What Is the IAVTA?
The International Association for Vehicle Transparency & Accountability was founded in 2026 to give car buyers what the sticker price leaves out: a single number that captures every cost of owning a vehicle, divided by every mile it has left.
That number lets you compare a three-year-old sedan to a brand-new truck on the same playing field. It accounts for purchase price, financing, insurance, fuel, maintenance, repairs, state fees, and how long each vehicle is likely to last. The result is a per-mile cost you can use to make a more informed decision.
Why Cost Per Mile Remaining?
A $15,000 car isn't cheap if it needs $4,000 in repairs and only has 30,000 miles left. A $35,000 car isn't expensive if it'll run for another 180,000 miles with minimal upkeep. Cost per mile remaining (CPMR) is the only metric that captures the full picture.
CPMR adds up every dollar you'll spend: purchase price, loan interest, insurance premiums, fuel, scheduled maintenance, expected repairs, and your state's taxes and fees. Then it divides that total by how many miles the vehicle is likely to have left. The result is a single, comparable number: what each mile will actually cost you.
This lets you compare a 2019 Honda Civic to a 2024 BMW X3 on the same playing field. It reveals when a "cheap" car is secretly expensive, and when a pricier one is the smarter long-term investment.
How It Works
One Metric, Full Picture
We divide total ownership cost by estimated miles remaining, based on each brand's real-world reliability and longevity data. One number tells you everything.
Seven Cost Components
Purchase price, financing, insurance, fuel, maintenance, repairs, and state fees. Toggle any cost on or off to model your personal situation.
Every Trim & Year
Thousands of individual trims across up to 20 years of model history, so you can compare across generations and packages.
Built on Real Market Data
Our pricing data comes from the same sources dealers and lenders use, drawn from millions of actual vehicle transactions and hundreds of thousands of current listings across the U.S. market. Every figure reflects what cars are actually selling for right now.
Market Pricing
Fair market values derived from millions of real sales and current dealer/private listings, updated monthly.
Interest Rates
Live 60-month auto loan rates from the Federal Reserve, with the real-world spread between new and used financing.
Fuel Prices
Weekly gasoline and electricity prices from federal energy data, combined with EPA fuel economy ratings for each trim.
Ownership Costs
Five-year insurance, maintenance, and repair estimates at the model level, scaled by vehicle age to reflect real-world wear.
Vehicle Longevity
Brand-level lifetime mileage estimates from reliability studies and survival analyses of 15+ million vehicles on the road.
State Fees
Sales tax, registration, and inspection fees for all 50 states, applied based on where each vehicle is listed.
Why This Approach Works
It normalizes across price ranges
A $50,000 truck and a $12,000 sedan look nothing alike on a dealer lot. But when you see that they both cost $0.42/mile, you can make a real comparison based on value, not just sticker shock.
It accounts for longevity
A Toyota with 100,000 miles still has a long road ahead. A luxury brand at the same mileage may be nearing end-of-life. CPMR factors in how far each vehicle is likely to go, not just how old it is.
It catches the hidden costs
Some cars are cheap to buy but expensive to insure, fuel, and maintain. Others cost more upfront but save you thousands over the ownership period. CPMR shows the real total, not just the headline number.
Cheapest Common Cars to Own
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