Cost of Driving: How Does Illinois Compare?

The dings to your wallet don’t stop at the purchase price when you drive your new or used car off the lot. How hard those hits are for maintenance, gas and insurance depends on where you live. With the high price of gas in the Land of Lincoln, you’d expect Illinois to be among the most costly of states for drivers.

However, Illinois ranks 41st, putting our great state in the top 10 of least expensive places to drive a car, according to 24/7 Wall St. The cost of purchasing a vehicle was not included in the analysis. The most expensive state is just to our northeast: Michigan, where total operating cost is $4,678. The total operating cost in Illinois is $3,158.

Here’s the 24/7 Wall St. analysis:

Illinois was home to over 8.2 million licensed drivers, the sixth highest figure in the country. At an average price of $2.91 a gallon, fuel costs in Illinois are the 11th highest in the nation. Additionally, people tend to drive more in Illinois — a total of about 105.3 billion vehicle miles a year — the seventh highest statewide figure. Consequently, drivers in the state consumed a total of nearly 6 billion gallons of fuel each year. As in most states, fuel was the single largest expense for motorists in Illinois, accounting for 54.2% of the total cost of operating a vehicle, 2.2 percentage points higher than the corresponding national figure. Despite higher than average fuel costs and relatively high total miles driven, owning and operating a vehicle was not as expensive in Illinois as it was in most states. Total annual operating costs in the state amounted to an average of $3,158, several hundred dollars cheaper than the national average of $3,541.

• No. of vehicles per 1,000 people: 791 (12th lowest)
• Avg. price of gas: $2.91 (11th highest)
• Avg. insurance premium: $1,079 (13th lowest)

Here are the next nine most expensive states in the U.S. to drive a car:

• Mississippi
• North Dakota
• California
• Maryland
• West Virginia
• Wyoming
• Louisiana
• Texas
• Georgia

» more via 24/7 Wall St.

CURIOUS HOW CAR INSURANCE RATES STACK UP, STATE BY STATE?

Check out this database via Insure.com.