? @bump, where’s this paid-off car magically coming from in your assessment of how much car ownership costs annually? And not factoring in any major maintenance costs over a lifetime of car ownership also seems a bit unrealistic.
ETA: Yes, as other posters have said, average total costs of car ownership are estimated at way more than $5K+ annually. I came up with that figure for my average annual savings via generous estimates of how much I spend on transport that I would avoid if I owned and drove a car, and also allowing for the fact that car ownership for most of my adult life has been quite a bit cheaper than it is now.
I agree that “assuming your car is paid off” is a flaw in the math. It’s been a while since I had an accounting class, but that suggests that you’re assigning 100% of the purchase price to the car ownership costs in the first year only rather than spreading it out over the lifetime of the vehicle.
That depends- what’s low density? I’m going to guess you wouldn’t consider my neighborhood of mostly detached or semi-detached single family houses to be low density since the lots are mostly 20 feet wide. At any rate, it’s dense enough for carless households to be common - and even the ones that aren’t carless don’t generally have one car per person of driving age like most people I know who live in the suburbs.
But that’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing- do people have fewer cars in my neighborhood because of the good public transit and ease of not having a car or does the public transit and density make owning a car cost more either in cash or time? Until my husband retired we had two cars. Insurance was $6K a year. The garage we rented to avoid driving around to find parking was $4800 a year. That’s before any gas or repairs or maintenance or having to pay for parking at work or the mall or anywhere else. Because in a place that’s not optimized for driving, there isn’t free parking at every office/store/library/doctor’s office. Which is not really “free” - it just isn’t paid for per use.
FWIW, the IRS mileage rate for 2026 is 76 cents per mile. That’s the rate the IRS figures correctly offsets all costs (fixed and variable) for the average car of average age used by the average person in pursuit of their business.
It’s been decades (Yikes! I got old! ) since I had a business where mileage deductibility was relevant to my own car usage. But back when it was I found that the IRS rate then was well below reality. I have no reason to think it’s any better here in 2026. In fact due to the way inflation works, and especially recent car price inflation, I’d bet the IRS number is even more behind reality now than it was then.
Turning to mileage …
The common standard used for annual mileage is 12K miles. 12,000 * $0.76 = $9,120.
So there’s another corroboration via a different line of thinking of the general notion that typical car ownership runs well north of $5K. And can be lots more real easily. @Kimstu saving $5K by her math demonstrates she’s an uncommonly frugal person. Good for her.
None of which is really relevant to the larger question of “public transit: yeah or nay?”
Until we start building new cities of a deliberately different design, and abandon the ones we already have, we’re not going to get large scale public transit in the USA. And that’s clearly a silly idea that’ll never happen. So all discussions about wanting to increase public transit for a hefty fraction of the USA are unaffordable and hence moot.
I could imagine a future world where a corporate-owned fleet of self-driving cars largely replaced individual car ownership within suburbia and more urban areas. First it would replace much of second car owwnership.
But I can’t imagine a world where Los Angeles or Dallas or the Greater Miami metroblob here is effectively blanketed with any mobility solution other than car-like devices that deliver individual people point-to-point.
Today was a typical errand day for me. I’ve been to 7 places so far and have at least 1 more to go, perhaps 2. Total mileage: ~25 now, probably 35 before I’m done. There is no way in hell a bus or train is going to take me that distance to those randomly shotgunned locations in anything like a timely manner. And that degree of convenience and more importantly, that degree of time efficiency is the minimum acceptable level to everyone who can afford it.
I completely agree with you that many many prople are, very reasonably, going to want a personally owned and operated individual vehicle rather than fixed route mass transit for taking care of business around town even in fairly densely populated metropolitan areas.
But it’s still pretty crazy to take for granted that that vehicle should almost always be a highway-capable multi-passenger two-ton behemoth. I mean, how much of your 35-mile errand running today was done, or had to be done, on high-speed highways? How much of it required anything like your car’s full cargo capacity? Assuming your region had roadways that were reasonably safe for a tiny lightweight electric-runabout type vehicle that could go maybe 45 miles per hour tops (scooter car or street-legal GEM car sort of thing), would that handle your errand days reasonably satisfactorily?
Because if so, and if that setup was available for under say $10K per vehicle, I think a lot of people would be amenable to having one of those far more frugal and efficient puttputts to run around town with, instead of dragging the family behemoth everywhere they go.
I need room for 3 child safety seats in the second row, plus it can’t be one of those mini-cars which tend to be no where near as safe as a regular car with side impact protection, airbags, crumple zones, reinforced roof pillars, etc because I barely survived a rear-ending in a full sized Honda Civic. Even then I have a TBI that changed my life drastically. I’m not going to risk that again and I’m sure not going to risk those 3 kids in those safety seats. A Suburu Outback I’d as small as I can go.
See, this is the size escalation that most of Europe has avoided by making it more expensive and less convenient (separate licensing) for large vehicles. Their safety ratings also include how much damage each car does to a standard test vehicle (and to pedestrians). Those numbers are published, and can be used by regulators, tax authorities, etc.
No one person can impact this problem on their own.
There’s nothing wrong with a Subaru Outback, really, but also the existence of the Outback killed the Legacy Wagon – the Outback is just a Legacy Wagon with a higher center of gravity, more mass, more body roll, and (depending on OEM tire selection) worse traction. Basically, it’s a less safe version of a vehicle that American consumers didn’t want because Wagons are seen as lame.
But like I said, it’s really not a behemoth. Your average EV is a half ton heavier.
Well, I’m thinking more about typical TCB-type solo trips around town where most people wouldn’t want or need to be hauling around three small children.
(The fact that American society is also structured so that the average mother of three small children can’t accomplish any routine errands without carting said children out onto all-access roadways to play keepaway with dozens or hundreds of heavy powerful high-speed vehicles is probably a topic for a different thread. Suffice it to say that, given that the #1 cause of death for children is motor vehicle crashes, probably the best thing we could do for child safety is not so much strapping them into ever heavier and tougher cars but rather figuring out ways to let them spend less time in cars in the first place.)
My daughter had a car that fit your description perfectly. A 2012 Toyota Scion IQ. 120" long, three-cylinder engine, CVT transmission, 40 mpg in city driving without even trying. She bought it used for just $7500. Unfortunately, a low-speed collision with a pickup truck utterly demolished the entire right side of the vehicle. She was unhurt, but said, “no more tiny cars,” and used the insurance money to get a RAV 4.
Toyota sold fewer than 16,000 IQs in the U.S., mostly on the West Coast, before discontinuing it. Now I see people in my suburb zooming around in glorified golf carts that make my daughter’s IQ look like a Hummer. Once they get out of their subdivisions and on to even a secondary road, it looks like an accident waiting to happen.
Thank you. It is regrettable about the Legacy wagon but I doubt it would have worked for my 3 car seats across if it could be found. Their parents traded in their Legacy sedan because 3 child seats just.did.not.fit.
I’ve driven sedans until the Outback. I looked for a Suburu for its safety record after my TBI. I’m old enough and now short enough that the SUV is much easier for me to get in and out of as well as sitting up higher gives me a much better field of vision, which is important for us geezers. If this ends up not being my last car, the next one will be a Suburu Forester, Crosstek or Outback too.
Well the Legacy and the Outback were literally the same vehicle other than the suspension and a few other changes. Same rear seats.
The new Outback is bigger than the older Outbacks because cars always seem to get bigger. So if they traded a Legacy (which hasn’t been sold in a while) for a newer Outback, it makes sense that it would be a bit wider. But the Legacy version, had they still made it, would be too.
I’m single. I can own the all purpose car OR the all purpose car and a second puttputt.
That puttputt has to have near zero cost of operation to offset its capital and insurance costs. And for hardcore urban people like me, overcome the difficulty and expense of storing the second vehicle.
This is similar to the discussions of urban or suburban couples who get along just fine w an ICE & a short-range EV. The latter is half-capable, but most couples only need 1-1/2 cars-worth of capability.
But yes, to your narrow point everthing I did today could be readily done w a 45mph 1-person puttputt w air conditioning. Net of the crashworthiness issues addressed by others above.
How often do you need the “all purpose car” to do something the puttputt cannot do? I know people who own pickup trucks or large SUVs for those twice annual trips to move the boat to the lake or to take it out of the lake.
They traded the Legacy sedan for one of the smaller Hyundai SUVs. I’m (Grandma) the one who at about the same time got a 2013 Outback. I watched as my son in law strove mightily to try to get 3 child seats buckled into the Legacy back seat-could not be done.
Oh I see. Was the Hyundai a 3-row? My kids are older but I was never able to find any vehicle that fit 3 car seats in one row. Car seats are just huge. I ended up with a 3-row Mazda 5 (a 6 seater based on the Mazda3 platform, great car and great packaging that never took off in the US) and then eventually a conventional minivan.
I doubt 3 car seats* would fit in the Outback. This is honestly another thing people don’t really talk about, having 2 kids is so much easier than 3 kids partly because the 3rd requires a massive change in one’s vehicle lineup.
But now 3-row SUVs are the default family car and I think that’s just sad, first of all because the minivan version of any 3-row SUV is going to be 20% cheaper and secondly because no one ever gave cars like the Mazda5 a shot.
As to me, probably 3x week. Out to dinner 25 miles down the freeway, off to downtown 45 miles away for a show or a sporting event, etc.
But …
I drive an expensive status car. No excuses, no bragging, just a fact. I bet I could sell it and spend $250 a pop on roundtrip ubers to downtown instead and still be cash ahead at monthend. So my use of my all-purpose car doesn’t really justify the expense.
There’s another other obstacle akin to, but different from, the puttputt’s crashworthiness problem.
This area has a recilinear grid of boulevards in dense urban & big lots = undense suburban zones. Typically 2 or 3 lanes each way plus turn pockets. Published speed limits are 30, 35, 40, or 45 depending on the pedestrian, crossstreet, and driveway density. So far so ordinary.
The problem is the actual speed of traffic is limit + 20mph. 65 in a 45mph zone is commonplace. Ditto 50 in a 30. I’m not eager to drive a slow accelerating vehicle that tops out at 45 among even subcompacts at those speeds. Much less among jacked-up F-250s. And trying to avoid the network of boulevards by meandering through housing or commercial areas is generally impractical and often impossible.
I totally agree w your point about the 2x/year boat-tow truck. So dumb. Rent that shit. I sure did.
) since I had a business where mileage deductibility was relevant to my own car usage. But back when it was I found that the IRS rate then was well below reality. I have no reason to think it’s any better here in 2026. In fact due to the way inflation works, and especially recent car price inflation, I’d bet the IRS number is even more behind reality now than it was then.