Data & sources
Every number, traceable
DriveCostCheck runs entirely from a versioned local snapshot of official U.S. EPA / U.S. Department of Energy data published at FuelEconomy.gov. The site never calls government services at page load, and never modifies the source values — sentinel values meaning "not available" are shown as not published, never as numbers. DriveCostCheck is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the EPA or DOE.
How current each input is
The four inputs behind every figure on this site are refreshed on different schedules, so they are checked against different thresholds. Each age is measured from the date the observation is for — the week a gasoline price was recorded, the month an electricity price covers — not from the day the file happened to be downloaded.
| Input | As of | Age | Flagged after | Upstream cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicle data | processed Jul 26, 2026 | 31 days | 210 days | EPA republishes vehicles.csv a few times a year |
| National fuel prices | retrieved Aug 27, 2026 | 0 days | 30 days | FuelEconomy.gov refreshes its national averages about weekly |
| Gasoline prices | week ending Aug 24, 2026 | 3 days | 21 days | EIA publishes a new week every Monday |
| Electricity prices | EIA data month June 2026 | 57 days | 95 days | EIA publishes a new month about eight weeks in arrears |
The ages above were computed when this page was built. Your browser re-checks them against today's date and shows a notice at the top if anything is overdue. Refreshing is npm run data:update; npm run data:validate rebuilds from the local cache and reports what would change without publishing anything.
Snapshot files
| File | Retrieved | Upstream Last-Modified | Size | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| vehicles.csv.zip | 2026-07-24 | Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:51:12 GMT | 2.08 MB | 83ee4bf48e65e8e9… |
| emissions.csv.zip | 2026-07-24 | Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:51:13 GMT | 0.25 MB | 4bb1b2fa473f0b23… |
| fuelprices.xml | 2026-08-27 | not provided | 0.00 MB | d4be2b454c617ae4… |
| eia-epm-table-5-6-a.html | 2026-08-27 | not provided | 0.11 MB | 746ed8d38d9cbf4e… |
| eia-pswrgvwall.xls | 2026-08-27 | Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:18:37 GMT | 7.13 MB | 471ba6a367e5a589… |
| ympg-shared.json | 2026-07-24 | not provided | 0.03 MB | 106b3122c052e72f… |
What the snapshot contains
- 49,995 vehicle records, model years 1984–2027, parser v1.0.0, processed 2026-07-26.
- Validation: 0 errors, 12warnings (details in the repository's DATA_QUALITY_REPORT.md).
- Field definitions follow the official web-service documentation: fueleconomy.gov/feg/ws/ · fueleconomy.gov/feg/download.shtml
Fuel and electricity prices
Liquid and gaseous fuel defaults are the official FuelEconomy.gov national averages retrieved 2026-08-27: regular $4.10/gal, midgrade $4.68/gal, premium $5.07/gal, diesel $5.31/gal, E85 $2.63/gal, CNG $2.96/GGE, propane $3.42/gal. Local prices differ — every calculator lets you override them, and custom values are marked.
Electricity is the exception. The default is 18.3¢/kWh — EIA's U.S. Total residential price for June 2026, not FuelEconomy.gov's 15.0¢. Every per-state electricity price on this site comes from that same EIA table, so the national fallback is drawn from it too: a default from a different source would sit below states this site describes as below-average, and picking your state would raise your cost while the page called you cheap.
Imagery
Every image on this site is original DriveCostCheck artwork, drawn in code: the logo, the icons, the social share cards, and the engraved body-style plate on each vehicle page. No stock or third-party photography is used. Full asset provenance lives in the repository's ASSET_SOURCES.md.
The engraved vehicle drawing is a generic silhouette for the EPA body class, not a likeness of the specific model — each plate says so beneath the illustration.
Questions or discrepancies? See Corrections.