Why the 2015s buyback is fouled up
I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, worth repeating.
The reason that the 2015s have a poor buyback is because the judge decided to use one single factor as a depreciation for the whole model year's worth of all of them (and that factor was also quite a bit higher than average car depreciation).
By using a single annualized factor, the actual depreciation "age" of all the 2015s, even the ones bought the week before the scandal was released to the press, were "normalized" and thus variously, arbitrarily, and outrageously extended to 1 year.
See, since the value capture snapshot was fixed for Sep 2015, THAT is the figure being depreciated by one year, even if you only owned your car a few days with 100 miles on it back then in SEP 2015, the judge hit that value WITH THE PRECEDING YEAR'S DEPRECIATION as if you bought the car in SEP 2014!
Another way to see it;
The 2015s value is pegged to Sep 2015
but
The depreciation removed from that value is for the period SEP 2014 to SEP 2015, WHETHER YOU OWNED IT DURING ALL THAT TIME OR NOT.
This asymmetrical depreciation effect for more recent buyers hits the 2015s the hardest.
This kind of thing is why I am NOT beating the drum for how well a job the lawyers did... anyone with a clear sense of justice, fairness, yada yada would not have let this pass.