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Comment by richwater | Hacker News Reader

That's a fantastic way to crater your cars resale value.

How so, exactly? There's no way for anyone to check how much a battery was charged regularly, just like there's no way to check if a car was only used to drive to church once a week or driven like a hooligan hitting redline all the time - I'm not suggesting fraud of course, far from it - just that buyers have to assume the worst possible use case, and if so I don't see how actually regularly charging the battery to max affects the resale value at all. Besides, I don't expect the resale value to be very high after 8 years(realistically more) anyway.

I believe the SoC (state of charge) history is recorded for Teslas and other EVs. There is a company called Recurrent [1] which uses this data to estimate battery degradation. I think the idea is to generate something like a Carfax report for used EV battery packs.

[1] https://www.recurrentauto.com/

Yes, putting a lot of miles on any car is going to affect resale value.

Why do Americans care so much about resale instead of just using the stuff you bought?

If I ever buy a house it'll be to actually live life in it, not to nickel-and-dime some poor college student.

It's double edged, the first edge is selfish, maximum extraction of value. The second is definitely not exclusive to Americans - taking care of your belongings and reducing the rate of sending things to landfill.

I agree this is a cultural problem. Houses are seen as retirement vehicle, etc. I think it's partially a sales tactic, to switch your brain into "investing" mode and willing to fork up a lot of cash and leverage (I'm "investing" in a Tesla, see how much gas i'll save?).

> Why do Americans care so much about resale instead of just using the stuff you bought?

I expect that you throw your old car away whenever you get a new one?

Many of us do, yes. Drive it until it’s primary worth is scrap.

But that doesn't make a very good mobile status symbol.

> Many of us do, yes.

I doubt it, because

> Drive it until it’s primary worth is scrap.

But that means selling it for scrap, which is still not "throwing it away".

Besides, a car that's 30 years old is still worth more than scrap, and even then, scrapped cars are still sold for money.

So, no, there are very few people either throwing or giving their cars away after driving it for however long it lasted.

Because the better the resale, the nicer the car you can afford to replace it. Most new cars are kept for 3 years and traded in, (or leased) so the better the resale the more money to put into your next car. Or if you lease the less your lease will be.

Those who buy used cars keep their cars longer, and are willing to pay more for a car they think will last longer.

Why not just get a much nicer and reliable car and keep it for 10-15 years?

The type of people who do that save money buy buying a 3 year old car. The people who buy new cars mostly wouldn't be seen in an older car.

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