Hawaii Governor Unveils Plan to Create EV Recharging Network for Islands by 2012

Hawaii's governor has unveiled a plan to create an alternative transportation system for the islands based on plug-in electric vehicles with swappable batteries and a battery-recharging network.

The plan put forth by Republican Governor Linda Lingle calls for creating a public-private partnership with Better Place to create 70,000 to 100,000 recharging points that would support the zero-emissions vehicles expected to be available after 2011. Hawaii's biggest utility, Hawaiian Electric, will aid in the rollout.

Lingle said the arrangement with Better Place of Palo Alto, California, will "help Hawaii get off its extreme oil addiction," which costs the state $7 billion a year.

The plan, which is the brainchild of Better Place CEO and former software executive Shai Agassi, is intended to overcome the major hurdles to electric vehicles: slow battery recharging and limited availability. The latter challenge is particularly daunting, and Better Place has yet to line up financing for the $75 million to $100 million needed for the Hawaii venture.

Tuesday's announcement follows earlier Better Place endorsements from Israel, Denmark, Australia, Renault-Nissan and a coalition of Northern California localities supporting the idea. The California company plans test deployments of vehicles in 2009 and broad commercial sales in 2012.

Under the plan, consumers would buy or lease electric cars, and Better Place would supply recharging services and batteries. Consumers would have a choice of buying mileage plans, which would include recharging services and battery swaps, or being guests on the network and paying for each battery charge.

Agassi has raised $200 million in private financing for his idea. In October, he obtained a commitment from the Macquarie Capital Group to raise an additional $1 billion for the Australian project.

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, he said that he was optimistic about his project despite the dismal investment and credit markets, because his network could provide investors with an annuity. Users of his recharging network would subscribe to the service, paying for access and for the miles they drive.

Given the downturn in the mortgage market, he said that investors are looking for new classes of assets that will provide dependable revenue streams over many years. "I believe the new asset class is batteries," he said. "When you have a driver in a car using a battery, nobody is going to cut their subscription and stop driving."

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) noted in an article published today that Hawaii is trying to cut its dependence on oil to 30 percent from 90 percent by 2030. To do so, it must ramp up electricity production from renewable resources such as wind and sunlight and use electricity to displace gasoline in some portion of its 1.1 million vehicles.

Hawaiians pay high electricity prices because costly oil is burned to produce power. The Journal reported that the price of electricity ranges from 24.9 cents per kilowatt hour on Oahu to 38.5 cents on the big island of Hawaii compared with an average of 8.9 cents in the continental U.S.

Such high prices should encourage the development of renewable energy. But there has been a big impediment: Electricity can't be moved among the six major islands, because there aren't adequate transmission lines.

That could be changing, the Journal reported. There are now proposals to build large wind farms on Molokai and Lanai, and to turn those two islands, along with Maui, into a single grid, with the help of undersea cables. Surplus energy would be sent to Oahu, which consumes 80 percent of the state's electricity, on another undersea transmission line.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Posted by

Scott Doggett December 3, 2008, 9:19 AM

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Alternative Fuels, Batteries, Emissions, Energy Companies, Fuel Economy, Fuels & Technologies, Hybrid, Legislation, Plug-ins and Electric

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Better Place, Electric Cars, Electric Vehicles, Hawaii, Shai Agassi, Zero Emissions