[api]

I recently got a used Leaf with about 70mi range for around $7000 (total cost including fees, tax, etc.). It's extremely low maintenance (no ICE at all) and while I haven't done math in this detail yet the "fuel" price even at California's higher electricity rates is less than half the cost of gasoline per mile driven. Once you factor in the relative lack of maintenance it's much cheaper to operate than an ICE.

Overall if you don't need really long range a used Leaf is a great deal. You can get them in virtually mint condition for under $10k. Just be sure to research and check out battery health. There's an Android app called LeafSpy that will use a Bluetooth ODBII dongle (these are cheap) and can query lots of detailed battery info so you can check out battery health after buying. Mine was about average in terms of capacity loss for its age and it gets around 70 miles per charge without issue.

Also note that the Leaf's mileage estimate tends to be a little pessimistic, at least in my experience. My guess is that it's designed this way to avoid stranding the driver. Gas cars are often a little pessimistic too for the same reason. They give you a bit of a reserve.

[tres]

What's more, many of the Leafs are still under factory warranty when they're sold for a fraction of their new MSRP.

I bought my 2011 Leaf when it was just about three years old and had somewhere in the neighborhood of 22k miles on it and paid somewhere around $6k.

I figured it was a pretty safe buy because the car still had plenty of miles left on the warranty.

I never had to make use of that warranty though; truly the best fit & finish of any car I've owned. Reliable & by far the best value of any car I've ever purchased.

After eight years, capacity is running down... somewhere around 40 miles per charge in the summer now... but that's perfect for my use-case. I'm looking forward to many more years with minimal maintenance costs. Once the battery capacity gets low enough, I'll spring for a new battery.

[api]

There are companies working on aftermarket battery upgrades. There's one that has a module that lets you put a newer 40kWh battery in an old Leaf. Such batteries can be purchased from junked/totaled Leafs. There's another out there working on some kind of emulated battery module. Neither of these are quite ready yet but the market is there so I assume such upgrades are coming.