3 years	12,100	25.4	$1,572
4–7 years	15,244	24.7	$2,037
8–11 years	14,365	23.6	$2,009
12–15 years	15,999	21.0	$2,514
16–19 years	14,343	19.3	$2,452
20–24 years	11,693	19.8	$1,949
25+ years	10,682	20.4	$1,728

Calculated from the tables in sections 02 and 03 above. All fuel prices held at $3.30/gal for comparability across age groups.

The most expensive vehicles to fuel aren't the newest or the oldest. A vehicle 12–15 years old costs an estimated $942 more per year to fuel than a vehicle 0–3 years old, driven by both higher mileage (an extra 3,900 miles/year) and meaningfully worse fuel economy (21.0 MPG vs. 25.4 MPG). That's a bigger combined penalty than either factor alone would produce.

Calculated: $2,514 − $1,572 = $942; 15,999 − 12,100 = 3,899 miles

05 The Age of Vehicles on U.S. Roads Today

The NHTS data also shows how the national vehicle fleet is distributed by age, weighted to represent all U.S. household vehicles.

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file, weighted by WTHHFIN

Vehicle Age	Share of Fleet
0–3 years	20.0%
4–7 years	25.3%
8–11 years	19.2%
12–15 years	13.0%
16–19 years	10.3%
20–24 years	7.0%
25+ years	5.2%

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file, share of weighted vehicle count (WTHHFIN) by VEHAGE group

Nearly 45% of vehicles on U.S. roads are 7 years old or newer, while roughly 12% are 20 years or older. This means the highest-cost 12–15 year age group, while not the largest single group, still represents about 1 in 8 vehicles on the road today.

Calculated: 20.0% + 25.3% = 45.3%; 7.0% + 5.2% = 12.2%

06 Methodology and Caveats

This estimate combines two real government datasets that were not designed to be joined, so the result is a reasonable estimate, not a precise per-vehicle figure. Specifically:

FHWA/BTS, 2022 National Household Travel Survey; U.S. EPA, Automotive Trends Report

Model year is approximated. NHTS reports each vehicle's age in the 2022 survey year, not its exact model year mapped to a specific EPA fuel economy figure. This article approximates model year as 2022 minus the midpoint age of each group (for example, the 12–15 year group is treated as model year ~2008, using age 13.5 as the midpoint).
Fleet-average MPG, not vehicle-specific MPG. The EPA figures are fleet-wide averages for a model year, not the fuel economy of any specific vehicle. Two vehicles of the same age can have very different fuel economy depending on class and powertrain.
A single national gas price is used throughout ($3.30/gal) so that the comparison isolates the effect of mileage and fuel economy, not regional price differences.
Sample sizes shrink at older ages. The 25+ year group is based on 727 weighted survey vehicle records, versus 3,740 for the 4–7 year group, still a substantial sample but with wider uncertainty than the younger, more heavily represented groups.

Why combine them anyway. No single government survey tracks fuel cost by vehicle age directly. Combining NHTS's real driving-behavior data with EPA's real fuel-economy-by-model-year data is the closest available estimate using only official U.S. government sources. This is disclosed here as an estimate, not presented as more precise than it is.

07 Data Sources

Every figure in this article comes from a U.S. government source. No proprietary, estimated, or third-party data was used.

Federal Highway Administration / Bureau of Transportation Statistics. 2022 National Household Travel Survey, public-use vehicle file (vehv2pub.csv). nhts.ornl.gov
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Automotive Trends Report: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Fuel Economy, and Technology since 1975. epa.gov/automotive-trends

Disclaimer. This article is for informational purposes only. Fuel cost estimates by vehicle age are derived by combining two separate government data sources using the approximate-model-year methodology described above, and represent national averages, not a prediction for any individual vehicle. Actual fuel cost depends on the specific vehicle, its condition, driving habits, and local fuel prices.