That was a good tip, I've updated my profile. I considered the Nissan Leaf 2nd hand too, most that came off lease after 3 years are 15k euro, that's a pretty hefty depriciation though. My i from 2010 was still 10k euro though, a pretty hefty price for a 2nd hand car still, the Peugeot 206 SW 2.0 HDI diesel I traded in was only good for about 2250.
The good news is, the battery broke in the 1st week I drove the i and after 2 months I now have a new battery, I really can't complain.
I purchased the i purely by doing math. For driving 20k km a year (~12k mi) the diesel cost me 2700 euro a year on diesel, road taxes and insurance, the next option I considered was a Toyota Aygo/Citroen C1/Peugeot 108 which was 1800 a year, and after that came the i with 850 euro a year.
You see, the diesels in the netherlands have pretty hefty road taxes (85 euros a month), the aygo which is considerably smaller over the Peugeot 206 SW is still 32 euros a month, but electric is road tax free up to 2020.
I can relate to the math though, and it's a sorry state regardless of where you live, it doesn't appear to matter anymore. And it's not just the math, but also the spoken and written language. I cringe whenever I read the comments on a common car website, it's positively horrific. Having been to the US I can tell you that for all intents I found Louisville Kentucky to be very much alike the Netherlands. And speaking with the Americans a lot of similar topics come up, except guns, we really don't have much of those, although people occasionaly get shot.
Math Example: I have solar panels as well, and people mock me for that too. We have this great tax rule in the Netherlands where you can deduct your PV generation from your consumption 1 for 1. That's 21 cents per kWh. And with 2100kWh a year I effectively reduce my bill with 441 euros a year. That means that for the 4k euro investment I get quite the interest in that regard, compared to currently 0,75% for my savings account at the bank. It's a no brainer, 1 summer month (300kWh) makes me more money then the bank account in a year.
The current fuel and diesel prices in the Netherlands have always been quite high compared to the US, it's approx 7 dollars per gallon here. But somehow that never really filtered through into car choice much. Quite a lot of smaller cars compared to the US, but there is a substantial amount of 2nd car families.
There have been a few attempts at stimulating fuel efficieny, but all have been targeted at the company car lease drivers. The fuel efficient cars got a far lower income tax compared to the other company lease cars. It used to be 7% for the plugin hybrids, leading to a lot of Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV sales.
For 2016 the plugin category is going up to 15% and 22% there after, the same for the normal petrol and diesel cars. Only all electric will still be heavily subsidized at 4%. This construction has led to a really awkward 2nd hand market though, as it drives over 3 quarters of all the car sales in the Netherlands. So now you have huge amount of 2nd hand VAG group 1.2TDI diesels in the form of Seat/VW/Skoda which no one in particular wants, but had the really low tax for the corporate lease drivers.
A similar story for the original hybrids, a huge Toyota Prius selection, because it had a 7% income tax over the purchase price of the car.
For the coming years it's become a lot simpler though, it's either 0g CO2/km or everything else. I'm pretty sure the effect of that will be far more effective then the previous political agenda.
One of the most common arguments I use against nay sayers that quote the battery production as "polluting" is the following. "You are suggesting that burning the oil we pumped out of the ground just last week is better then building a battery that is used for 5-10 years, sure, why not"
