The 36-month, 36,000-mile lease will cost $389 a month plus taxes with no down payment. The contract includes roadside assistance, all maintenance as well as the collision insurance. However, consumers leasing the Fit will be required to carry liability insurance at $100,000 per incident and $300,000 overall coverage.

Honda doesn't offer a lease deal for the gasoline version of a Fit, but a similar lease for the slightly larger Civic is $220 a month with Honda picking up the first of the 36 monthly payments. It does not cover the cost of maintenance, roadside assistance and collision insurance.

Based on current gasoline prices, the Civic will cost about $1,000 more to drive 12,000 miles than the Fit at a nighttime charging rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

"In a worst-case situation, with electric power generated from a high proportion of coal -- as it is in a wide swath of the country's midsection -- an electric car or a plug-in hybrid will generate slightly more full-cycle [often called a well-to-wheels analysis] global-warming emissions, as the report calls the greenhouse gases, than the best gasoline-engine subcompact. In areas where the cleanest electricity is available -- regions served by hydroelectric, natural gas or nuclear generating plants -- greenhouse gas emissions may be less than half that of today's best gasoline-engine vehicles.

Put another way, for 45 percent of the United States population, an E.V. will generate lower levels of greenhouse gases than a gasoline-engine vehicle capable of 50 m.p.g. in combined city-highway driving. Cities in this group include the predictable -- Seattle, for example -- as well as the less obvious, like Buffalo or New Orleans.

About 37 percent of Americans live in regions where a Leaf's greenhouse gas emissions would equate to a gasoline-powered vehicle rated at 41 to 50 m.p.g. Some 18 percent of the population lives in regions with a comparatively dirty power supply, where the well-to-wheels carbon footprint of a Leaf would be the equivalent of a vehicle rated at 31 to 40 m.p.g., typical of models like the Chevrolet Cruze, Ford Focus and Hyundai Elantra.

Here's another way to look at it: if one region were completely dependent on coal for power, its electric cars would be responsible for full-cycle global-warming emissions equivalent to a car capable of 30 m.p.g. in mixed driving. In a region totally reliant on natural gas, an electric would be equivalent to a 50 m.p.g. gasoline-engine car. "