Advanced options
Uses typical rates: about 20% in the first year of a new car, then 15% a year. Real depreciation varies hugely by make, mileage, condition, fuel type and market; check actual used prices for your model.
What The Car Depreciation Calculator Works Out
- Projected value: today's value reduced by the first-year rate (about 20% for a brand new car, the drive-off-the-forecourt drop) and then by about 15% a year, compounding. A GBP 30,000 new car lands near GBP 17,000 after three years; the commonly quoted benchmark is 40% to 50% of list price retained after three years and 60,000 miles, though models range from under 30% to over 65%.
- Value lost: today's value minus the projected value, with the percentage underneath. For most newer cars this quietly outcosts fuel, insurance and servicing put together.
- Cost per year: the total loss spread evenly across the years projected. The year-by-year table shows the real shape: steepest in year one, flattening through years three to five, and a trickle by year eight, which is how bangernomics works.
- Depreciation rates (advanced): override the 20% and 15% defaults. Desirable or scarce models can hold value at 10% a year; unloved large saloons, high-mileage diesels and some EVs have lost 25% to 35% in a single year as the used market reset.
- Cost per month (advanced): the yearly loss divided by twelve, which is roughly what a lease or PCP payment is built from, since those are essentially depreciation plus interest. A car that holds value leases cheaply.
- Cost per mile (advanced): the loss divided by the miles you will cover, so you can set depreciation beside fuel at 12p to 20p a mile. Around 10,000 miles a year is the pricing norm; higher mileage drags values down further than the rate alone suggests.
- Residual value (advanced): the projected value as a percentage of today's. Trade guides work in these percentages, and the honest market price is whatever the same car with the same miles sells for on the classifieds.
- Saving by buying at one year old (advanced): the first-year drop on a new car, which is the premium you pay for the new-car smell. It is why the nearly-new and three-year-old ex-lease markets exist and why years four to eight are usually the cheapest years of a car's life to own.
- Total loss since you bought it (advanced): if you already own the car, enter what you paid and the card adds the fall from purchase to today onto the projected loss, giving the whole-life cost of ownership so far.