How Many Miles Does the Average Car Last?

Key Findings

NHTSA's own estimate puts typical lifetime mileage at about 152,000 miles for cars and 180,000 miles for light trucks (pickups, vans, and SUVs).
Half of all cars are off the road by around age 15; half of all light trucks make it to about age 16, per EPA survival-rate data.
Only 0.7% of cars and 8.9% of light trucks are still registered at 30 years old.
A car's annual mileage declines steadily with age, a brand-new car is driven about 13,843 miles a year, dropping to 6,962 miles a year by age 20, roughly half as much.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Draft Technical Assessment Report: Midterm Evaluation of Light-Duty Vehicle GHG Emission Standards and CAFE Standards for Model Years 2022–2025, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016); U.S. DOT/NHTSA, Vehicle Survivability and Travel Mileage Schedules (2006). Both via the DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40.

Contents

Introduction
Typical Lifetime Mileage
Vehicle Survival Rates by Age
How Much a Car Gets Driven as It Ages
What This Means for Buying and Keeping a Car
Data Sources

01 Introduction

"How long does a car last" doesn't have one single government answer, but two federal studies together give a real, quantified picture: how many vehicles are still on the road at each age, and how many miles those vehicles rack up before they're gone. NHTSA's 2006 Vehicle Survivability and Travel Mileage Schedules study and EPA's 2016 midterm CAFE evaluation both estimated these curves for the full national vehicle fleet, and their tables are reproduced here in full.

U.S. DOT/NHTSA, Vehicle Survivability and Travel Mileage Schedules (2006); U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Tables 3.14 and 3.15.

02 Typical Lifetime Mileage

NHTSA's 2006 study is still the government's standing estimate of how many miles a vehicle accumulates over its full lifetime, from new until it's scrapped or permanently retired:

Vehicle Type	Typical Lifetime Miles
Cars	152,137
Light Trucks (pickups, vans, SUVs)	179,954

U.S. DOT/NHTSA, Vehicle Survivability and Travel Mileage Schedules (2006), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.14.

A different, separately-computed EPA figure runs higher. EPA's 2016 report also published a full annual-mileage-by-age schedule (see the table below) and the Total row of that schedule, summed over ages 0 to 30, is 278,134 miles for cars and 310,610 for light trucks, the total a vehicle would accumulate if it survived, and kept being driven at each age's typical rate, for the full span. That number is higher than NHTSA's "typical lifetime miles" because it doesn't account for the fact that most vehicles don't survive to 30 years; NHTSA's figure is closer to what an actual, representative vehicle experiences on average. The two aren't a contradiction, they're answering slightly different questions from two different studies published a decade apart.

U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.14, "Total" row.

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03 Vehicle Survival Rates by Age

EPA's 2016 report separately estimated what share of cars and light trucks are still registered and on the road at each age, from brand new (age 0) through 31 years old. The table below shows the full curve.

U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.15.

Vehicle Age	Cars	Light Trucks
New (age 0)	100.0%	100.0%
5 years	97.4%	94.1%
10 years	86.2%	78.4%
15 years	51.0%	55.3%
16 years	41.5%	50.2%
20 years	15.7%	32.4%
25 years	4.0%	17.4%
30 years	0.7%	8.9%

U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.15. Table shows selected ages; full year-by-year data available in the source.

Cars cross the 50% mark right around age 15. Interpolating between EPA's age-15 (51.0%) and age-16 (41.5%) readings, cars hit exactly 50% survival at about 15.1 years old. Light trucks last a bit longer, crossing 50% at about 16.0 years. After that point, survival drops off quickly: fewer than 1 in 6 cars make it to 20 years, and fewer than 1 in 25 make it to 30.

Calculated: linear interpolation between EPA's age-15 and age-16 survival-rate readings (cars) and age-16/age-17 readings (light trucks). U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), Table 3.15.

04 How Much a Car Gets Driven as It Ages

Surviving vehicles also get driven less each year as they age. EPA's report estimated typical annual mileage at every age from 0 to 30 years; the table below shows the same selected ages as above.

U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.14.

Vehicle Age	Cars (mi/yr)	Light Trucks (mi/yr)
New (age 0)	13,843	15,962
5 years	12,337	14,081
10 years	10,509	11,595
15 years	8,629	9,239
20 years	6,962	7,358
25 years	5,778	6,481
30 years	5,358	6,466

U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), via DOE/ORNL Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Table 3.14. Table shows selected ages; full year-by-year data available in the source.

The decline is steady rather than sudden: a car's annual mileage drops by roughly half between new and age 20 (13,843 to 6,962 miles a year, a 49.7% decrease), and light truck mileage falls by a similar 53.9% over the same span.

Calculated: (13,843 − 6,962) ÷ 13,843 = 49.7% (cars); (15,962 − 7,358) ÷ 15,962 = 53.9% (light trucks). U.S. EPA, EPA-420-D-16-900 (2016), Table 3.14.

05 What This Means for Buying and Keeping a Car

These figures describe the on-road vehicle fleet, not the average age of vehicles currently registered. This site's real-world fuel economy analysis separately calculates a weighted average on-road vehicle age of 10.3 years from 2022 travel-survey data, that's a snapshot of how old the average car currently in use is, which is naturally younger than the ~15-year median lifespan described here, since a fleet's average age reflects vehicles at every point in their life, not just the ones nearing the end of it.

For a buyer deciding how long to keep a car, the mileage-by-age table shows how much of a car's driving comes early: summing EPA's annual figures, a car that stays in service for 15 years accumulates about 173,000 miles over ages 0 to 14 (about 195,000 for a light truck), and about 213,000 over ages 0 to 19. NHTSA's 152,137 typical lifetime miles is an average over vehicles that leave the fleet at different ages, so it is lower than the total for a car that survives that long.

06 Data Sources

U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Vehicle Survivability and Travel Mileage Schedules (January 2006).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Draft Technical Assessment Report: Midterm Evaluation of Light-Duty Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards and Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Model Years 2022–2025, EPA-420-D-16-900 (July 2016). epa.gov
DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Transportation Energy Data Book, Edition 40, Tables 3.14 and 3.15 (compilation source for both studies above).
This site's related analysis: Real-World Fleet Fuel Economy vs. New-Car MPG and Vehicle Maintenance and Repair Costs by Year.

Disclaimer. This article is for informational purposes only. The survival-rate and mileage-by-age figures come from a 2016 EPA report and a 2006 NHTSA study, both still the standing federal estimates of this kind as of publication; no newer comparable federal study has been identified. These are national averages across the entire vehicle fleet and do not predict any individual vehicle's lifespan, which depends heavily on maintenance, climate, and usage. "Typical lifetime miles" and the summed mileage schedule are two different, separately published calculations from two different studies and should not be treated as directly comparable figures.