What the huh? That’s a lot of mpg for the new version of the Honda electric vehicle, which will only be available for lease and only in California and Oregon to start out with. Before you get too excited, yonder comes the Chicago Tribune to tell you why this isn’t such a good deal after all. The energy savings are significant in favor of the EV but it’s also priced a lot higher than the gas-powered Honda Fit. You would need to drive it for 11 years to make up the difference.
– The electric Fit needs 28.6 kilowatt hours of electricity to go 100 miles. At the national average price of 11.6 cents per kilowatt hour, that costs $3.30.
– A gas-powered automatic-transmission Fit, which gets 31 miles per gallon, needs to burn 3.2 gallons to travel 100 miles. At the national average price of $3.57 per gallon of gasoline, that’s $11.52.
– People drive an average of almost 13,500 miles a year, so a typical driver would spend $445 on electricity for an electric Fit over a year, and $1,552 on gasoline for a regular Fit.
– Honda has valued the price of an electric Fit at $29,125 after a $7,500 federal tax credit. That’s $12,210 more than the gas-powered Fit, a savings of $1,107 per year to make up the difference between the electric and the gas-powered version.
Still, new technologies cost more, price goes down after a while.
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