Vehicles up to four years old accounted for 39.3% of U.S. driving trips in 2025, up from 34.0% in 2024 and 27.0% in 2023, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety's American Driving Survey: 2025 research brief, released in September. Hybrids made up 7.4% of trips last year, compared with 6.4% in 2024.
Separately, mild hybrids reached a record 5.83% of U.S. repairable claims in the second quarter of 2026, up 26% from a year earlier, according to Mitchell's Q2 2026 Plugged-In: EV Collision Insights report.
Late-model vehicles gain trip share
Both annual increases in the share of trips taken in vehicles four years old or newer were statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, according to the brief. Trip shares for vehicles five to nine years old dropped to 29.0% from 31.9%, and vehicles 10 to 14 years old dropped to 15.9% from 17.5%. Both declines were statistically significant. Vehicles older than 14 years made up 15.8% of trips, compared with 16.6% in 2024.
Combined, vehicles 10 or more years old were still used for about 31.7% of trips in 2025, AAA reported. Citing earlier foundation research, the brief said older vehicles may be missing more recent safety technology and can show greater mechanical wear, with possible consequences for road safety and the protection of occupants.
The survey also broke down vehicle age by demographic group. Drivers 75 and older (42.3%) and respondents with at least a bachelor's degree (44.6%) had some of the highest shares of vehicles four years old or newer, while drivers ages 16 to 19 trailed at 22.9%. Vehicles more than 14 years old showed up most often among respondents listed as not working (29.4%), those whose highest education was a high school diploma or GED (23.2%), residents of the West (20.2%), and residents of non-metro areas (20.0%), according to AAA.
Registration and claims data track fleet age
The average age of U.S. light vehicles reached 12.8 years in 2025, according to S&P Global Mobility data cited in CCC Intelligent Solutions' report. CCC said the average is likely to reach 13 years in 2026. Citing Experian data, the report also found more than 12 million fewer vehicles 6 years old or newer in operation in the third quarter of 2025 than in the same quarter of 2020, even as the total fleet grew by about 14.3 million vehicles.
Repairable collision claims in CCC's data have also shifted toward older vehicles. Since 2020, vehicles seven to 9 years old and 10 to 12 years old have each gained 4 percentage points of share among repairable collision claims. Over the same period, vehicles 1 to 3 years old lost 6.9 points and vehicles four to six years old lost 4.0 points, according to the report. Calibrations appeared on 28.3% of repairable estimates in 2025, up from 21.8% the year before, CCC found. The report's broader findings on an aging fleet and rising repair complexity were covered earlier this year.
Vehicles between six and 12 model years old made up 34.5% of light-duty vehicles in operation in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2026, down 2 percentage points from 2024, according to Experian's Q2 2026 Automotive Market Trends Report.
Hybrids gain as gas and diesel slip
Gas and diesel vehicles fell to 89.5% of trips in 2025 from 91.0% in 2024, a statistically significant decline, AAA reported. The hybrid increase was also statistically significant. Electric vehicles rose to 3.1% of trips from 2.5%, a change the brief did not mark as significant.
EV trips were the longest on average, at 30.1 minutes and 13.8 miles, compared with 25.0 minutes and 12.4 miles for hybrids and 24.3 minutes and 11.8 miles for gas and diesel vehicles, AAA found.
By region, the West posted the highest hybrid and EV shares, at 11.1% and 5.3%, respectively, while the Midwest had the lowest EV share, at 1.4%. Metro-area drivers reported hybrid and EV shares of 6.7% and 3.6%, compared with 3.6% and 1.5% for drivers outside metro areas.
On the sales side, hybrids reached 22.2% of new light-duty vehicle sales in the second quarter of 2026, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Mitchell's first-quarter report had put mild hybrids at 5.69% of U.S. repairable claims, a record at the time.
Daily mileage dips from 2024
Drivers averaged 28.6 miles a day in 2025, compared with 31.1 miles in 2024, and the national total came to an estimated 2.76 trillion miles, down from 2.95 trillion, the foundation's data shows. The brief's tables did not mark the change in average daily miles as statistically significant, and AAA said U.S. driving patterns in 2025 were largely steady relative to 2024.
Drivers also averaged 2.40 trips and 59.3 minutes behind the wheel each day. Mileage peaked from July through September at 32.2 miles a day and was lowest from January through March at 24.4 miles. Drivers in the South logged the most daily miles, at 32.4, and drivers in the West logged the fewest, at 24.3, AAA reported.
The survey's vehicle age and engine type figures come from respondents' reported driving, not vehicle registration counts. When a respondent had access to more than one vehicle, all of their trips were assigned the model year and engine type of the vehicle they drove most often.
Of 5,154 people surveyed in 2025, 4,575 gave a model year for their vehicle. AAA noted that the data is self-reported and that people may not accurately recall details such as how often, how long, and how far they drove.
