2012 cost of operating a motor vehicle
The just released 2012
Your Driving Costs survey, conducted by the American Automobile Association, estimated the cost of owning and operating a new midsize sedan at 59.6 cents per mile - equating to an average of $8,946 in yearly costs, based upon 15,000 miles of annual driving.
This comes up once in a while on AU, so I thought I'd link to the latest numbers.
Owning and operating. The cost of operating a car you already own is in the mid-twenty cent a mile range.
The answer is somewhere in the middle...it depends on what costs are wholly fixed, wholly mileage-dependent, and which ones are a mix. For example:
-Property taxes and license fees, when applied to cars, are generally fixed.
-Fuel is pretty much mileage-dependent.
-Maintenance is a mixture, but tends to be mileage-dependent.
-Insurance is a mixture as well...part of it is fixed, but if you drive a lot/have a long commute, you can expect to pay more; if you don't drive much, you'll often get a little bit knocked off the cost.
-Depreciation is...whatever your accountant makes it. You can depreciate based on mileage, based on expected ownership time, etc. If you drive a lot more than "normal", you should
probably assume that you're either going to own the car for a shorter period of time (i.e. 8 years instead of 10) or that you'll be doing extraordinary maintenance on the car to keep it in good condition, running up depreciation costs.
I would note that really, only the insurance (at a low level) and taxes/fees are going to stick around if you own the car but don't drive it. Depreciation may remain in some form, but a low-mileage older car can often fetch more at salvage (i.e. when you sell it) than one with a lot of mileage.