A new tool from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Vehicle Cost Calculator uses basic information about your driving habits to calculate total cost of ownership and emissions for makes and models of most vehicles, including alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles.
It is a high-level screening tool that compares the ownership costs and greenhouse gas emissions among alternative fuel vehicles, advanced technology vehicles, and conventional vehicles currently on the market.
A user selects vehicles to compare by model year, make, and model. For each vehicle selected, the calculator retrieves the city and highway fuel economy from the database licensed from fueleconomy.gov with data sourced from Edmunds. For most vehicles, a range of prices is possible depending on what options the buyer selects. For these vehicles, we present the possible low and high prices, and use the low price as the default value. The user may override the default price to better reflect the particular model of choice. For some models, a single price is available.
As each vehicle is selected, the fuel type and price is shown below the selected vehicles. The prices are based on a national average, as reported in the quarterly Alternative Fuel Price Report. The user may change the fuel price to reflect local prices.
To accurately calculate fuel costs for selected vehicles it is important to know how a user drives and how much of the vehicle's total mileage is driven using each fuel type. This is especially important for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which operate using both gasoline and electricity from the grid. The default values provided in this section are derived from U.S. averages reported by the Summary of Travel Trends, 2001 National Household Transportation Survey. The user may tailor this information to his or her situation by modifying the supplied values
Try out the Vehicle Cost Calculator by visiting: www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/calc/.