>And for the couple times a year we need to take road trips, we can rent a luxury sedan with the money we've saved on fuel costs.
False.
See another discussion I'm involved in. To give you the gist: I drive a 14 year old gas guzzling truck. Let's say it broke down and I wanted to save money, so I bought an electric car. Here's the breakdown in costs-
Buying another 14 year old gas guzzling Toyota truck: $19,000 over 5 years. ($1400/yr in gas, 32 mile round trip to work, plus a one-time cost of $5000)
Renting a minivan for vacation trips: $110/day plus gas (20mpg).
High-end Model S: $108,680 over 5 years. ($100,000 plus 5 years of renting a minivan for one week)
Base Model S: $66,080 over 5 years. ($57,400 plus 5 years of renting a minivan for one week)
Nissan Leaf: $42,500 over 5 years ($35,000 plus plus electricity costs plus 5 years of minivan rental)
The fact is, if you want to save money, you can do it more efficiently with an ancient gas guzzler than you can buying a new electric car. Yeah you're saving money on fuel costs, but you're spending a lot of money on the car itself. The Leaf is built on the same platform as the Cube and the Micra, yet costs $20,000 more MSRP. Even comparing it to the truck, it would take 14 years to save enough on fuel to pay off that $20,000 you could have saved by buying the Cube or the Micra.
I highly doubt that only 1% of the population needs to drive more than 250 miles at some point once a year. We have salesmen at work where some of them drive that far every day. My mother was a home care nurse who drove that far one day a week. If the car works for you, I'm glad. It's a nice car. But don't fool yourself into trading in your old car for promises of saved money. The numbers just don't work out, even for the average American driver they're targeting.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730973