[FONT="]I would stay away from cars like the Bolt or Ioniq/Niro if you are not going to be leasing it. While most hybrids and EVs have been fairly reliable, there have been a few exceptions and when those cars go wrong... it is really expensive to get them fixed. Furthermore if the manufacturer doesn't have a history of selling those types of vehicles then a lot of times you will find that service departments don't know how to fix them properly. The Prius, while it is a boring selection, is the safest bet, in terms of reliable and cost effective long-term transportation.
For the record I did get burned on this one by a first generation Honda Civic Hybrid, so that is part of where my point of view comes from. However, for a while there I was considering purchasing a A3 E-Tron that I found that someone had won at a charity raffle, and so I sought the advice from a local independent hybrid specialist and they were the ones that disclosed that bit about dealer support issues. Apparently they had run into a lot of customers that tried to get their hybrids services by dealers and had serious issues because they had no idea what they were doing. In fact that is how I ran across them.
I was trying to get a used battery pack installed in my Civic, I paid them like $600, and after keeping the car for two or three weeks and seeking advice from Honda’s support services they still couldn't figure out how to get it to work right. I dropped it off at Atlanta Hybrid Repair and they worked on it off and on for about a week, undid all of the hamfisted fixes the dealer had tried on my vehicle, and eventually got it to work and only charged me like $100 because they took working on my car as a learning exercise and appreciated me letting them keep it so long and figure out what the problem was.
Long-story short: make sure you have someone like Atlanta Hybrid Repair there to service your vehicle if you do buy one, because if you can’t get your car running if it does have an issue… it isn’t much good to you.
However, if you are considering leasing or want utility that is closer to the JSW/GSW: you may want to consider the Accord or RAV4 Hybrid as well. The Accord to me is interesting in terms of how it can decouple the ICE from the drivetrain to go from a serial to parallel hybrid operation, but given my past experience with Honda hybrids, their current reliability issues, and the fact that it is such a complicated design… I have concerns about how well it might stand up to the test of time.[/FONT]