Most expensive states for car ownership

There’s nothing surprising about the fact that the actual cost of owning car, basic taxes and insurance costs that everybody has to pay, can vary across all 50 U.S. states. What comes as a bit surprise is that this variance can top roughly $10,000 between some states over a five year period.

This was the result of a new study run by Edmunds that calculated the average vehicle ownership costs by model and region, taking into account the whole gamut of vehicle related costs - including depreciation, financing, taxes, fees, insurance premiums, fuel costs, maintenance and repairs.

Taking into account all of these factors, Hawaii, California, Alaska, Nevada and West Virginia were declared the most expensive states to own a car as these had significantly higher taxes and fees than most of the other states and in some cases double the insurance costs. At the other end of the scale, New Hampshire, South Dakota, South Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin were determined to be the states with the lowest average costs.

A simplified version of the tool used to calculate the costs is now online, so click here to find out how much your car is costing you.