Lowest True Cost to Own® Vehicles for May 2011

Have you ever wondered which new vehicles are the least expensive to own? We're talking about the vehicles not necessarily with the lowest purchase price, but with the lowest total ownership cost? Well, Edmunds.com's editors and data analysts decided to roll up their sleeves and figure that out.

We started by gathering all of the necessary data, and then used our proprietary True Cost to Own® (TCO®) algorithms to estimate the five-year cost of owning each new vehicle currently in the market. The result is our list of those vehicles with the lowest overall ownership cost in their respective segments. A model's competitive segment was determined by (i) its body type, and (ii) the sales-weighted average MSRP of all available styles (excluding destination charges) of that model's body type.

For more information on how we calculate TCO®, and the assumptions that we use, see our About TCO article.

The models listed on this page are updated monthly.