You make a solid point, I’d only say you’re overestimating a marginal cost of a minute of travel. Unless you’re doing a long freeway trip (which is unlikely in the context of going to Target), your average speed will be closer to 30 mph. That means that you’ll burn less than 2 gallons of gas (closer to 1 in fact) per hour, and even at today’s gas prices, that will come down to less than $.15/minute. Maintenance and amortization, as a good rule of thumb, are around equal to the cost of fuel, so you’re unlikely to reach $.40/minute, much less $.60, unless you drive expensive, fuel inefficient car at highway speeds for extended periods.

The rest of your comment, however, I fully agree with.

IRS gives almost $0.60 per mile:

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rat...

> The standard mileage rate for business use is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile.

I also incorporate morbidity/mortality risks associated with driving, considering it is the riskiest thing people do on a day to day basis which very well could result in loss of income due to not being able to work and other costs.

I also expect inflation to keep driving up replacement cost of cars (and repairs).

Finally, I am under the impression that short distance start and stop driving is more costly via wear and tear than long distance highway driving.

I think they’re overestimating, but more importantly, they also include fixed costs in those figures, while the parent comment was talking about cost of a marginal minute once you already have a car.

I presume that a car would have to be replaced after it is no longer useful, so the replacement cost needs to be amortized over all the miles in the current car.

Yes, if you are looking for a full cost of driving, but not if you are talking about marginal minute of use of a car you already have.

And then you end up with huge parking lots and traffic problems because everything is so far away.