https://maxmautner.com/2026/10/11/how-fast-is-a-car.html
The median American worker earns $23.80/hour, or ~$19 after taxes. A used car driven the US average of ~10,900 miles a year costs ~$8,200, counting $1,700 a year for a parking space at home. That is ~430 hours of work before the car moves. A new car takes ~700 hours. A $999 e-bike ridden 3,000 miles a year takes ~25 hours.
I love urbanism, I love bikes, I love e-bikes. Fuck cars! Buuuuut… yeah, the numbers are insanely inflated.
Not everybody has to pay to park their car at home. I drive a $4500 manual transmission beater and, other than insurance, the math really ain’t adding up:
So gas, insurance, and minimum maintenance comes out to $2750 a year. Now that I’ve had the car for 4 years, the cost of the car is spread out to an additional $1125/year, so the full total becomes $3875/year. That’s assuming the car dies today of course.
In addition to the general maintenance costs of oil changes and tire replacement, these sources typically calculate “wear and tear” per mile to estimate repair costs per vehicle mile travelled while accounting for major expected repairs over the lifetime of the car. These are also going to be skewed based on average usage across the country, using a composite mpg. Your own costs will vary, but these averages also take into account the commuter using a Ford F350 to sit in urban traffic for 30 minutes at 15mpg.
The cost of parking a car at home is typically not reflective of paid parking spaces for apartment complexes with garages, but estimates the cost per square foot based on an average home value and an average mortgage. The post also states that there are considerations made for, e.g., time spent finding parking–so the cost in time is estimated as a function of the model’s average hourly wage variable.
If you own a beater that you can do basic maintenance on, if you own your home or have free street parking, if your car gets 40mpg, you’ll end up with lower costs than average. Some of these costs are externalized (longer commute for the mandatory zoning regulations to build houses with parking), and some of them are lower because of frugality (buying older beaters, not fixing the broken air conditioning). But that doesn’t mean that these aren’t the average numbers for the median car owner in the US, whose habits are more expensive.
just to note, that just shifts the monetary costs from one person to all of society
I can 100% see this angle, so I think the only addendum I’d make to the article would be to also add data visualization for “frugal” car ownership. Of course the e-bike will pull out ahead every time though