Regardless of how you choose to track your auto expenses, the knowledge you get from doing so will put you in the driver's seat when it comes to figuring out how much your vehicle is costing you to operate and documenting its value when it's time to get rid of it.
One can no more assess the work of scientists without examining the incentives and value systems under which they operate than one can assess the work of mortgage bankers without looking at the incentives and value systems that led them to drive the economy into a ditch.
However, climate modelers operate under very different incentives and value systems than those of the legions of cancer researchers who have spent 40 years fighting the most expensive medical battle in American history, thus far coming up short.