Welcome to the latest installment of Fleet Data Depot, which provides snapshots of information, trends, and analysis relevant to the fleet market.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) experts at Vincentric deliver another quarterly update on ownership costs for fleets. These fleet cost-per-mile calculations are for the third quarter of 2024.

This analysis is based on vehicles driven 20,000 miles per year for three years. As usual, Vincentric calculates its standard eight cost elements: depreciation, financing, fees and taxes, fuel, insurance, maintenance, opportunity cost, and repairs.

Ownership Costs Remain Flat in Q3

The Fleet Cost per Mile for each vehicle category either decreased slightly or remained the same for this quarter:

• Luxury Cars: No change

• Luxury SUVs: No change

• Passenger Cars: decreased ~1.5%

• Pickups: No change

• SUVs: decreased ~1.1%

This follows the second quarter, in which ownership costs were also flat, after 10 months of cost increases. 

In Q3, every vehicle category saw a 3% to 5% decrease in the finance cost category due to a steady decrease in interest rates throughout this year and a 3% to 5% decrease in the fuel category due to lower fuel prices since June. 

Conversely, every vehicle category saw a maintenance category cost increase of 2% to 6%. Vincentric attributes this in part to refreshed maintenance data since last quarter, which includes updates to labor times and parts prices that affect maintenance costs. 

Additionally, Vincentric reports it is still receiving MY-25 vehicles from its data provider, which affects the costs for all vehicle categories. Of note is a slight increase in depreciation for all vehicle categories except Passenger Cars.