> My electricity cost was 10 cents per kilowatt hour. This gave me an energy cost for my lead-acid EV1 of 2.6 cents per mile.
This is a bit misleading. As anybody who understands rechargeable battery technology can tell you, the major cost factor with batteries is the fairly short service life and the high replacement cost of the batteries themselves, not the cost of electricity.
The initial lead-acid battery pack for the EV1 stored 16.5KW/h and had an expected total service life of about 7000 KW/h before it would need to be replaced. Therefore, it could only store and deliver about $700 worth of electricity. I have not been able to find exact numbers on the replacement cost of the 1.5 ton battery, but it was probably over $4000. Therefore, the recurring cost of the battery replacement would probably have been about 15 cents per mile. Ouch.
The second-generation nickel-hydride battery pack for the EV1 could had a capacity over 25KW/h, and had a service life of around 24,000 KW/h, but the replacement cost of the NiMH battery would probably have been over $12,000 - so the battery cost-per-mile would still be about 14 or 15 cents.
There is a company called Ceramatec which claims to be able to deliver a sodium/sulfur battery which will have a lifetime battery cost of only 3 cents per KW/h delivered. However, the characteristics of the battery are not an ideal match for an electric car.
Personally, I believe that an electric car would be practical if it used a zinc/air fuel cell instead of a battery pack and included a small 15hp Wankel engine/generator and a 3 gallon gas tank as an emergency range-extender.
The Wankel was low on efficiency but that may not be a problem with limited use as you suggest. I always liked the Wankel.