We currently have a 2010 Fit Sport that has been great. I drove it for 2 years and then got foolish and gave it to my wife. I went nuts and bought a luxury SUV. I recently traded that for another. My driving has been reduced to a 12 mile roundtrip commute 5-6 days a week, and little more. I've signed for a new 2015 Yellow EXL and I'm pretty excited. While the color wasn't my first choice, the pickings are slim. There are some manuals out there, but few with an auto. In the last week or so, my local dealer has sold the last 2 EX CVT's they had and I was left with either the vehicle I chose, or trying to locate another. I look forward to participating here. 1 thing I will miss is XM. Honda really blows making you opt for Navi there. On the plus side I'll get a refund from XM for the remainder of my current subscription. I installed an aftermarket radio in the '10 Fit, including XM, but my wife doesn't listen so we cancelled it a while back. Trying out the iPhone interface on the new car, I was reminded of the quirks I faced back in 2010. No pause button?! Come on Honda! All in all, I hope to enjoy the new Fit for a long time to come.

 

Enjoy LLLC1393! Have seen very few 2015 Fits here in the Atlanta area since beginning our first year in August 2014, but the yellows I have seen definitely makes a statement; hope you find it a happy choice.

 

LLLC1393, congrats in advance on your new Fit.

Fitster, I recently took a trip to Atlanta (Midtown area) and couldn't believe how many Nissan Leafs I saw (and you are correct, not many Fits). They must be really green there.

 

I was reading about this just yesterday. It may be due to the State of Georgia's recently discontinued $5000 incentive for EV purchases. Added to the Federal $7500 incentive, that added up to a whopping $12,500 discount to purchase a Leaf.

 

So I have also noticed; maybe it's because of all our trees!

 

Oops: Did Georgia just pull the plug on the electric car market?

Many people are wondering after state legislators voted to eliminate a tax credit that last year helped catapult metro Atlanta to the highest U.S. market share for plug-in electric vehicles. The same bill will impose a $200 registration fee -- the nation's highest -- on noncommercial EVs.

When the governor signs the bill, as expected, Georgia will go from first to worst on its support for the EV market. The electric vehicle tax credit ends June 30; the EV fee starts the next day.

 

Nice, very nice (sarcasm intended). That's the government always looking for the most opportunistic means to increase tax revenue. All those new EV owners baited by the purchase rebates will now have to pay every year for their "green" prowess. That's one way to get this planet back on course (more sarcasm intended). I hope those additional revenues will solely be used to improve and maintain the plug-in infrastructure (aka charging stations).

 

Aside from the timing specifics in this case, EVs should pay their share of highway maintenance costs traditionally paid through taxes on automotive fuels. If they don't use fuel, with no other means of getting some tax revenue, they are quite literally freeloading on the rest of us using fuel and paying fuel taxes. A flat fee doesn't work well because it benefits high usage and penalizes low usage. We haven't heard the last of this. Something weight and mileage based will come sooner or later, question is how. Maybe it will have fuel incentives to drive technology insertion--e.g., a lb-mile on gasoline more expensive than a lb-mile on hydrogen, say. But not free.

The person who buys the last gallon of motor fuel can't afford to carry the entire cost of maintaining the roads.

 

You would be hard pressed to actually measure the damage my tiny one ton fit or any small car for that matter does going 5000 miles a year on our roads. On the other hand heavy trucks hauling the massive weight of imported items sold by kmart, wall-mart, target, etc, etc... driving many, many more miles a year - and most of all that giant Amazonian leech jeff "bozos" (no school tax/property tax as well - what a business model!), cause massive damage to our infrastructure and pay relatively minimal reparations. This will not change, because the democraps love the teamsters and all unions, and the republipigs love business, and the people love their free shipping... God bless America...

 

Don't follow most of your arguments.

Road maintenance is about a whole lot more than just "damage" caused by "tiny" 2,600 lb Fits. Somebody has to pay for weather damage and wear, to name just one. (How are you going to get the weather to pay its share?) Trucks pay not just fuel taxes, they also pay road taxes. (Ever seen a weigh station? Ever noticed they are run by the revenuers not the DoTs in most states?) Even if the items these trucks carried were domestically manufactured--and a lot of them still are--the trucks would still be there. They are there as a function of consumption not origin. Now, there could be an argument over whether the heavy trucks pay proportional to the wear and tear they cause and the benefit they gain--but what that has to do with unions vs. big business and two party politics is a little murky to me. "Free shipping" to the consumer doesn't mean that the transaction isn't accruing transportation costs some of which are road tax/fuel tax. (Ever notice that the price difference on Amazon between the "free shipping" suppliers and the not free shipping suppliers is generally pretty close to the shipping charge?) Oh, and "free shipping" from Amazon vs. buying something at, say, a neighborhood BestBuy doesn't change the fact that the merch has to get from manufacturer to you somehow, and either retailing method doesn't change that at all, just changes the routing and the number of stops. (And it'd be easy to establish that the Amazon model is more efficient--fewer stops--and uses less of the roads than the BestBuy model.) The Amazons of this world do pay property taxes where they own property. (They also collect sales taxes in those locations.) Now, an argument could be made about all the avoided sales taxes from online shopping, but that argument should be as much or more about the purchasers--you and me--evading our personal obligations to be paying use taxes, and happily buying online to "save the taxes" while doing so, as it is about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. BTW, I see way more WalMart trucks on the roads than Amazon.

Way off topic. Even the original point I made that road users who aren't using taxed liquid fuel should still have to pay something somehow for road maintenance in Georgia and elsewhere is kinda off topic.