About TrueDriveCost

TrueDriveCost builds free, no-nonsense calculators for the real cost of owning a car. Most car tools stop at the monthly payment. Ours go all the way to the number that matters — depreciation, fuel, insurance, interest, maintenance and fees, summed into the true cost per year, per month and per mile.

Every one of our 11 calculators shows the formula and the assumptions behind its result, and our national-average defaults come from primary sources — AAA, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the EPA — each dated so you can see when it was last checked.

Who builds it

TrueDriveCost is built by David Miles, a web developer who builds focused, source-backed calculator tools across the Modern Site Builders network. The same author entity and editorial standards sit behind every site in the network, so the methodology you see here is the one applied everywhere.

Our standards

• Every figure carries a primary source and a date — we never cite numbers from memory.
• Prose uses rounded, evergreen figures; exact, dated numbers live on the pages that show their sources.
• We correct the record when we are wrong. The federal EV tax credit ended on September 30, 2025, and our tools reflect that.
• Results are estimates for planning, not financial advice. Confirm exact figures with a lender, insurer or your state DMV.