Actual electric car owner here, who did not WTFV.
I charge at home overnight, so charging takes me zero time. Less time than a gas car owner going to the gas station.
We do have a gas vehicle (my work truck and a Jeep) for longer trips and inclement weather. If it's cold or extremely hot the EV does not perform well, and it really is not an all-weather vehicle. Snow and ice are just not ok.
My wife uses it for getting to and from work and running errands around town.
It is a used Nissan Leaf. When we got it, we paid half of the cost of a new one. It had 10,000 miles on it and was three years old. Checked out the battery and it had full capacity. Since then, we've had it for four years and put around 60,000 miles on it. Went through two sets of tires (EV tires are extremely low rolling resistance so they are low profile and wear out rather quickly). The battery started out at full bars and we have lost one bar (about 6%) of its performance. It runs about 60 miles in real traffic on a charge. The MPG equivalent is around 100 miles per gallon for the cost of electricity.
Troubles: the fast chargers are congested. It's not that they are slow, you can pick one at a grocery store and go shopping while you charge. There are not enough of them for the amount of EVs on the road today, and they are not well maintained. Running into a broken one will really screw up your trip if you don't have another one close by. Because of this, we don't use it for anything longer than 1 charge (round trip of 60 miles or less) unless we know for sure that the chargers are working on the route. There is an app that is crowdsourced that allows you to share your fast charger station results - if a charger is broken, a warning shows up on the app almost immediately. (The charger stations are not well maintained and can stay broken for days or weeks.) You have to plan your routes carefully. Obviously there are several brands of fast charger stations and there are apps that keep track of where they are on a map. This car is not good for inclement weather, but as long as you have another car for that purpose, you are fine.
All in all, we love it and would buy another one. It's a delightful little car to drive. Amazing acceleration. If you've never driven one, do. Then get out somewhere on a clear road and mash down on the gas pedal. You will be floored by how fast they go. It's funny, even though I'm a libertarian I still get shit from the far right Trump supporters about driving an EV. At first, I'd get some jackass sitting at a light in a jacked up monster truck (my other truck is indeed a 4x4) while revving his motor to challenge me to a drag race. They don't do that any more. We always blow their doors off, in our little $7,000 econobox.
Damn I wouldn't have ever considered buying one used just because of the battery degradation thing. However your experience might have changed my mind just for a grocery getter. I honestly probably won't get one because I just have to drive too much but if I get to a place where I don't have to anymore I might consider it I like me some acceleration.
When you are looking at a used EV, there are apps (along with a dongle you plug into the OBDII port under the dash) that will give you a full diagnostic of the battery. In particular you look at how many times it's been fast-charged. We almost always slow charge it to 80% at home overnight. This will give the battery the maximum lifespan. Of course when we picked out the car, we did take a look at the batteries on several of them before we bought ours. It's a lease return and it was absolutely perfect inside and out.
Once you get to the point that the battery is shot, it is possible to replace it. In a Nissan Leaf, the whole bottom of the car can be unbolted and removed. (This is usually done at the dealer service department.) The bottom of the car is one big battery pack. It's a drop in replacement, but a new one will set you back between $6000 and $8000. I have heard that aftermarket rebuilds may be available soon, and it may become a DIY project.
I've also seen videos where someone found a wrecked Leaf and stripped the batteries and all the Battery Management System out of the car and reused it to create a homemade EV conversion of a non-electric car. Following this logic, it may be possible to take your own Leaf - with a dead battery pack in it - and take a wrecked Leaf - with a good battery in it - and do a transplant into yours. Or maybe get the replacement battery cells and do a rebuild of yours. I think it's a valid DIY project for an advanced handyman / shade tree mechanic / electronics nerd. I will probably tackle that in 4-5 years when our battery is shot.
Overall, I love the silly thing.
And if you want a FAST car buy a Tesla. They will blow the doors off of pretty much any production car in the world. This is a 6 passenger sedan and it easily outruns a Bugatti Veyron. I live near a race track and the EVs are disqualified from drag racing against regular gasoline cars. The EVs have their own races.
All good advice I know a little bit about redoing hybrid car batteries out of junk yard cars by taking the individual cells from the batteries and servicing them. That said its time consuming.
WTF they are disqualified from drag racing that is fucking bullshit its a car 4 wheels if you can't beat it get faster.
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