Nobody can survive without turning customers into revenue streams, so we have SaaS, in-app purchases, and so on. I predict that automobiles will go that way, they will essentially become a service, whether you get one exlusively to yourself or share it on demand.
OEM's are looking at their 2-5% margins and then eyeing lyft and uber's 40% margins (well, +/- the burning-all-of-it-plus-investors-money-to-capture-global-market-share bit).
It's not SaaS, it's MaaS they're all gunning for.
Leaf's are pretty cheap relative to new, I think some buyers remorse is leading to a flooded market but I'm not sure.
Tesla's aren't that much less than new (although I was looking at "certified" ones through Tesla.) I decided there wasn't much reason to buy used.
Maybe in 3-5 years it will be different.
The reason to buy used is that there is no waiting list so you can get it now.
Which implies as a corollary that if Tesla was able to fill current demand for new cars, then the price of used Teslas would drop substantially.
Once the technology stabilizes a bit and becomes more common, resale probably won't be any worse than everything else.
With that in mind, a $16k 3 year old Bolt is actually not that bad.
Whether those batteries were attached to a set of wheels or packed inside a box for a residential/utility install was secondary.
Do you have a citation for that?
I don't know that long-term durability of EVs is even knowable yet, the oldest Model S is only four years old. Average age of cars on the road in the USA is 12 years, so we'll need to wait a while for good comparison data.
But generally, EVs have a lot fewer moving parts. There's less to break. Theoretically, they should last significantly longer.