Average Cost per Mile by Vehicle Class (2026)

AAA publishes a cost-per-mile figure for each vehicle category every year, built from five top-selling models in each and averaged over a standardized five years and 75,000 miles. Here is the 2026 edition, seven categories, low to high:

A 1.8x spread between the cheapest category and the priciest, on the same standardized assumptions — same five years, same 75,000 miles, same methodology. Nothing about a driver changes across that table. Only the vehicle does.

What moves inside that spread

The half-ton pickup at the top and the small sedan at the bottom aren't separated by fuel. AAA's own category notes say the half-ton's problem is the highest overall driving cost across the board, and the medium SUV's is being “second most expensive to own and operate” outright — both are size-and-price stories, not fuel-price stories. Depreciation and finance charges scale with a vehicle's purchase price the way fuel cost scales with its efficiency, and for the categories at the expensive end, the purchase price is doing more of the work.

Hybrids and EVs no longer get rows of their own. In 2026 AAA folded them into the ordinary categories, which is why the compact SUV has the second-lowest fuel costs in the table, “thanks to two hybrids and one EV,” in AAA's words, and still ranks fourth overall. Cheaper fuel shows up in one line of the bill. AAA's release makes the same point in dollars: a gas medium sedan cost $3,080 a year less to own than a comparable electric one, because the EV carried higher depreciation, fees and finance costs.

Why this table doesn't line up with last year's

The 2025 edition had nine categories, including separate hybrid and electric rows, and put the average new vehicle at $11,577 a year. The 2026 edition has seven and puts it at $12,863. AAA says plainly that methodology updates make this year's results “not directly comparable” with last year's, so the gap between those two figures is not a year of inflation, and no row here should be read against its 2025 counterpart.

It also isn't your mileage

AAA publishes the same kind of table by annual mileage, and the shape of it is the same story again — the number is set by an assumption, not a law:

The category table above is built at 15,000 miles a year. Drive less than that in any of the seven categories and your own figure runs higher than the row says, for the same reason the mileage table does — depreciation, finance and insurance accrue on the calendar whether or not the car moves, so fewer miles means each one carries more of a fixed bill.

Where the IRS rate lands in this table

The IRS standard mileage rate — 76¢ for July 1 – December 31, 2026 — is a single number covering every vehicle type, which puts it inside this table rather than above or below it: below the compact suv and above the subcompact suv. That is arithmetic, not coincidence — the IRS rate is itself an annual average across a national fleet, so it should land somewhere in the middle of a table that breaks the same fleet out by category. If your own car is a half-ton pickup or a medium SUV, the IRS rate understates you; if it's a small sedan, it overstates you.

What this table is for, and what it isn't

It's a starting benchmark — a reasonable placeholder if you don't yet own the car and want to compare categories before you shop, or a sanity check on a number you've already computed for a car you do own.

It isn't your car. Every row is an average of five top-selling new models, held to a fixed five-year, 75,000-mile ownership period. Your specific trim, your actual insurance quote, your real resale value, an older or paid-off vehicle, a holding period of eight years instead of five, a mileage nothing like 15,000 — any one of those moves you off the row for your category, and most drivers differ on more than one.

True Cost per Mile runs the identical six-category method AAA uses — depreciation, finance, fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance — on your own numbers instead of five top-selling models. Use the table above to know which direction your result should plausibly fall; use the tool to find out where it actually lands.

From there, EV vs. Gas Cost isolates just the fuel line for a category-vs-category comparison, and the mileage effect above gets the fuller treatment here — including why a car you barely drive is often the most expensive one on the street, per mile.