Which Cars Cost Us the Most and the Least to Maintain, and Why?

Porsche's SUVs are quite different from its sports cars, but they're similarly expensive to own. Our long-term Cayenne tallied $2677 over its three scheduled maintenance visits (as with the 718 Cayman, the first visit was free). Not only are Porsche's dealership visits expensive on their own, but some of Porsche's competitors such as BMW offer a more generous complimentary scheduled maintenance policy, which also helps keeps initial ownership costs down.

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Mazda took a step upscale with its new three-row CX-90 SUV, introducing a new platform and powertrain, and its service receipts looked a bit more like what you'd expect from a luxury SUV than a mainstream one. For reference, other rival three-row SUVs that we've put through our long-term test regimen have racked up lower service totals, such as the 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander ($938), 2020 Kia Telluride ($728), and 2019 Subaru Ascent ($821).

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During our time with Honda's first-generation CR-V Hybrid, we made three scheduled service stops for the usual stuff: oil changes, tire rotations, various filter replacements, and the like. It all came out to a total that was less than we paid for another similarly priced small SUV, the Mazda CX-30 that totaled $781. And that's without any complimentary scheduled maintenance.

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We haven't had too many full-size pickup trucks in our recent long-term arsenal, but Toyota's latest Tundra was far more expensive to maintain than our long-term 2019 Ram 1500 was ($425). A particularly expensive 30,000-mile service was largely to blame for the Toyota's high costs; that visit included air filter replacements, an oil change, a tire rotation, differential fluid changes, and oil replacement for the transfer case.

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The Maverick is a small pickup truck that also proved to have relatively small maintenance costs during our time with this practical machine. Ford doesn't include any complimentary maintenance, but our four scheduled stops were all relatively affordable.

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Honda Civics are known for being affordable and economical, and even the fun version—the sporty Si model—proved to be inexpensive to own during our time with an eleventh-gen example. We didn't pay much for any of the Civic's three scheduled stops for oil changes, tire rotations, and filter changes, as even the most expensive bill came in at just over $150. Even our top-dog 2019 Civic Type R cost about the same for service ($369), although it burns through its specialized tires quickly, which will add a lot to the operating costs.

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Maintaining an electric vehicle is an entirely different proposition than maintaining a gasoline car. For one thing, there's no engine oil to change. So it's no huge surprise that our long-term Kia EV9 ended up being less expensive to maintain than comparable gas-powered three-row SUVs. Other than the BMW i4, which, like the M3, cost nada thanks to the included-maintenance program, the EV9 was our cheapest EV to maintain, followed closely by the Rivian R1T ($405) and Tesla Model 3 ($432).

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Complimentary maintenance came into play with our long-term Sonata N Line, as all but one of its scheduled service stops were covered by Hyundai's plan at the time. Unfortunately, Hyundai ended its coverage starting with the 2026 model year, so those buying new Hyundais now won't benefit from the same free service stops.