Move over California. Hawaii is taking the lead on this one. The island state announced Tuesday that it will be the first state to have a comprehensive electric-car station program.
While California plans to use the same company, Better Place, to build a limited number of stations, Better Place will have some 50,000 to 100,000 spots to charge electric cars in Hawaii by 2011. The company will also buy renewable energy from Hawaii’s largest electricity company.
The electric car is good only if it has the infrastructure it needs to be efficient. Although Hawaii is small, the governor and Better Place hope that the program will make the state a leader in electric car technology. And Hawaii’s small size actually benefit it in this venture: because the state is surrounded on all sides by water, i has limited imports and exports of cars, reports the Washington Post.
The governor of Hawaii said that the program will help the state in its goal to reduce its fossil fuel consumption by 70 percent. Right now, Hawaii uses foreign oil for 90 percent of its energy.
Hawaii can hopefully be an example in not only the need to build up a new infrastructure for electric cars, but also for cars with types of alternative fuels. These programs sometimes are only as good as the support they get from state and country leaders to make states accommodating to new technology.
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Hawaii Endorses Better Place for Electric Cars: Gas 2.0
Hawaii to Get Electric-Car Battery Sharing Program: Gas 2.0
Photo Credit: janruss at Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Jeff Wilson talked about this in his recently released book The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW. I found it fascinating but thought it a bit futuristic. It is exciting to see the very plans he talked about in his book beginning to unfold NOW. Go Hawaii, Go Better Place, show the rest of the world how to do it…and go Jeff Wilson and your new book The Manhattan Project of 2009
This is the best thing that has happened to us in a very long time!