3 meeeeelion dollars?
These ownership cost calculations are useless. How many miles do you drive a year? What are your insurance costs?
Calculate it yourself. You can get depreciation from lease residuals), you know what your insurance costs and what gas costs. You know how many miles you drive.
The biggest contributors to cost of owning are maintenance/repair costs and depreciation, with the former being the biggest contributor in the long haul (10 years, for example), while the the latter has the biggest contributor in the short term.
When I traded my Mazda3, it was four years old and had 44,000 miles. I got $6k less than I paid for it on trade in, so it amounted to an average depreciation of $1500/year. Repair costs were $0, as I sold it right before the B2B warranty expired. When I factored in maintenance, insurance, gas, etc, it was right around the $3500k/year mark, which I considered excellent.
I have no idea what my total cost of ownership for my Golf will be, but I doubt it'll be less after four years than my Mazda's was.
Really not quantifiable.
Really not quantifiable.
Why?
Sure it is, but only after the car is sold.
The 2018's will have a lower cost of ownership than the 2017's over a 5 year period because of the extended warranty.
If you trade you never really know what the ACV is.
Sure you do-- IF you know that the price you are paying on the new car is not artificially raised in order to give you more on your trade in to make you think you're getting an incredible trade in offer.
Whenever I've traded a car in, I've negotiated the price of the new car first. I never tell the salesman I'm trading a car. Once I get the quote in hand, I come back the next day or couple of days and negotiate some more. Once I'm ready to deal, I then say I've changed my mind and want to trade in my car. The offer they give me on the trade--without changing the deal on the new car, is the value I assign to my trade in for cost of ownership calculations.