Age of Information (AoI) and Energy Cost (EC) are two significant performance metrics for real-time status update of Internet of Things systems to characterize information freshness and energy efficiency. This study is oriented toward a vehicular network system for short packet transmission, utilizing free-ride codes to achieve synchronized transmission of payload and extra data. The extra data encoded with random codes are superimposed on the Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) coded payload data to achieve one-step transmission of heterogeneous data, consuming neither extra transmission power nor extra bandwidth resources. In this scheme, the average AoI and EC expressions are derived for preemptive and blocking schemes with a truncated automatic repeat-request protocol. Numerical simulations show that free-ride codes can not only reduce the average AoI of extra data but also have a negligible impact on the AoI of payload data, all while requiring no additional EC. Moreover, a comparison with the blocking scheme suggests that the pre-emptive scheme obtains a smaller average AoI but a larger average EC.