You must have missed the qualification in the statement about "good driving conditions". To the author, "good driving conditions" means no heat, no air conditioning, no hills, and no stop-and-go traffic jams. Any of these severely reduces the range....and there ain't no place to plug in along the way if you need to use the window defroster. How many times do you add an additional errand on the way home? Not possible with your EV. The author also conveniently "forgot" about replacing the batteries after a couple of years, too. EV batteries loose a sizeable percentage of their capacity EACH MONTH.
Depends. The Nissan Leaf has had some problems with capacity loss in hot climates like Arizona. If you live in such an area, you would be better served by a Chevy Volt. It uses active liquid cooling whereas the Leaf uses passive air cooling. This keeps the Volt's battery in a healthy temperature range. The Volt also never charges the internal battery over 80% and it switches to gasoline mode when you get down to 30%, all while giving you about 40 miles of electric range (followed by 340 miles of gasoline range).
These two things combined seem to be the magic bullet when it comes to preserving battery capacity over the life of the car. All the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence I've heard is that Volt owners are experiencing no capacity loss after years of use. For example:
http://insideevs.com/op-ed-point-will-chevy-volt-battery-show-signs-range-loss/