First, they are comparing the wrong cars: they take the Chevy Cruze and Nissan Leaf -- both compact cars -- but compare them against the midsize Prius, rather than the compact Prius C (which not only has better gas mileage than the midsize Prius, but also a sticker price in the same range as the Cruze.)
They also call gasoline + initial price "total cost of ownership", ignoring maintenance costs, and -- critical to the all-electric Leaf -- electricity costs.
Further, assuming $2 gas over any extended time is, well, dubious. Sure, prices are falling now, but while short-term drops happen, we haven't seen an extended period (> 1 year) of $2 gas (overall US retail prices are closer to $3 now than $2) since 2004, and there's no sign of any kind of long-term change that would return us to an extended period of sub-$2 gas.
Its not clear to me if this is just ludicrously incompetent, or if this is just a Nissan ad (with the kind of deliberately misleading comparisons and assumptions one might expect in an ad) dressed up to look like a news article.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=em...
