Listen, my brother has one and he loves it. He gets an average of 50 mpg... Sometimes it goes down to 48 mpg, so don't let anyone tell you that it's not economical. He did exactly what you said; He bought a used 1 year old one for $23,000 and trust me he saves a lot of money on gas.
It has a 12 gallon fuel tank @ 50 mpg; that's 600 miles for one tank of fuel!!!! That's pretty damn good if you ask me...
Oh and the batteries have a 10 year warranty. The car also has a 6 year powertrain warranty that covers the car bumper to bumper. I'm about to get one myself for my daily driver.
And I agree with you about both the political and environmental reasons to use less oil. Let's just say global warming is not man made but a natural occurrence, we still need to get off the oil. We don't realize it but every time we fill our cars a portion of our money goes to those crazy fuckers in the Middle East.
If we really want to fight this war on Terrorism, we should all ,as a country, try to give the least amount of our money to those psychos in Arabia. The only money maker for terrorists is oil. It's not like they have other money making industries... Have you ever heard of an Arab computer company, car company, biotech company, etc? Probably not because all they have is their oil and the day we stop using it will be the day that part of the world will be irrelevant. Think about it, if those Iranians stopped selling their oil, do you think that they could afford those nukes?
