Agree. I gotta admit how devastated I was initially when i tried to trade my EQS. Nobody wanted it, not Porsche, not Mercedes (three dealers). Carvana calculated for three days before finally making what turned out to be the best offer. Sometimes I think I should have just kept it, but I don't need or want three cars, and I only have a two car garage, so that was not really an option. It's a sad commentary on the current EV used market, which I hope will change as the industry realizes that the value of the battery is greater than they think it is in the long run. At least, that's what I believe and am hoping for. I, certainly, had seen no indication of any degradation of the capability of the car or battery during my three years with it. Someone who bought it got a fantastic car. So did I, BTW.....

Let's do a side note for a moment: Comparing a depreciating asse, a vehicle, to real estate is not very accurate, and there are many pitfalls to this analogy. There are no jetson, either. When car's do fly, it will be 100% autonomous, and fewer people will actually have license to operating it. It seems that J_Boxer has broken down the vehicle paradigm into its basic definitions; that's great! The topic at hand is the battery technology evolution.

Let's talk about realistic battery evolution. Most public sentiments about EV are misaligned causing massive EV depreciation. We'll ignore the battery life and degradation since that has been settled.

Infrastructure. That's the cause.
Starting with today's electrical infrastructure, the maximum residential wattage delivery is about 19.2 kwh and 22kw which requires 3 phase. But typical max residential charge is 11kw. It doesn't matter if the EV architecture is 400v or 4000v. The damn thing will not charge any faster if the max infrastructure is only 11kw. So for residential charging (level 2), if you are happy with that now, you'll be just as happy with that 10 to 15 years from now assuming electrical codes will not change for residential. On he commercial side, you have MCS that can deliver megawatts, but realistically (foreseeable 10-15 years), your level 3 DCS will do 350kw, which, on a 800v architecture will charge from 5%-80%in about 20 minutes giving you a couple of hundred miles. At that point, time for gas fill up and recharge, assuming the infrastructure is equal, battery recharge tech has caught up to gas fill up. But it doesn't stop there. It will get better.

While the battery tech changes fast, the infrastructure does not. EV is depreciating not because of it's technology but because the infrastructure is not there to support it's technology. For example, while the EQS is on a 400v, the engineers can still make it charge quite fast on a 200kw DC charger, 10-80% in 30 minutes IF you connect to a 200+ kw charger. How many are those around and available now compared to 10 years from now? Let's say future MB architecture is built on 800V architecture, now you potentially cut the time down to say half (20 minutes). How about 1000V architecture like the Tesla Semi? Do you think we would go there to cut down more charging time to, say 5-10 minutes? How far would we go, or do we invent new batteries with greater energy density? For clues as to where MB is heading, read up on the AMG EVxx recent run and charging times.

You see, the public can conceive where the tech is going, but they overlook the infrastructure which is what is holding EV back. Similarly, we had to build smooth freeways to make way for more powerful engines. Because we can perceive battery tech potentials easily, we fear that it will change fast and become obsolete; therefore, we put less value into it. Simply put, the public experiences technological illiteracy or technophobia. Additionally, analogies to small electronic devices and devices that run on battery further misleads public sentiments and opinions.

Where there are fears, there are opportunities. As it stands now, there will be a future 800v+ architecture EV with a high energy density battery chemistry in my garage. I'm hoping it won't be too heavy. ICE will be classics! I'll keep them in the separate garage when I want to smell the nostalgic oil and sound.

Infrastructure is absolutely a big piece of the puzzle, but comparing it to consumer electronics is quite relevant, IMO. Take smartphones for example. The first iPhone used EDGE, even though 3G was technically available, but the chipsets weren't very energy efficient, so battery life was an issue. Then 3G became widely used, but it wasn't until LTE that the apps and use cases for smartphones took off. LTE enabled a lot of applications for which 3G was just too slow. Now we are getting 5G and for the first time, the infrastructure is ahead of the curve. 5G is still kinda looking for the killer use case. There isn't much currently for which the latest LTE is too slow. I'm not even paying for a 5G plan at the moment, even though my phone is capable, but nothing I use my phone for on the go would really benefit from 5G and most of the day I'm on Wi-Fi with a 1 GB backbone anyway.

So yes, as long as the infrastructure is lagging behind, the products will suffer slow adoption. That's absolutely true.

When people move to 5G, 4G will be so much faster than the 4G now because there will be less traffic and congestion holding up the towers.

I am also a 5G hold out, mobile data is expensive in Canada and 5G will burn through hundreds of dollars of data anyways.

Meanwhile, I heard 6G is in the talks already. Did you hear about that...?

Beautifully written - thx!

Here is a link for light reading about automotive battery tech (ignore the company's promo) and a glimpse into the cutting edge technology of automotive battery and architecture; it's a stark difference from any previous small or medium battery devices such as a smartphone or robotics.

Tip of the iceberg:
https://www.tek.com/en/blog/resolvin...ertrain-design