Hawaii is planning on converting Maui to an all electric vehicle island. The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative hopes to decrease the state’s dependency on oil and focus more on renewable energy. According to the initiative currently 85% of the state’s energy comes from oil. Hawaii hopes to become more self sufficient by introducing electric vehicles to the island of Maui. According to this article the government hopes to have 3,000 electric cars on the road by 2010 and 50,400 electric by 2015.

Hawaii is a perfect place to introduce an electric vehicle network; people living in Hawaii pay some of the highest gas prices in the country, so driving an electric vehicle will likely be a much greater value than in other states. The geography is also conducive to an electric vehicle system since most of the islands are not that large.

To implement their electric vehicle system Hawaii has partnered with Better Place. Better Place will build up to 100,000 battery charging stations around the island of Maui by 2015. While you can still charge your vehicle at home, you have the option to subscribe to their battery swapping service, which sources their electricity from renewable energy resources. The cost is expected to be up to 8 cents per mile. Just last month Better Place unveiled their trial battery swapping station in Yokohama Japan. The article also includes a video demonstration on the process, which at one minute and fifteen seconds is quite impressive.

While no production vehicles are currently compatible with the battery-swapping stations, Better Place is working with auto manufacturers to ensure future electric vehicles will work with their system.

It will be interesting to see the effects the electric vehicles have on Hawaii’s economy once the network has been well established. Better Place is also working on implementing electric vehicle networks in San Francisco, Australia, Israel, and Denmark. To read more about Hawaii’s energy plan visit www.hawaii.gov/gov/energy.