1. A system for determining costs of vehicle ownership, the system comprising: a computer processor; a network interface coupled to the processor; a data storage device coupled to the processor; wherein the processor is configured to receive a request over the network interface including information identifying a user-specified vehicle of interest and a user-specified ownership interval of interest over the network interface, respond to the request over the network interface in real-time using the processor configured to: identify one or more pre-calculated data items that are stored in the data storage device and retrieve the identified pre-calculated data items from the data storage device, request one or more external data items from an external data source and receive the requested external data items from the external data source via the network interface asynchronously to the retrieval of the identified pre-calculated data items from the data storage device of the system, compute a cost of vehicle ownership for the vehicle of interest using the one or more pre-calculated data items, wherein the cost of vehicle ownership is the cost incurred while owning the user-specified vehicle during the user-specified ownership interval, the cost is expressed as a net present value, and at least one of the one or more pre-calculated data items is associated with a repair cost for the user-specified vehicle during the user-specified ownership interval and the repair cost is determined based on one or more bins of repair data, each bin of historical repair data associated with a year, make and model of the user-specified vehicle of interest, and output the cost of vehicle ownership for the vehicle of interest to a user in real-time via the network interface.