Even with gas at a very low real price historically, EV's have a solid cost advantage which can make long trips moot for most people.
The math on a Leaf right now:
Avg 4.5 m/KWh driven even vaguely sensibly at national average 11c/KWh means 2.44c/mile fuel. Net price an SV can be had for about $22.5k and that includes heated seats/nav/bose audio so very comparable to similarly equipped midsize car in price with the advantage of silent, 100% torque from the line driving. Maintenance costs are much much lower - all I spent in my 2 years was for tire rotations - no oil, much lower brake wear with regen etc. Free chargers are not uncommon (free gas however...). But let's, to the advantage of the ICE, ignore those last things and just look at fuel.
A very comparable well-equipped Focus auto gets 31mpg blended according to Edmunds (every ICE driver quotes their highway constant mpg, with a few exceptions like your Prius, but that's like me quoting my downhill regen m/KWh. I'm using blended norms in both cases). AAA is reporting $1.996 a gallon as today's average so that comes to 6.4c/mile
Take that 4c/mile adavantage, and again there are many more savings with an EV, and the average 12000/ year driver would save $480 annually in fuel alone.
I like taking long trips, but with intermediate Focus level cars available from Enterprise for $19.19 a day I don't like them enough and don't have the time to rent one for more than the 24 days I could afford to for that savings. Now do that math when gas goes back to $4+...
Yes yes we all hear about the people who have jobs or lives that somehow require them to drive personal vehicles hundreds of miles dozens of times a year on short notice and I am sure they exist but they are not normal. The average driver commutes 38 miles in a typical day and add in all other errands and trips and that 12k average is what you get. So it's worth noting that for every road warrior who claims they can't go electric because they drive twice that, there must be two who do half that. A guy who goes 50k a year? Needs to be three or four who hardly drive at all to keep that average there. Nobody is saying every single driver could go EV only today but a huge, overwhelming, majority could and could to their advantage.
People always wildly overestimate the times they drive huge distances, because those drives are more memorable than puttering around our local areas which is what the vast majority do the vast majority of the time, and the savings doing so by electric, which are in reality better than my ICE-biased model, could pay for a nice rental and save wear and tear and depreciation on your own car the few times one would be needed.
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