Fuel is the part you feel and usually the smaller part. For most vehicle classes depreciation costs more per mile than gas, and you pay it later, which is why a night can feel profitable and not be.
Figures built from AAA's 2025 Your Driving Costs study. Last updated 2026-10-13.
| Vehicle class | Depreciation | Fuel | Maintenance | Insurance | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small sedan | 17.5¢ | 9.9¢ | 10.2¢ | 10.1¢ | 47.7¢ |
| Medium sedan | 23.1¢ | 11.1¢ | 11.9¢ | 10.5¢ | 56.6¢ |
| Subcompact SUV | 22.0¢ | 12.1¢ | 10.8¢ | 11.3¢ | 56.2¢ |
| Compact SUV (FWD) | 23.7¢ | 11.4¢ | 11.6¢ | 11.5¢ | 58.3¢ |
| Medium SUV (4WD) | 31.7¢ | 14.7¢ | 11.8¢ | 12.2¢ | 70.4¢ |
| Midsize pickup | 26.7¢ | 16.8¢ | 11.4¢ | 10.2¢ | 65.1¢ |
| Half-ton / crew-cab pickup | 40.3¢ | 17.8¢ | 11.4¢ | 11.3¢ | 80.8¢ |
| Hybrid | 23.1¢ | 8.6¢ | 9.8¢ | 11.0¢ | 52.5¢ |
| Electric | 30.1¢ | 5.1¢ | 10.1¢ | 13.3¢ | 58.5¢ |
Fuel priced at $3.151 a gallon, the national average regular-gasoline figure used in the AAA study. Electricity for the EV row is AAA's own flat per-mile figure rather than a gallons calculation. License, registration, taxes and finance charges are excluded from these totals and discussed below.
Source: AAA, Your Driving Costs 2025, published September 2025, newsroom.aaa.com. Figures are five-year averages for the top-selling 2025 models in each category at AAA's 15,000 miles a year baseline.
In every class in the table above, depreciation per mile is larger than fuel per mile. In the full-size pickup row it is more than twice fuel, and in the electric row nearly six times. It is invisible in the moment because nothing is withdrawn from your account when a mile is driven, and it arrives all at once years later as a lower trade-in or an earlier replacement.
This is the whole reason a cents-per-mile figure matters more to a driver than a gas budget. If you judge an offer on fuel alone you are using a number that is about a fifth of the real cost for most classes in the table, a quarter at most, and under a tenth for the EV. The difference accrues silently.
Per-mile cost falls as annual mileage rises. Insurance, registration and the fixed share of depreciation are annual amounts that spread over however many miles you drive, so the same dollars divided by more miles is less per mile. Gig drivers routinely exceed AAA's 15,000-mile baseline, which is why using a 15,000-mile figure overstates the per-mile cost of a 30,000-mile year.
| Vehicle class | At 15,000 mi/yr | At 25,000 mi/yr | At 40,000 mi/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small sedan | 47.7¢ | 39.9¢ | 35.5¢ |
| Medium sedan | 56.6¢ | 46.5¢ | 40.8¢ |
| Subcompact SUV | 56.2¢ | 46.1¢ | 40.5¢ |
| Compact SUV (FWD) | 58.3¢ | 47.6¢ | 41.6¢ |
| Medium SUV (4WD) | 70.4¢ | 56.4¢ | 48.5¢ |
| Midsize pickup | 65.1¢ | 54.0¢ | 47.8¢ |
| Half-ton / crew-cab pickup | 80.8¢ | 64.0¢ | 54.5¢ |
| Hybrid | 52.5¢ | 42.2¢ | 36.5¢ |
| Electric | 58.5¢ | 44.8¢ | 37.0¢ |
Same vehicles, same fuel price, three annual-mileage assumptions. Depreciation is rescaled from AAA's published 10,000 / 15,000 / 20,000 mile figures and extended linearly beyond them; the 40,000-mile column is therefore an extrapolation rather than a measured AAA figure, and the further past 20,000 you go the less it should be trusted.
What does not fall is maintenance and fuel, which are per-mile costs to begin with. So the curve flattens: the saving from 15,000 to 25,000 miles is larger than the saving from 25,000 to 40,000.
The net pay calculator lets you switch the two excluded components on, and override fuel price and MPG, so you can get closer to your own car than a table can.
The 2026 standard mileage rates are 72.5 cents a mile through June 30 and 76 cents from July 1. Those are tax figures: they set how much a business mile reduces taxable income. The per-mile costs on this page are economic figures: what the mile takes out of your pocket and your car.
They are close enough in size to be confused and they are not the same thing, and the gap between them runs in either direction depending on the vehicle. Treating the deduction as though it were your operating cost, or subtracting both from the same gross, double-counts the car. The 2026 rate, explained covers the tax side.
Because AAA publishes a flat per-mile energy cost for EVs rather than a miles-per-gallon figure, and electricity per mile is cheaper than gasoline per mile at the prices in that study. Its insurance is the highest in the table and its depreciation is among the highest, so its total is not the cheapest: at 15,000 miles a year the electric row comes out above the small sedan, the hybrid and both other sedans.
You can use it as a rough stand-in, and for several classes it is in the right area. But it is a published tax figure, not a measurement of your car, and for a cheap paid-off vehicle it is well above the real cost while for a new full-size pickup it can be below it.
You should, if you have them. A class average exists for the common case of not having tracked them, and for pricing a decision in advance, which is the case where you cannot have actuals yet.
No. They are a cost model built from a published study, for working out what driving pays. They say nothing about what you may deduct or how to report it, and they are not endorsed by or affiliated with AAA or the IRS.
This model is the one MileTruth uses internally to turn gross earnings into a net figure, published here so the arithmetic is inspectable rather than hidden in an app. MileTruth is not released yet and there is no store listing yet and nothing to buy.
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