Many people who have owned a car have also had to overcome the obstacle of eventually selling or otherwise getting rid of that car. There are several options that you have when it comes to moving on. You could sell the car privately to a willing buyer, you could part-exchange the car with the dealership to get a better deal on a new model, you could auction the car for a quick sale…and so the list goes on.

To do any of these things, you will need to know the current and correct value of your car. The tricky thing is, how much your car is worth depends almost entirely on which course of action for which you opt in the choices mentioned above. For instance, the worth of the car when selling it privately to an individual buyer would invariably be higher than its worth as a part-exchange vehicle.

Speculating on these numbers leads many to erroneous judgements that hinder the resale progress and/or end up in severe disappointment and even disillusion for the car owners. This is just another area in which one of the Pedal system’s 20 unique features can help. Today, we’re talking about the “Know Your Car’s Real Value” feature.

Pedal: Know Your Car’s Real Value

How Does the Feature Work?

This feature appears quite near the top of your Pedal® dashboard. Just underneath the top banner where your car’s image, registration and location are shown, there is a collapsible box. When collapsed, the headline says “Show vehicle valuations” and open it changes to “Hide vehicle valuations.”

Open up this section and you’ll find 6 very useful and very important numbers, along with a date. First of all, the date is showing you on what date the current valuation is being estimated. To the right of that you will see six numbers, all of them prices. These are the various values of your car according to what perspective from which you look:

• Price when new – the original value of the car; helps you to better understand how much depreciation has already happened
• Private – the value of the car when selling to a private buyer, it’s similar to the “book” value
• Trade – the amount the car would be worth if selling to a dealership or other car buying service
• Part exchange – the value when putting it up as part of a deal to get a newer model
• Auction – the price your car would likely fetch at auction
• Forecourt – what your car would be priced at if it were being sold at a dealership

As we said, these numbers would show variance, but that’s the point. With Pedal® you can see all these values in one convenient place, so when the time comes you can compare your different options and make an informed decision on which avenue to pursue.

Will you be able to show the patience needed to advertise and sell the car privately, in which case you can get the “Private” figure in your pocket. Alternatively, will you favour the quick-sale route and take the lower numbers like “Trade” or “Auction.” When seeing the number isn’t as low as you first thought, you might then be resolved to make the transaction as quickly as possible.

It should be noted that these numbers are estimates based on market data. It’s not an icon-clad guarantee on what sum you would certainly receive when selling your car.

Why is “Know Your Car’s Real Value” a Great Feature?

There’s much utility in this feature from Pedal®. First of all, knowing the current value helps you to understand how much your car has depreciated since it was new. This can have some important implications if your car is still on finance, including on a lease.

Selling a Leased Car

If you have leased your current vehicle, then you likely take a keen interest in any difference between how your car lease residual value and the actual book value of your car. What quite often happens, especially for those who negotiated hard to get the agreed-upon car price down when signing a car lease, is that there comes a key moment when the residual value left on the car lease is quite a bit lower than the car’s real value.

This leads some to take the step of buying out their lease and then selling the car on for a tidy profit. It might be just a few hundred pounds, or it could even be a few thousand. It could provide a total sum remaining to use a downpayment on something much nicer, anyway.

Confidence as a Seller

Besides working the lease market, knowing your car’s true value is important as a tool to help bolster your confidence when you want to sell your car. Whatever platform you try to use to sell your car, you are bound to encounter buyers who try to tell you that your price is too high.

They’ll try to get into your head, filling it with notions that they have seen the same car posted for £1,500 cheaper. The normal procedure here would be to stand your ground and claim you have the right asking price, or even a price that is below the regular market value. With the help of Pedal®, you’ll be able to prove it. You can quickly and easily show sellers the value of the car when it was new and its new value a car being sold privately. You could also use the knowledge to remind wily dealership operators the same thing as they try to low-ball you to get your car into their stock to resell at the inflated forecourt price.

Use “Know Your Car’s Real Value” as a way to level the playing field. You can stand your ground backed up with real data.

Choosing the Best Time and Method to Sell

Finally, knowing the current value of your car can help guide you to better choosing the right time at which to sell the vehicle. With the ever-present figure of the car’s price when new, you can find an optimal point where depreciation has happened but there’s enough value left in the car to sell now and use the money for a meaningful payment towards another car.

Besides that, you can also be better informed as to what each of the various sales channels will bring you. It will help avoid the shock that often ensues when people try to sell their cars to dealerships for a quick deal. They can anticipate the dealership will offer below the value that a private buyer would take, but perhaps are not prepare for how much lower than can be, perhaps £3,000 or more.

Knowing what each channel will give you allows you the luxury of time to reflect properly on what selling at each of the values would mean for your plans.

Know Your Car’s Real Value – Another Way Pedal Helps Us to Better Understand Our Car

The 20 features on the Pedal® system are designed to keep us informed and in the loop on every bit of crucial information that our car harbours. Before Pedal®, many people won’t have realized just how much there is going on with their cars that they need to know, but currently have no meaningful way to achieve it, or at least no easy way.

If you think back to any time you have sold a car in the past, and then reflect on the information that we’ve described above about what the Pedal® Know Your Car’s Real Value feature could have told you then if you had it, do you think your experience would have been different. We say it would.

Purchase the Pedal® OBD-II sensor today and start learning everything there is to know about your own car. Plug in and start data collecting. You’ll be glad of every feature and what it can tell you.