Oh - BTW, I'd *never* recommend an i3 to buy new. But the first batch of ones that were leased out came due not super long ago, and I was assuming that you could probably score some pretty good deals on used i3s.

One interesting reason that the 500e is such a screaming deal is basically that Fiat had to make it, but they lost a ton of money on each one sold. They had to sell them to essentially offset Ferrari fucking up their corporate average fuel economy numbers, and it was cheaper to take the loss on the 500es that it was to pay the fines for blowing those numbers. So they were cheap to begin with, but a niche car, so used prices on them are obscenely low. Or at least were the last time I looked.

Honestly, though, if I didn't have a place to plug in every night, I don't think I'd get an EV. I think you made the right call with the hybrid (which might be another point in the i3's favor - there's a hybrid model as well that'll optionally run pure EV for some distance). We recently had some work on the house done, and we couldn't get the car in range of the plug since building materials were in the driveway. I charged a bit at South Shore in Alameda, and for a bit at my parents' place off of 110v, which was incredibly slow.

One of the best benefits of owning an EV and having a place to charge is that you get a full charge every morning, which essentially cuts practical charging time to zero. Even with the Supercharger, which is really fast, the idea of spending time at random chargers that aren't at my house is pretty bleh, and would get really annoying (and consume a lot of mental bandwidth). Even if you're just renting, do you not have a window you could toss a 110v extension cord out of to a driveway? For us, most days we'd drive (back before we got the 240v outlet installed) enough that we could still top up on 110v before morning.

re: Mach-E and id.4 being interesting, I don't mean "Oh, that's interesting..." it was more, they are interesting cars. I think VW has the capacity to build something competitive to Tesla, they're just a decade behind. Ford, my guess is, has built an interesting *car*, but like everyone else, they don't have the infrastructure in place to make it feel properly supported. Which was my same problem with the Chevy Bolt, which otherwise was a really good car. I'd really like both of them to succeed. Hey, if you're looking at the id.4, have you considered the eGolf? One of my friends has one and likes it a lot.