[VOA]

Total cost? Below $40,000, in monthly lease payments sometimes
as low as $299.

I'm sorry I can't give a citation for this...

BUT...when I was living in Los Angeles during 1995-2005, I do
remember either reading/hearing that the real cost of the EVI
was over $100,000.
And that folks like Ed Begley Jr. that got those artifically-low
leases were getting sweet-heart deals just for the publicity
from their use of the car.

Granted, the real-world cost of the EV-1 (per unit) should have gone
down with real mass production.
But even in Liberal Los Angeles, the stock of the EV-1 did sink when
a few of them suffered "spontaneous combustions" and burned
down to the axles.

(I'm not "anti-EV1"...a re-working of the concept might produce
a reasonably-price new vehicle that would make real sense in
congested urban areas.)

[BurbankKarl]

We stored about 200 of these at our facility...there actually was a program to swap out the original batteries and re lease them, but then the charger fires started happening. It was after the second one, a model in Florida whose carport burned, that the whole program came down.

Last I heard they still hadnt disposed of those batteries, as it was forbidden in CA...that is why the cars went to AZ.