What's up with Honda... An on-the-early-adopters beta test? "Just about every major automaker will sell an all-electric car in the next few years. But if you want to know how competitive the company wants to be with its EVs, you need to look at one metric: price. "Honda today announced a lease price of $399 a month for the Honda Fit EV, based on a purchase price of $36,625. That's great news. The problem is that the company will not sell the all-electric Fit. It only be available as a lease. "Honda will begin leasing the Fit EV in California and Oregon in summer 2012. The company expects volume to be approximately 1,100 units— or only about 366 cars a year—for the next three years. This low volume, combined with the lease-only approach, sends a message of tentativeness. A Honda official said the company wanted to be careful and cautious about the Fit EV rollout, explaining that "we don't want to experiment on the customer." "Putting an electric car up for lease but not giving EV drivers the option to buy conjures bad memories of the ill-fated EV1, which was confiscated and crushed by General Motors. "The news of the lease-only option is more painful considering that Honda now says the Fit EV will have a range of 123 miles--up from the 100 miles it promised last year at the L.A. show. Honda told me that the company wanted the 123-mile number to get communicated, as a comparison of the range offered by other electric cars, like the Nissan LEAF. Curiously, the company also said that the EPA number for range that will appear on the window sticker is likely to be 76 miles. The Fit EV will use a 20 kWh lithium-ion battery, and will be powered by a 92-kW electric motor. "The Fit EV's onboard 6.6 kW - 32 amp charger means the battery pack can be fully charged with 240 volts in ;as little as three hours.' " PluginCars.com Nov, 16, 2011
With Honda's past firmware issues in regards to battery management and usage, I would be cautious at best in purchasing a pure electric Honda. Leasing is more forgivable because their poor design can only leave you stranded, not out a bunch of money. Wise move on their part.
This is exactly what happened to me with the GM EV1 that I leased for two years and loved. GM adamantly would not sell or renew the lease at the end of the two years. They even came to the house to remove the charger.
It makes total sense for Honda to do this - it limits the warranty exposure and allows them to collect the cars at the end of the lease period and to pull them apart and do a postmortem. A few years ago Mini did the same with their electric Mini and I think that BMW (Mini's owner) is going to do it also with an electric version of the 1 series. To go back to the warranty - think about it. If they sell these they will be on the hook for the 10 year/100,000 mile (not positive this is the CARB requirement for EV's) warranty. Delivering that service on these cars could be expensive and difficult in the later years, and if they proved unreliable you get the double whammy of being expensive and also a killer in terms of company reputation. Honda has also announced that they are only going to produce a couple thousand of these over a few years so it is pretty clear that this is a niche program for now and that they are really looking for Beta testers more than owners (as the op said). I know that the whole lease thing with the EV1 was a fiasco but it seems like all of the car makers have learned from it. I would imagine that anyone interested in these will be informed about the plan for what might happen after the lease period.
Actually, 10 years / 150k miles warranty requirement is to achieve AT-PZEV emission certification. It only applies for hybrids (including plugins) because the battery is considered part of emission hardware. It doesn't apply for EVs since there is no gas engine that could be affected by the performance of the battery.
