When I was in college the first time, I was part of the school's alternative energy club. We got to take a very close look at the EV1 that the state was leasing. That last word is key- none of the people who drove an EV1 was a private owner of the vehicle. It cost almost nothing becuase GM underwrote the maintence past tires.

The one we got to see needed to have a new battery every 18 months, and had corrosion issues. They didn't like salted roads, and sucked on hills. Guess what Vermont has half the year, and what Vermont has all the year. Maybe the state's toy car (sorry, that's just how it felt to me) was the only one that needed a lot of maintence, but for some reason I doubt that.

As for going 140 miles on NiMH, no doubt it can be done. In fact, I saw better with some Tour de Sol rigs. But they had larger batteries than the the EV1. Most G2 EV1s, as I recall, were getting closer to 120 miles on a charge. That doesn't sound like much, but it is 16% difference. You see the same kind of variability with infernal combustion engines- a car model that is rated for X amount of mpg may have quite a bit of difference between exact specimines. The reason I ask is because I've heard the 140 mile claim, and it is misleading. Anything over, say, 5% probably should be discarded from those kinds of numbers for the sake of honesty.