Just bought a used Volt and was kind of in your shoes. Our 16 year old Saturn finally had enough and we decided it was time. I was hoping to stay under 10,000 and saw a few volts in that ballpark and was intrigued. Since we were not sure what we could expect for long term reliability we decided to spend a little more to get something with a bit of warranty left.
After a couple of years the warranty will be up anyway so who knows whether that decision we have made a will make a difference one way or another. It's a little piece of mind for what I feel is already something of a gamble. Those batteries may last a long time, but they'll go eventually and probably before we would have otherwise gotten a newer car. Hopefully some enterprising 3rd party will come up with a cheaper battery replacement.
