Comound interest: A car is bought for the price of £12 000, but its value depreciates every year by 8%. Calculate, how much will the car be worth in 5 years

The question states the value of the car depreciates every year by 8%. This means that from the original, 100% value of the car in a set year, every consecutive year the value will decrease by 8% so that the value of the car in the next year will be 92% the value of the original price in the first year. As a result, to find the value of the car in the next year, we deduce 8% from 100% and multiply it by 12000. We express 100% as 100/100 (=1) and 8% as 8/100 (=0.08) to facilitate calculations. In one year, the value of the car will be 12000 x (1 - 8/100), in other words, 12000 x 0.92, which equals 11040.Consequently, after the second year, to calculate the value, we take the cost of the car after one year and do the same: 11040 x 0.92We then repeat this 5 times. However, to avoid long calculations (as it is 5 years), we can simplify this by introducing the power of 5.We now take the original value of the car and multiply it by 0.92 which is also to the power of 5.12000 x (1 - 8/100)5 = 7908.978278 (or 7908.98 rounded to two decimal places)

VB
Answered by Victoria B. Maths tutor

4657 Views

See similar Maths GCSE tutors

Related Maths GCSE answers

All answers ▸

Jason and Mary leave their houses at the same time. They travel towards each other, Mary at 20km/h and Jason at 15km/h. They pass each other after an hour and a half. What was the original distance between them when they started?


Solve 7x+6 > 1+2x


Write down 9.02x10^-3 and 2.6x10^5?


How do you use the completing the square method to solve a quadratic equation?


We're here to help

contact us iconContact ustelephone icon+44 (0) 203 773 6020
Facebook logoInstagram logoLinkedIn logo

MyTutor is part of the IXL family of brands:

© 2026 by IXL Learning