This December 2012 paper calculates expenditures on a variety of costs of car ownership from the 2006-2010 waves of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). The Consumer Expenditure Survey is conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and tracks the expenditure patterns of a representative set of U.S. households.  This research was undertaken to provide a measure of the costs of auto ownership and usage based on reported expenditures for use in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Location Affordability Index (LAI), a measure of housing and transportation costs based on location.