That would be SWEET... It's a quiet neighbor hood but maybe we can see an EV burn some rubber in person

 

A couple of points I saw
1) You're comparing depreciation to a lease. To have apples to apples, you'll need to see what is the lease rate for a gasoline fit. As mentioned previously, you don't get the depreciation price; there is a premium to pay for the privilege to turn the keys over after 3years
Here's a quick lease that says a honda sport 36month lease is $255/mo. Not an exact example but point is the same
2013 Honda Fit Sport Automatic Auto Lease and Car Loan Offers



2) If you're in a techno center place like the bay area, there are perks for early adoption of new technology. The OP already mentioned the biggest one for him was free carpool access as the value of time.

But the other huge one related to a financial analysis is that many charging companies as well as public charging options are in a honeymoon phase with electric vehicles. Currently many of these are offering their charging infrastructure for no cost other than getting your info into their system as they build up their user base. Yes, this is not convenient, but if you can get this to match your car usage habits, then your energy cost are now zero at least for the present term.

OP gets this from his employer, but there are websites and smartphone apps that you can use to find charging stations as well as showing what they charge

plugshare.com for example.
Notice that many ChargePoint brand stations in government and business parking lots also currently are free.

 

Yep. When you compare apples to apples it's even better. The regular $255 lease requires $2000 down and only allows 12000 miler per year. Still not exactly apples to apples, but it starts to illustrate the value of the EV's lease.

 

Either way, depreciation or the cost of a lease, it's still the cost of using the car over 36 months. Leases are typically more costly than ownership, but no way to tell on the FitEV as they're too new to project depreciation and Honda isn't selling them, just leasing. I keep cars 10-15 years; the cost of a FitEV is impossible to calculate over that period, so let's go with 3 years. I suspect Honda is losing money on the leases in an effort to build a market.

I agree 17% depreciation on a gasoline Fit is unrealistic over 36 months. It's more like 30% and that's on a private sale. If we take that number the depreciation cost of the gasoline Fit Sport over 3 years is $5,640 ($18.8K*30%). This is comparable to the 3 year lease of $199/mo or $7,164. (neither amount includes taxes, which deserves comparing too, but I'm lazy).

Electricity isn't free. Electricity costs vary depending on what part of the country you live in. In CA it's about $0.20/kwH. The FitEV gets about 4miles/kwH. If you drive 15,000 miles per year, your electricity cost would be about $750.00 per year. Your fuel cost in a gasoline fit would be $2,000 yr based on gas being $4/gal and 30miles per gallon.

Over 3 years the electricity cost would be $2250 vs $6,000 for gasoline.

So the cost of a gasoline Fit (not including valve adjustments, oil changes, or ATF changes) is about $11,640.

The cost of the FitEV is about $9,414 over the same period (not including the cost of wiring the charging station).

I recognize there might be savings on insurance as collision and comprehensive are included in the lease, but you are required to have comprehensive and collision on a leased car, and not on a purchase, and liability tends to be higher on a leased car due to greater limits required by the lease. I'll call this a wash.

I also haven't included the interest cost on financing a loan for the gasoline Fit and I recognize there is an opportunity cost (time value of money) for paying cash instead of financing, but I don't feel like crunching those numbers.

Given the additional features if the FitEV works for your commute, it's an economically sound choice (savings of $2,226 over 3 years) as long as Honda throws in the charging station and a pretty cool car (I guess: they don't have them around here ).

edit: and this is based on a $199/mo lease. If it's $259 the extra $60/mo will cost you $2,160 more. I really think Honda is subsidizing the lease to make it competitive with a gas Fit. It can't be a coincidence they're so close. If you use 30% depreciation on what is probably a $30,000 car (comparable to a Leaf) then a purchase would be $10,000. The $259 lease is $9,288; Honda certainly isn't making much money.

 

Whenever an electric car is debated, people always whip out the calculators, however there are other factors in considering to car ownership.

If every car were judged solely on financial economics or on some kind of pure metric, then we should only have a handful of best-of-breed choices on the road.
Yet we see all kinds of cars. So money isn't everything, especially when things are within a relatively close range.

You have to admit there is some "cool" factor in having something different or unique, and that factor has some value to a particular segment of the market.

So different strokes for different folks, and in this case even the financials wash out.

The biggest concern of this deal (besides the same concerns with other ev options), is the "lease" has ghosts of the EV1 deal, that after 3years you may be asked to hand back something you've grown attached to may be taken from you.

For that reason, getting back to the Original Post, you may want to consider whether it's worth your money and effort to invest in modifications to personalize this car.

 

I have never leased a car before this one, but even with owning cars I always consider modifications a complete loss. To me they just make my experience with the vehicle better.

I don't plan to do anything to the EV that I can't remove and possibly sell at the end of the lease, but I'm fully willing to lose money on mods to drive something I think is cool.

Also, for you guys comparing electricity vs gas, keep in mind that I'm in California. I travel about 15 weeks a year all over the US for work and gas prices are always anywhere from .30 to $1 more per gallon here than most places.

Again, like I mentioned before, the use of the carpool lane will give me 30-60 minutes of my life back every day. I'd easily pay a couple hundred bucks a month for that.

Liability insurance has nothing to do with the lease. Comp and Collision do because they cover the policy holder's vehicle. Liability protects the people I hit and covers their damage and is calculated based on how much protection the insured needs to protect their personal assets.

 

You can't keep the car, it's in the contract: there is no end of lease purchase option. I guess Honda could change their minds. It's very much a pilot program and I'm more than a bit jealous, although at 50 miles round trip to the office I'm not sure I'd be a good candidate. The 80 mile range isn't ideal for a daily driver in Atlanta.

It's a very personal decision and involves politics, ethics and esthetics (coolness factor) as well. While I could afford a more expensive, bigger, faster, sleeker car the Fit fills my transportation needs 95% of the time and does it well while saving gas and assuaging my need to make a subdued political statement. The electric would as well.

But removing politics, ethics, and geekiness, the only fair measure is to get out the calculator and figure out which has the lowest cost of ownership. It's the electric by a nose (with heavy subsidies from Honda). When I've done the same calculations for hybrids they come up wanting.

oh, the lease probably restricts any modifications outside of fuzzy dice, I doubt anyone cares as long as the mods are reversible.

 

Lease agreements typically specify minimum liability coverage in order to qualify for the lease. This is because the car is owned by the leasing company and they have some liability. State laws mandate minimum liability coverage (always less than the leasing company). Insurance actuaries calculate how much you'll pay based on what kind of risk you are and the liability coverage you (or the leasing company) chooses. Increasingly they factor your credit worthiness into the equation.

It's interesting Honda is covering comp/collision. I've never heard of this before. It could be that their estimate for what insurance companies would charge for this was so high as to make the car non-competitive.

Oh yeah. We're not paying $4/gal for regular.

 

Honda made no minimum requirements for liability. I just had it put at the same levels as my other cars.

$4 a gallon? What, is it on sale somewhere?

 

well I don't know about the rest of the country but here we brew it out back.

 

That's kinda why I want one... I want to be in the sequel of "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

[/sarcasm]

It does have that feel to it, but I think this time it will start the ball rolling at least. NYC's been planning on adding charging stations, and with gas & insurance prices quite high here, this lease is quite appealing. Liability alone will be no where near what full coverage is around here.

I figure Honda has all these EV's, at a loss already.... so if they subsidize the lease they're still out.... BUT it's great advertising/promo, and even real world R&D up to a point... I'm sure it will sway quite a few people away from other makes.

 

Actually part of the lease agreement lets Honda use the data collected from the car's "brain", so I think a big part of it is R&D.

The sticker price is $36,625 and I had read that they were losing money at that, so they are losing A LOT on each one with this lease deal.

 

Agree 100%.... was just being conservative.