RGS

I historically have sold my S-class cars(gas) when they are about 10 years old. Since Mercedes (gas) have a reputation of "running forever" the resale value declines slowly after the first 5-10 years.
I am considering a EQS for my next car. I suspect one of the factors effecting the rapid decline in EQS resale value is the "fear of the unknown" as it relates to the lifetime of the main propulsion battery and the cost to replace. Mercedes warrantees the battery capacity for 8 years(from new) will exceed 80%(I believe) of original specification. Since "Range" is a significant issue in Electric Cars and my guess is battery capacity declines more rapidly after the initial 8 years, a 10 year old EQS will probably need a replacement. It probably too early to have an active marketplace for battery replacement, I assume it will be difficult to know the costs. Does anyone have knowledgeable/educated guess on this cost?

AppleFan1

Why worry about something that will happen 8-10 years down the road? Technology is advancing faster than the “speed of light.” Hell, by then the world could come to an end. Seriously, my advice is you only live once.

Utopia Texas

I have never considered the resale value on any of my Mercedes, BMW’s or Porsche vehicles. They are the world’s worst investment. I buy them for the enjoyment of the ride and technology. Your mileage may vary. 😊

LastOne

The emotional reaction to the disposal of a 10-year old car that has served you well and given a lot of enjoyment may cause some anguish. It is an expense not an investment, so any residual value at that time would be a bonus. If you cannot handle it having little or no value then consider leasing.

superswiss

The short answer is we don't know what we don't know. Currently, battery recycling is not economical, so there is effectively no market for used batteries. The reason EV values are dropping fast is because nobody really knows what value is left in a used EV. The most expensive part of an EV is the battery and it has effectively no resale value. It doesn't even have scrap value. That's the basic crux. Any resale value is currently based on the perceived remaining use left of the battery, but there is currently no way to determine the health of a used EV battery, so you don't even know what you are buying. You don't know how often the battery was fast charged to at least somewhat gauge the health of it.

As for the general sentiment above, I agree. I also never bought a car for its resale value, but I buy cars as toys mostly that are emotional to me, such as AMGs. I buy them for the experience and I pay cash, so the purchase of the car is a sunk cost and I only spend that money if I don't miss it. When time comes to sell the car, then whatever it's still worth at the time is money that I didn't have before, so as said above it's a bonus. This is also why I lack interest in owning an EV. To me they are not exciting enough as a toy to wanna spend money on them. They make great commuter cars, but I don't commute and I technically don't need a car. If I did commute I'd probably get an EV just for commuting and then I would lease in order to project the cost and also EVs are still so early in their lifecycle the next model is likely vastly improved, so long term ownership isn't that appealing for the current EVs as things are changing and improving so rapidly.

ScottC2

Sometime during the last 12 months or so on this site, I saw a post discussing the actual replacement of an EQS HV battery under warranty and the work-document given to the customer at the end indicated a battery (part only) cost of $50,000. For the poster, this was fortunately covered by warranty...but it was an interesting bit of information. When purchasing my EQE SUV, I was of the mindset that I would like to keep the car for about 17 years. (I kept my last one, a Volvo, for 21 years). Since it seems these new vehicles are "rolling computers", I now realize how ridiculous my mindset was. I will be happy -- and amazed -- if I can even get 10 years. I worry that EV's will follow the path of iPhones. Software features and upgrades in the future will eventually indicate that perfectly functioning old hardware is "no longer supported" ...forcing a hardware upgrade.

stealth.pilot

Porsche's are not bad. A lot of their sports cars hold more than 50% of their value after 10 years (versus 50% value at 2 years for Mercedes, and 18 months on EQ models).

MB37

You all remind me of the old washing machines of the 80s versus the new ones. I used to fix commercial washer and dryers, and man, those things can take abuse. They kept running and running, and as long as you can weld, have parts to replace, they were indestructible. Nowadays, you have to pay to play. If not, stick with what is tried and true, and you mileage will go a long way. As for these EQS, I think the tech is there to be viable for a good 10 years. After that, it can serve as a golf cart, a whip around the track, or a hand me down beginner's car. If you're a DIY, you can make a temporary battery generator for your garage fridge. The sky's the limit was far as what you can hack with these used EVs. I'll either be dead or have moved on to the next best thing. There's always organizations that will come and roll these babies off our property should that be the worst case scenario.

AppleFan1

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here but 10 years is more than a tenth of a human life span. Personally, I don’t give a hoot about the 8-10 year life span of the main battery. If one wants to keep an EQS for that length of time, one shouldn’t be purchasing it in the first place. The way to go for an EV is by leasing it either by a one payment lease (my preference) or monthly payments. I love my 2022 EQS 580. I’ve had no problem driving it for long trips or in town. Plenty of EA chargers on the Interstate where my wife and I travel. The car is so much fun and comfortable to drive. I love new technology. I’m pretty sure I’ll be first in line in my city to lease the 2025 EQS 580 (current lease expires in a year from now). Btw, I’ll never purchase an ICE going forward. I believe in technology. I just hope I live long enough to enjoy all the incredible goodies over the next 10 years and beyond.

c4004matic

If other lithium automotive batteries are a guide, batteries degrade most durig the first 5 years or so. After that they degrade at a much lower rate. My educated guess looking at Tesla EVs is that packs are useful for 15 yrs or so (70% more or less. I have 30k miles on my . Range loss has been close to zero. Note that the EQS has much more advanced batteries than those old Teslas. I think the warranty is super conservative. I would bet that more batteries would have some sort of fault than need replacement for degeneration during the warranty period (thus very, very few). One thing to note is that after 10 years the battery might cost more than the value of the vehicle, thus it might be a very hard sell other than as a trade for another MB. Which is the perfect idea for built-in obsolesence. On the other hand, 10 years from now, batteries with higher capacity may cost significantly less, making a swap a lot less painful. Again, as a new technology there is still a gamble involved. One thing is virtuaaly guaranteed, lithium battery cars will still be the dominant technology by far. As the number of cars in the road increases lithium will become like aluminium, more and more of the metal will a be a recycled material. Virtually the entire battery, including all the heavy metals, are fully recyclable.

superswiss

There's only one problem with that. Current lithium recycling methods require temperatures in excess of 1000C or corrosive chemicals and therefore use up to 45% more energy and produce up to 20% more emissions than mining fresh lithium. Recycling aluminum on the other hand uses 95% less energy than making new aluminum. Lithium is nothing like aluminum. Supposedly, German researchers have found a more efficient method, but it's only been demonstrated at lab scale. This is why currently less than 10% of lithium batteries are getting recycled. The vast majority ends up in landfills. At some point we may have a cost effective and energy efficient way of recycling lithium at large scale, but we are not even close to that. Battery technology in general has a long way to go.

c4004matic

Note the caveat... in ten years. Yet already a US company has a chemical method of separation that is energy neutral already at small scale, ergo all that is required is ramping it up. Basicly you mulch the battery and use and eletroplating process to remove the metals. In ten years it should be more than ready.

streborx

As many have previously opined, if your desire is an EV, lease it and let MBFS suffer the depreciation loss.

superswiss

Agreed in principal. If I could only see into the future....Reality has over and over proven that most predictions don't come true, and the real world is very different from small scale lab environments. After all, nuclear fusion is still only 20 years away. The long awaited solid state batteries are also turning out not to be as great as promised.

nath_h

FWIW, MB gives us 10 years/155,000 warranty on our batteries. For those of us owning and keeping our cars a long time, this neutralizes most owners' concerns regarding fear of the unknown. My EQB gives only 8 years/100,000 miles, and I plan to exit that right before I hit the 8 year mark. What will the range be at 9.5 years old with maybe 125,000 miles? If Tesla is any guide, probably 90%, which would be just fine for my purposes. If it gets below 80%, it becomes MB problem, and the car would get a new battery. But yes, those expressing concern about how to keep this software heavy car working at ten years...dealerships are going to have to become very good at software engineering. However, this also applies to ICE cars that are stuffed full of computers. I think that in year 2045, we will no longer see model year, say 2023, on the road anymore except for some very special cars. Unless something changes to make keeping old electronics working well, the useful life of cars will see a decrease compared to past decades. All of this stuff with electronics, rapidly changing battery technology....we are in frontier land of a disruptive technology that will change how we drive and how we power our driving. There's just going to be uncertainty for us all as this gets sorted out in the coming years. My only firm advice....don't buy a Fisker Ocean

LastOne

The criticality of software engineering versus mechanical engineering is unclear, but the balance between the two will naturally shift.
Our mindset, from the computer industry, is devices need to be kept updated primarily for security reasons. With a car the pressure to require software upgrades should not be as strong as the computer industry. Hopefully security concerns are not just around the corner. This should mean that updates would not be required once stability has been established. An upgrade risks the stability of the interactions between the over 100 control units. Maybe I am dreaming.
As an example, my car has been working fine for the last 6 months after updates were applied from issues during the first three.

MB37

Study past histories, and you can get a glimpse of future road maps. Software engineer changes on a dime. Mechanical engineering changes a bit slower. Chemical engineering, when applied, changes even slower. We have only a finite number of elements on Earth to play with. Even more so, the availability of them is another challenge. From this 5000 feet view, you can extrapolate that while software will get updates frequently, it is limited by mechanical engineering (chips, boards, sensors). Furthermore, since chemical engineering is the one that changes the slowest(from inception to application), you can rest assure that, in general, you will still see a lot of Lithium based batteries in the next ten years. Additionally, as the technology matures, the cost of production becomes cheaper.

EV is experiencing a COVID-like years right now. Everyone and their relatives are freaking out about cost depreciation, useful life, environment, you name it because it is new (to the public). Fears spread faster than joy. But history will tell you that those taking risks will inevitably reap the rewards. Are you young enough to take the risk, or is your retirement money needing to be spent carefully to ensure you last until the end?

In any case, I have confidence, based on what I have read from the chemical experts of lithium based batteries, that my car's range will not deteriorate to 80% past the 10 year mark. Are there risks and outliers? Of course. If you choose and are knowledgeable about leasing, then mitigate your risk by leasing. As for me, I bought it at good price. I plan to enjoy it. And if something happens, move on to the next big thing.

nath_h

You bring up good points, with a different perspective. I'd hope also that once a car is 'stable' that there won't be need to keep monkeying around with the code. My under-informed concern is that there may be code problems gunking up the system years from now, sort of like the old Windows rot when computers would just slow down over time to the point of not being usable. On my old 2008 CL, there are mysterious problems that creep up from time to time that seem software based. Others on the forums report ghosts in the system--issues that don't seem hardware based, but the cars are too old for the dealer to know what to do with it to track down software problems. To a certain extent, those of us with these highly complex 15 year old cars just live with some stuff not working perfectly. But back to the EQ cars, I do think things will be okay at ten years out. MB (and others) have too much riding on this platform to have their cars bricked at 8-10 years old.

ehildum

Ten years is the practical life of a well designed and built ICE automobile. If nothing else, the simple mechanical wear on the engine will be the limiting factor - over ten years you can expect the engine to rotate about 500 million to 1 billion times (about 5,000 - 10,000 hours of operation). Lower quality automobiles will have failures sooner, as will vehicles that did not receive scheduled maintenance. With newer vehicles, there are far more electronic packages as well as a lot more mechanical components for the assist systems. Keep in mind as well that the EQ platform is a completely new platform for Mercedes, so there is no benchmark for how these platforms will last and where the problems are. Mercedes considers these an experiment, and in a few years will be doing a new design based on their experience with these platforms.
On top of this, battery design is receiving huge investments and we are starting to see that there are several new battery technologies that will change the way batteries are designed. For example, the EQ platform uses a 400V design, but new designs are using 800V or more. We can expect that chemistries will change, but in the near term we will see much more support for things like battery recycling. If nothing else, I expect a pick and pull type of availability for these components just as one can get a transmission or engine from a wreck today. We will also see more third party repair shops. My current mechanic does not work on electric vehicles or hybrids as his current business just does not see that many inquires about these cars. However, that will change as the fleet changes to EVs.

c4004matic

The next real change in battery tech, will be the solid state battery, till then most changes will be tweaks on the present tech. Thse won't be available at industrial levels for about a decade or so.

SW20S

I would not buy any EV, these are lease only IMO.

GrayA

I think buying a used EV is ok as well, provided that it has dropped a substantial amount from new.

Looking at China, these batteries are currently the best:
Semi-solid state used in IM Motors L6
Semi-solid state used in Nio ET7
Shenxing battery (LFP) from CATL
Golden Battery (LFP) used in Zeekr 007

hlothery

Remember the old, weird looking original Honda EV? Definitely more than 10 years old. We have several still running around in San Antonio, which I see from time to time. Who knows how long a well maintained battery will last. I love my EQS.

Crito

About 400,000 miles.

MB37

Like deer, our basic instincts wants us to focus on what is the most expensive components and stare at it. I bet a six pack of Heineken that in ten to fifteen years, the only component your EV is worth is the battery pack. Everything else is either outdated, not supported, or broken down due to the elements.