I was an early on V1 hub user and pre-ordered the V2 hub. After all this time I am still wondering what I gained by upgrading. None of the promised ‘features’ have been turned on. Bluetooth isn’t on, the USB ports are useless, and very few if any apps actually run on the hub,. Lastly the reliability hasn’t improved.
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The only thing that I can think of now is the promise of future expandability such as OTA upgrades and eventually everything that you mentioned will be turned on someday.
But I agree with you. For me, I was able to sell my v1 hub and I got a “free” power plug in the upgrade so costwise, it’s a bit of a wash for me.
Totally agree. I run my Hub V1 inside my garage to handle devices too far away from Hub v2. When I am flipping between the two I often ask," What’s the difference?" Nothing as far as I can see 
Sounds a bit complicated… can’t you just add any plugged in or hardwired zwave device between the hub and your garage so that the individual hops are short enough? A plug in zwave dimmer/switch or wall mounted switch/dimmer would do the job. They also make repeaters but I do not see the value…
My hopes were high mostly with regards to local processing as I am NOT a fan of relying on the cloud. Most of my automations, however, are done in “Smart Lighting” so that they can run locally but they only allow official DTHs so some get booted to cloud processing. This is not an issue with a number of them as immediate action is not critical (lights on at sunset for example) but others are (light 2 on when light 1 is turned on so entire pathway is lit).
What would be the use cases for BlueTooth and USB on the ST hub? Both have limited range so I can only see them doing something if you are near the hub. For USB I can see adding other HA Radios to interface to some system not currently supported but I can’t imagine much more. Either way I really dislike companies that think releasing incomplete products (hardware present but not supported in software) with the promise of completing it some day is good business practice.
Yup… I have a z-wave outlet in the garage connected to the Hub 2. What doesn’t work is the zigbee motion sensor outside of garage, the Presences fob and Securifi Key Fob inside our van. Complex? Not at all. For instances, the key fob sends key pressed to Hub v1 which triggers an event onto my PC server running EventGhost. EG then calls a smartapp on Hub 2 to do what ever (i.e. unlock door) unless… The key pressed is for lights than EG handles the light which might be (or not) connected to Hub v2. Pppppfttt. I ask again. Complex?? NOT!!! 
Lol ok… not complex… but I would just use an Iris Smart Plug as it will act as a Zigbee repeater. It also has zwave repeater functionality but it doesn’t sound like you need that so I would just discover the Zigbee outlet part and let it relay your sensors/fobs to the hub. Incidentally I had the exact same issue where the sensor was chewing up battery and often dropping. As soon as I put one of these plug in outlets (acting as repeater) the issues went away.
To force the Zigbee devices to find a new path to the hub I read you have to power off (batteries included) the hub for 20 minutes. This should force them to connect to the repeater instead. The ST version would work the same but it costs more…
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Iris-120-Volt-White-Smart-Plug/999925330