New or used? What the premium actually buys
Two cars, the exact same model, three years apart in age — and the number on the sticker tells you almost nothing about what each one really costs you per month. That’s the core question Evident answers: not “what does the new car cost?” but “what does it cost me every month, whatever age I buy into?”
The sticker price is the wrong question
A new car and the same car at 1–4 years old aren’t two versions of the same offer — they’re two different cost profiles. The sticker price only compares the day of purchase; it says nothing about depreciation, insurance or subsidy over the whole holding period. That’s why Evident always calculates in €/month, and shows new and used offers side by side rather than one after another.
The first owner pays the steepest part of the curve
Depreciation is the single biggest cost line for most cars — and it’s steepest at the start. Our model derives the used entry price from the list price by raising a residual rate to the power of age in years: the closer to new, the higher the starting value the next year’s drop is taken from. A car that’s already 3 years old starts from a lower base — the first owner has already paid the steepest stretch of the curve. For how the curve itself behaves (segment, brand, mileage), see Understanding depreciation.
What you give up buying used
That lower starting value comes at a cost:
- Warranty: the factory warranty runs from first registration, not from your purchase date. The warranty row on the car page shows the full term — on a used car, part of the clock has already run.
- Battery condition: you inherit the battery in its current state, not its as-new state. Get the State of Health checked independently before you sign — see Understanding battery health (SoH).
- Subsidy: the federal purchase incentive is tied to buying new — our calculation drops it entirely for a used purchase.
- Tech generation: newer model years often bring a faster charging curve or newer driver-assist systems.
One offset runs the other way: insurance follows the car’s current value, not the list price — a used car is cheaper to insure than the same car new.
When new wins
The premium pays off if you hold for a long time — spread over enough years, the expensive early stretch is amortised across so many months that the gap to a used car narrows. It also pays off when a purchase incentive or manufacturer promotion is pulling the new price down in a way that doesn’t exist for the used one, or when the latest efficiency saves you real money over the holding period. For short and medium holding periods, the math usually favours used.
Practical tip: in the Explore view, new and used offers run together in one ranking by default — the age slider (“up to X yr”) shows you each car’s best offer within that ceiling. On every car page you can also switch by tab between new and 1–4 years old and see both cost breakdowns side by side.
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