I'm jealous Brad! Great write up. Based on this review, it's such a shame that the Fit will have such limited availability, and that it'll only be available for lease. What kind of wait am I looking at to get one in Colorado -- late 2013, or even into 2014?

Wow -- that is great to hear! I sure hope they hear the applause and built 10,000+ of these in the first year. The Fit package is great to start with -- my brother drives one (he's 6'-6"+) and the performance and range are just what most people will want.

Build a *bunch* of them Honda -- please! And sell them to us.

Neil

Brad, Did you have a chance to do a good evaluation of coasting mode?

Ass kicker! I love it.

Finally! A more reasonably priced EV we can fly in. A conversion done right. This is what I've wanted since I started driving. Fast, fun driving, without the (profound) regrets of purchasing of gas. Looking forward to learning more and thanks for the excellent report.

As a (previous) Honda owner, I wholly support Brad's call to Mr. Ito.

Sounds great, but limited production and lease only is a total fail. Especially with the Toshiba Scib batteries that have a 5000 cycle potential, I want to OWN that vehicle, not lease it.

@Brad Berman · "What should I propose to Honda--to legitimately earn the trust of the EV community?"

What is the end goal here for Honda ?

BMW did something similar - leasing Mini-Es. Most of us thought it was just a CARB play. But by making real investments in Electric line of vehicles (i3 etc) BMW has convinced EV sceptics that they are serious.

What does Honda really plan to do ? Are they planning to make substantial investments in real EVs ?

@ EVNow - CARB credit is probably part of the justification, and financially helps get the R&D funds and green light for an EV project with profit margins three generations away. Regards the lease only, if the Fit EV turns out to be a hit, it may eventually see sales or renewals. I think the MINI E surprised BMW by being so reliable. The MINI E fleet keeps getting repurposed, and is now headed to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Fit EV’s drive is in-house, so may be practical for longer term support. Honda needs to get on the field to learn what role EVs have in their future. Step one is to build the car and put it in customers hands.

@EVNow - There is plenty of EV market out there. Right now. EVs today, with current battery technology, are not the primary cars for most households. But they do make perfectly fine second cars in a country where nearly everyone gets nearly everywhere by car. There are therefore at least 2 cars in most households. Battery capacity today can do this second car.

Say Honda were to make one full car model worth of EVs per year. That would be around 100,000 cars per year. That sounds like a lot of cars and it is in absolute terms, but it is only a fraction of the new cars sold each year. There are somewhere around 16 million new cars sold in the US alone each year. Say 5 of the most forward looking car companies did one full car model as an EV. That would be 500,000 per year or around 3% of all new cars. That leaves 97% of all new cars to be ICE.

So is 3% of the population ready for EVs? I think so. There are so many people that are so upset with so many things that EVs are the answer to. I think it is underestimating the current population to say there are not 3% of new car buyers that are ready to make some sacrifices in range to do it.

I know that some will point to how long it took for the Prius to get to where it is. But keep in mind that each of these EVs will be a different design for a different demographic. Now that the Prius will have 3 variations they will probably sell a lot more. And EVs deliver much more of a break from oil then the Prius does. Especially in terms of sending the kind of message a lot of people want to send.

Plus EVs are seen as cool by the younger generation in a way that the Prius does not. It is true that younger people have less money for new cars, but there are still some out there who buy them. And we are talking about only 3%.

And what about the lack of charger infrastructure? It isn't needed for that 2nd car in the household.

As new and better batteries are developed, as we build a charger infrastructure for people on trips, as people see how much better the EV driving experience is, as car designers do new and interesting things with EV designs, we will see the 97% and the 3% flip.

It is to protect itself against that time that Honda needs to leap in there and get some experience with a mass produced EV. Not just experience designing them, but experience all up and down their operations. Engineering, maintenance, parts logistics, sales, the whole bit.

@alt-e · "There is plenty of EV market out there."

Like Jose above, my primary car is Leaf.

But no, there isn't that big a market today. The "potential" market is huge. 60% of Americans have multiple cars - and thus can replace one with an EV. But that is only a potential market - it will take a long time, lot of effort & money to develop that market. You need commitment from OEMs to do that - Honda lacks that commitment.

There isn't an easy market that in 10s of thusands per month that will just materialize if only OEMs build cars. The market needs to be developed. They have to advertise, figure out how to train the sales peoples, be committed to investing a lot of money now for returns 5 years from now.

@EVNow - Of course they will have to advertise, etc., just like they would need to do on any brand new car model. Probably more because it is more new. The whole point of having a dialog with Honda is to nudge them to turn around and get committed to EVs.

Honda is clearly not now committed to EVs but that doesn't mean they cannot be in the future. For us to encourage them to go in that direction can only be a good thing to do.

The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn't work.

"ex-EV1 driver ·

I'd rather people spend their hard earned money supporting companies who are committed to EVs rather paying money to greenwashers like Honda, Ford, BMW, Daimler, Volvo, etc."

What's your beef with BMW? It seems to me that they are building an infrastructure that shows a commitment to EV's. This came from an article about the opening of the BMW carbon fiber plant in Moses Lake, WA.

"Standing near the carbon fiber passenger compartment of BMW’s planned i3 vehicle, BMW chairman Norbert Reithofer told a crowd of 150 at the new Moses Lake factory on Thursday morning that carbon fiber will be key for the evolution of electric vehicle.

“The BMW Group is pioneering new frontiers in auto production,” Reithofer said. “Passenger cells are made from carbon fiber to compensate for the greater weight of batteries. Using carbon fiber on this scale has never been attempted before.”

Link to full article here: http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2011/09/01/bmw-opens-new-moses-l...

@JRP3 · "Not to mention that Nissan LEAF's seem to be selling as fast as they can be produced. I'd say there is a strong market chomping at the bit to get their hands on an EV."

Depends on what you mean by strong market.

I don't think Nissan can sell more than 4K Leafs a month - after Smyrna opens - at the current specs & price. I'd call that a niche market.

@Brad Berman ·

As you know, GM has been talking about how Volt is supply constrained for a few months now. But every month we see the inventory go up - and so is the Days Supply. Now it is at some 130 days.

Two months back there was an article here about a GM exec saying some 4K Volts would be available for sale. Yet only a thousand got sold in Oct. Same thing in Nov. Looks like more than 12K Volts have been produced - but only 6K sales. Even if 3K are demos & in transit, that still leaves 3K of them on dealer lots. I'll write a post on that one of these days (I didn't do it because I didn't want to "pile on" the troubles Volt is already having).

One possibility is that in CA people are waiting for HOV access Volts. So, in a couple of months when we start seeing such Volts getting delivered, the sale may go up.

Regarding Leaf, there was definitely some difficulty in selling all the MY11 "orphans" that some dealers got hold of in CA. Interestingly, I also saw an Orphan sell for $5K premium at my nearest dealer. Ofcourse, we won't know the real demand until one can walk into a dealership, select the Leaf with the trim & color of choice and drive it home. That will happen only after Smyrna goes online.

It is nice to hear that Accord PHEV (and Fit EV) are well engineered and polished vehicles. But, I do think Honda execs are "uninspired" to put it mildly. They haven't been able to plug the market share bleed overall. They have yielded #2 position in Japan to Nissan and # 2 & #3 Foreign OEM in US to Nissan & Hyundai. When you are the market leader, you can play it safe and conservative like Toyota is doing. But when you are slipping, you can't be conservative. When are they going to wake up ?

Hi Brad,

>> In Tokyo, I was able to drive the Accord-sized plug-in hybrid as well. I'm planning to write that up in the next few days. <<

How cool is that?!! Looking forward to the writeup.

The silent engine in the Accord is a defect. No problem telling when the engine is running in my Zing! (It's an engineered-in feature encouraging the owner to shut the darn thing off.) The engine has saved my butt several times, but it reminds me too much of the engine on a sailboat -- it's nicer when its not running.