cost of owning a car is between 3k and 9k yearly

Maybe if you drive a fancy new car, but an older, reliable car can be much cheaper. For example, I drive a Toyota Prius that I’ve had for 10 years, and I paid $10k for it (approximately, and cash, so no financing). I’ve driven about 100k miles, spent about $3k on repairs, and have spent about $500/year on insurance. So an estimate for total costs is:

• gas - $7.8k (~45mpg @ $3.5/gallon)
• insurance - $5k
• repairs - $3k
• depreciation - $7k (assuming $3k value if I sold)
• taxes and fees - $2k (~$100/year registration + emissions cost)
• regular maintenance - $500? (I change my own oil, so $20/oil change every 5k miles, plus spark plugs, headlights, etc)
• tires - $1200 (changed them twice for ~$500-600 each time)

Total cost over 10 years is $27000, or about $2.7k/year.

So that $3k/year low end figure is actually a little high for me, and I ended up rounding most of these things up. I’m guessing a cheap EV could come out even cheaper.

So if you’re cheap like me when it comes to cars, owning a horse could be about 10x the cost of a car.