Car Depreciation Calculator

The drop is not literally 20% the second you cross the dealership exit, but most US studies (Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, Carfax) report new vehicles lose 9% to 11% in the first month and 20% to 25% over the first 12 months. The reason is simple: a 1-day-old car is now a used car. The next buyer wants a used-car discount on the same VIN, and dealers price wholesale-to-retail spreads that bake in their own margin. On a $35,000 sedan, that first-year cliff is about $7,000 to $8,750 of value gone before you have changed the oil. The only way to avoid the cliff is to let someone else absorb it: buying a 2 to 3-year-old vehicle skips the steepest part of the curve.

Pickup trucks are the slowest-depreciating mainstream vehicle class in the US, and the Toyota Tacoma is the textbook example. iSeeCars depreciation studies consistently rank the Tacoma at 20% to 32% depreciation over 5 years versus an industry average near 49%. Three things drive it: durable mechanicals (Tacomas commonly hit 250,000 miles with routine service), constant work-vehicle demand (contractors, ranchers, and outdoors buyers always need one), and Toyota's slow redesign cycle (the second-generation Tacoma ran from 2005 to 2015 essentially unchanged, so 10-year-old trucks did not look dated next to new ones). The Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado hold value almost as well for the same reasons. If resale matters more than the new-car experience, a truck is the highest-retention class on the lot.

Luxury sedans (BMW 5 Series, Mercedes E-Class, Audi A6, Genesis G80) routinely depreciate 55% to 65% over 5 years, well above the industry average. The driver is total cost of ownership: out-of-warranty repairs on a 5-year-old BMW can run $3,000 to $5,000 for a single major service, premium tires run $1,500 a set, and dealer-only diagnostic tools push owners back to the dealer at $200 per hour labor. Used buyers know this and price the risk in. Frequent model refreshes (Mercedes ships a redesigned S-Class every 7 years and a facelift mid-cycle) also make the prior generation look dated quickly. The same brand value that lets BMW charge $60,000 new is what lets a buyer get the same car for $25,000 three years later, because nobody wants to inherit a six-figure car with a five-figure repair bill.

Electric vehicle depreciation spiked from 2023 onward and is the highest of any class in our model. Three factors compounded. First, Tesla cut new-car prices six times in 2023 alone, sometimes by $10,000 in a single weekend, which instantly cratered the resale value of every Model 3 and Model Y already on the road. Second, the federal $7,500 EV tax credit applies to new cars only, so used EVs lost a structural pricing advantage relative to new ones. Third, battery technology and charging infrastructure are improving fast enough that a 4-year-old EV with a 250-mile range competes badly against a new one with 350 miles and faster charging. iSeeCars reported in 2024 that EVs as a category depreciated 49% over the first year, more than double the gasoline average. The model applies a 1.3x multiplier to EVs to reflect this elevated 2023-2025 rate; the curve may normalize as the market matures.

Effectively, yes. The model applies a 1.4x multiplier for rideshare use and 1.6x for commercial (delivery, fleet). Two mechanisms compound: mileage and interior wear. A typical US personal-use driver covers 12,000 miles a year, while a full-time Uber or Lyft driver covers 30,000 to 50,000 miles per year. At resale, KBB and Carfax dock $0.08 to $0.12 per excess mile against book value, so 50,000 miles a year past the baseline shaves $3,200 to $4,800 off the value annually before any wear adjustment. On top of that, used-car buyers and CarMax-style chains explicitly downgrade or refuse to buy ex-rideshare cars because of accelerated interior wear (driver seat, steering wheel, door cards) and the strong correlation with deferred maintenance. A 3-year-old Toyota Camry with 120,000 rideshare miles can sell for half what a personal-use Camry of the same year and trim sells for. Commercial use (Amazon Flex, delivery fleet) is even harder on the vehicle because of constant stop-and-go and curb impacts.