Vehicle EconomicsNew vs Used Car Calculator
Compare a specified new vehicle against a specified used alternative over the same horizon.
Why this comes up
"New or used" is one of the oldest questions in car buying, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on the specific two vehicles in front of you, not a universal rule. This engine compares your actual new and used options on total cost, and finds how much bad luck the used option could absorb before new becomes the better deal.
How we calculated this
Each option sums its own total cost over your chosen horizon: financing interest, depreciation, fuel or energy, insurance, maintenance, repairs, and transaction costs. Separately, we solve how much additional unexpected repair cost the used option could absorb before the new option becomes cheaper.
Worked example, using this page's own defaults: the used option wins by a real margin over 3 years, but could absorb thousands more in surprise repairs before new pulls ahead, run the calculator above for your own numbers.
What this means
- Used savings can disappear with a run of bad luck on repairs, but there's no universal rule for how likely that is, this is a modeled scenario, not a probability.
- Financing rates often differ between new and used, a higher used-vehicle APR can eat into the sticker-price advantage faster than expected.
- If age and mileage are the real variable rather than new-vs-used, Older Used vs Newer Used answers that more specific question once implemented.
Limitations
Every figure is your own scenario for these two specific vehicles, not a general new-vs-used rule. See Methodology.
Methodology
This engine combines Vehicle Economics' ownership total cost model (every ownership cost, depreciation, financing, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs, and fees, summed over your horizon) and break-even search model (a closed-form solve where one exists, otherwise a bounded search over a stated plausible range). See Methodology for the full detail.