Owning and running a new vehicle now costs $12,863 a year on average, or $1,071.92 a month, according to AAA's 2026 Your Driving Costs analysis, a milestone landing as claims data points to a shift in which repairs make it into a shop's bay at all.
CCC Intelligent Solutions ties that shift to household affordability pressure in its 2026 Crash Course Report . The report put total loss frequency at 23.1% of claims in 2025, a level CCC said is the highest on record for the industry.
CCC said growing premiums and broader financial strain on households are steering more people toward larger deductibles, thinner coverage, or delayed vehicle purchases, shifts the report said touch both who carries insurance and which vehicles keep getting driven.
As deductibles rise, CCC said policyholders are increasingly treating lower-cost repairs as optional rather than filing them, which leaves the claims insurers do see skewing toward higher-severity work.
A separate Autobody News piece examined a related CCC analysis, published Aug. 6: the frequency of paid property damage claims, the metric CCC uses to track collision-shop repair work, dropped 12.6% over a two-year period even as bodily injury claims grew more expensive to settle.
Value loss outpaces every other ownership cost
Depreciation, AAA's term for the gap between what a buyer pays for a vehicle and what it is worth at resale, made up the biggest share of ownership costs in the analysis. Vehicles in the study lost $4,422 in value on average each year. Weighted by sales volume, the average sticker price for vehicles in this year's study came to $39,376.
Fuel costs also rose: gasoline ran $4.152 a gallon on average during the study window, a 31.8% jump from 2025, while the price of charging an EV at home climbed a smaller 7.8%, to 18 cents per kilowatt-hour.
A related Autobody News piece tracked six months of uneven movement in used-vehicle values through 2026, movement that complicates the actual-cash-value calculation insurers use to decide whether a vehicle gets repaired or totaled.
"By looking at EVs, hybrids and traditional gas-powered vehicles within the same categories, consumers can better understand how total ownership costs vary by powertrain," said Greg Brannon, AAA's director of automotive engineering, in the release. "Looking at the full ownership picture — including depreciation and other expenses — can help consumers better understand the total cost of each option."
Vehicle type drives wide cost swings, AAA finds
For medium sedans specifically, AAA's data showed EV depreciation running about double that of gas models, a gap the organization said accounts for the category's 29.1% higher ownership cost for EVs compared with gas versions. That comparison covered only four vehicle types, medium sedans, compact SUVs, medium SUVs, and pickup trucks, and AAA said its findings there stand apart from the full study's broader figures.
AAA also found that vehicle category shapes cost independent of powertrain: a half-ton pickup runs $1.10 for every mile driven, a premium of 48 cents over a small sedan that AAA said adds up to roughly $7,191 in extra cost per year.
Methodology change limits year-over-year comparison
The underlying study covered 34 popular models spanning seven vehicle types, evaluated across an estimated five-year, 75,000-mile ownership period, according to AAA's release. This year marks the first time AAA counted EVs and hybrids alongside gas models in the same categories, rather than scoring them on a separate track, a change AAA said means the $12,863 figure can't be measured directly against the $11,577 total it reported for 2025.
