Estimate vehicle depreciation over time and calculate future resale value by year.
Enter the price you paid or plan to pay, how long you plan to keep the car, and the annual rate at which it loses value, and the tool projects the vehicle's worth for each year of ownership, ending with its future resale value. Each year's figure is the previous year's value reduced by the same annual percentage, so the dollar loss shrinks every year while the percentage stays constant. The result that surprises most people: the largest dollar drop is always the first year, so a new car loses more in its first 12 months than in any later year.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Purchase price: $25,000 | Years to keep: 4 | Annual depreciation rate: 20%
Expected output
Year 1: $20,000 | Year 2: $16,000 | Year 3: $12,800 | Year 4: $10,240 | Total lost: $14,760 (59.04% of purchase price)
Each year's value is the previous year's value reduced by 20%, so the dollar loss falls from $5,000 in year one to $2,560 in year four while the percentage stays constant. The final row is the estimated resale value; purchase price minus cumulative loss is $25,000 - $14,760 = $10,240, which reconciles the two figures.
The tool applies the annual depreciation rate to the previous year's value, not to the original price, so each year's loss is computed against a shrinking base. That produces a running table: the same percentage every year, with dollar losses that decline steadily. Reading the row for the year you expect to sell gives the estimated resale value at that age.
Besides each year's value, the tool reports the cumulative picture: the total amount of the purchase price already lost and the share of the original price the vehicle still holds. The two figures are complementary - resale value plus cumulative loss always equals the purchase price - which makes it easy to see both what the car is worth and what keeping it has cost.
Probably not. Trade-in offers start from wholesale or auction value, which runs below the retail resale figure this tool estimates, and the dealer then adjusts for condition, mileage, and how easy the car is to sell. Expect an offer below the tool's number, and expect a private sale to land closer to it.
No. It uses only the price, the years, and the depreciation rate you enter, and it applies the same annual percentage to every year. An exceptionally clean, low-mileage car will beat the projection; a high-mileage or damaged one will fall short of it. Treat the result as the baseline for a typical car, then adjust by judgment.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
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