Sethodine
Elio Addict
Buying an EV has been a bit of a crash-course in new terminology though. Before buying an SRK, I'd make sure it has a CHAdeMO fast-charging socket, in addition to the standard SAE J1772 socket type. The J1772 is what most public charge stations have, and should fully charge the 12kWh battery pack in the SRK in 3-4.5* hours. The CHAdeMO socket is for DC fast-charging, and would probably fully charge the SRK in 15 minutes, which would make long trips practical with some planning. I bring this up because my Leaf doesn't have the CHAdeMO port, and sometimes I really wish it did. All well.
*Charge time depends highly on the size of your inverter. I'm not sure what size of inverter the SRK will have, but the common 3.3kW inverters will take about 4.5 hours to fully charge, while a 6.6kW or 7.2kW will take significantly less time. But this also depends on the amperage of the charging station itself. And if your charging at home on 120v, you can probably expect an 11 hour charge time for a fully depleted battery. So as you can see, it's a whole new world of stuff to learn.
However, what you left out was that the replacement battery will be whatever is going into the latest version of the Leaf. The 2017 model is supposed to have a range of around 170 miles (doubling my current range), and battery technology will only improve from here on out. With how we drive the car, my battery won't need replacing until around 2023. Who knows what kind of magic battery technology we'll have by then?
I have good credit for my age/area, and it helps that both me and my wife work and don't have kids yet. We were spending about $200 a month on car repairs for our clunkers anyways, so between that and the fuel savings, it made sense financially. The thing about EVs is that most people are still wary of them, which means that they are the same or cheaper on the Used market than ICE cars.
I suppose the last couple years have been good to us, but we're still technically under the poverty line. The other side of that equation is that we don't spend money on (much) stupid stuff, and we save wherever we can. For instance, she volunteers at a local food charity organization, which allows us to shop from their stock for a flat rate of $35 a month. We can afford a Leaf because we have a financial discipline that I don't see in most other millenials our age. But commuting in the Elio (once it's paid off) will still be about equal to a $0.50/hr raise for me.
April of 2015 saw the first 2011 Leaf hit 200,000 miles, and it still had like 85% of it's battery capacity. This was a guy who commuted to work, charging twice a day (at home and at work), sometimes more by leapfrogging between stations. Since my wife's use is significantly lower, and we aren't using the DC fast charging, I expect it will be many years before we get to that point. In the mean time, we're only spending between $25 and $35 per month on electricity to fuel it.
And no oil changes. And no transmission that can fail. And regenerative braking means longer lasting friction pads...etc. There was even a study done on this very subject. 
