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The U.S. state of Hawaii is heavily reliant on oil imports to provide enough energy to its 1.3 million people. Hawaii spends about $7 billion annually on oil imports and a large share of the imported oil is used to fuel cars. Next to having the highest retail gasoline prices in the entire USA, the volcanic islands have lots of opportunities to generate electricity from renewable energy sources such as geothermal, marine, wind and solar energy.

To save energy, eliminate Hawaii’s dependence on oil imports, create jobs and become a front-runner in energy technology, Hawaii recently partnered with Better Place, a Californian startup which has specialized on providing an infrastructure of battery charging and battery exchange stations for electric cars. Better Place now plans to install up to 100,000 car recharging stations on the Hawaiian islands by 2012. The French-Japanese car maker Renault-Nissan should provide standardized battery-swappable cars that will be available for purchase and for leasing.

Better Place was founded by the Israeli-American entrepreneur Shai Agassi in 2007. His basic idea was to separate the battery from the car to encourage people to buy electric cars without having to worry about sky-high purchase prices or limited driving range. Mr. Agassi first wants to set up a network of battery swapping stations in Israel - a country perfectly suitable as a testing ground for his project. With distances in Israel being rather short, it’s relatively cheap to build an infrastructure that allows owners of standardized battery-swappable electric cars to exchange batteries whenever they’re running out of power. No place in Israel would  be far from the nearest exchange station where an empty battery is replaced with a fresh one in the matter of minutes. Furthermore - since the battery is owned by Better Place - the electric car fleet will always be equipped with the latest and most powerful batteries. Advancements in battery technology will be immediately passed on to drivers.. Thus, drivers would only pay for the exchange of the battery and / or a monthly subscription to the program or a leasing rate for the car which will be well below the average monthly gas bill. Israel could be ready for the mass-deployment of electric cars as early as next year. The first charging stations are already being tested with prototypes of Renault-Nissan’s future electric car fleet.

Shai Agassi has already convinced the governments of Israel, Denmark and Australia to support the project and create incentives such as tax dicscounts for electric cars. Besides, his company is in talks with government officials from about 25 countries around the world. In the U.S., next to Hawaii, battery recharging infrastructures could also be set up in the Bay area of California as well as in densely populated cities like NYC.

For the long-term success of the project it’s essential that Better Place and similar projects as well as car makers agree on common standards. In many metropolitian areas around the world, auto manufacturers and utilities are teaming up to test electric car concepts and fast-charging stations. Berlin, Paris and Tokyo are just a few examples. In these places, charging stations will be installed at parking lots, office buildings, retail centers, etc.

YouTube video on Project Better Place in Israel:

for more info: Hawaii To Be First With Statewide Electric Car Charging Stations (treehugger.com)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 4:37 PM and is filed under Electric Cars & Auto Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.