Does Hawaii prove that the U.S. can’t handle the electric car challenge?

by philg

On a recent trip to Hawaii (Big Island and Maui) I noticed that (1) nearly everyone drove a gas-powered car, (2) no public charging infrastructure was evident, and (3) all major-brand rental cars were gas-powered. Given that (a) it is challenging and expensive to drag fossil fuels to Hawaii, (b) that the state is ideally situated to harvest wind and solar energy, (c) few areas get cold enough to impair battery performance,(d) there are only a couple of major roads per island and cars can’t stray too far off these roads, and (e) that no state is friendlier to Big and Bigger Government, I wonder if this shows that electric vehicles are impractical in the U.S., other than for showing off one’s virtue on Facebook and within sanctimony cities.

Back in 2008, I wrote about the state’s attempt to build out an electric car system. That didn’t work out, obviously.

It would be seemingly simple to put charging stations every 20 miles along the roads ringing the Hawaiian volcanoes. Gas is more expensive in Hawaii than anywhere else in the U.S. (Motley Fool). Solar panels and wind turbines work better in Hawaii than in most other states. The state is not shy about government management of the economy.

Readers: What do you think? If electric cars can’t make it in Hawaii does that mean they can’t make it anywhere in the U.S.?

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22 thoughts on “Does Hawaii prove that the U.S. can’t handle the electric car challenge?”

  2. Does the lack of public airports in 1920 mean the US can’t handle the aviation challenge? Come on.

    Electric cars are new. Gasoline infrastructure has been in place for a century. It’ll take a while, but it will happen. Solar / wind / nuclear, grid batteries, and electric cars are the eventual future of ground transportation. It’s just a question of how many decades it takes for the transition to happen.

  3. Maybe not in Mass, but in Calif*, every car is either a hybrid or a Tesla. HI doesn’t have enough land for solar or wind power, so electricity might not be practical.

  4. No it just proves that electric cars are still not economical to buy vs standard gas cars. Some new car battery technology is just bad. Others are OK. But this risk makes the electric car depreciation very high. No rental car company will take those depreciation risks. So they are not buying electric cars.

    TBD if the black eye that the Leaf and others made will be repeated in the future.

  5. EV technology becomes cheaper every year. Gas prices are about as low as they possibly can be. I think it’s more a question of whether the inflection is in 2020, 2025, or 2030 rather than whether a single anecdotal observation justifies a declaration that we “can’t handle” the EV challenge. You’re better than that, Phil!

  6. Modern cars last at least 10 years, so even if 10% of all cars were electric, that would mean only 1% of all cars on the road would be electric, i.e. almost invisible.

  7. All over Oahu and Maui I was seeing Teslas and Leafs, maybe it’s in pockets? They’re great potential cars for the islands.

  9. I haven’t been out to Maui or the Big Island in a while, but on Oahu they’re everywhere. Hawaii law grants free parking in state and county lots. The Chinatown lot closest to my office is typically 30-50% EVs, with the bulk of those being Nissan Leafs.

  10. Electric cars do not pencil out competitively against any sort of battery technology we can presently conceive anywhere, regardless of electricity and gasoline prices. They are produced and purchased for status signaling. It makes more sense to simply make gasoline cars much lighter, which is easy. From a public policy perspective the reliance on personal vehicles must be dramatically reduced in favor of walking and efficient diesel powered transit like buses.

  11. @bobbybobbob: I have an electric car. Where I live, the fuel cost per mile is about 1/3 of the price of an efficient gas or diesel car. Add to that free tolls, free public parking, 1/10 of the registration fees, driving in bus lanes, etc. it makes a lot of sense. With my driving patterns, the car will pay itself off after about 3 years. So no, it is not for status signalling (in fact, I couldn’t care less what other people think about the car I drive).

    I get the feeling that rental car companies stay away from electric mostly because costumers are ignorant and because their businesses are a fine-tuned machine for ICE cars. For example, customers not used to electric cars may drive and run out of battery — then bringing disrepute into the rental car company. Using the quick charge stations can be confusing even for the seasoned EV driver, let alone for first timers. And lastly, by going electric the companies would not be able to play the standard tricks like “pre-paid fuel” or “bring back the tank full” when in fact it wasn’t full enough (or my favourite: bring back the tank with the same random amount of fuel as when you started).

    Electric cars are much more of a thing in Europe than in the US, by the simple fact that people in the US drive a lot more, and that big cities in Europe are more likely to discourage polluting cars. It is just a matter of time before cars with ranges of 200+ miles can become affordable, and the US market will catch on. In a few decades ICE cars will restricted to a few roles like long-distance driving and rural places.

  12. Your electric car is highly subsidized and probably sold at a loss anyway. It is perfectly feasible to build and sell a 50+ mpg car for only $9K by making it lighter. Only current federal standards prevent this. Electric cannot ever compete. Your electric drivetrain will probably be shot inside ten years, whereas a well cared for modern gasoline or diesel drivetrain can last twenty. The electric car cannot be mothballed somewhere for a couple years; the battery will rot. The battery will not like cold winters in much of the country. Electric cars are very energy inefficient if you consider the totality of the energy system. Powering daily mass use of electric driving with renewable sources is fantasy because the energy storage and transmission systems would be so fantastically expensive.

    Hybrids probably do make some sense in urban stop and go. Pure electric is just obviously dumb at so many levels. It solves nothing. As I said, the reality Americans have to come to grips with is that there will be much, much less driving in ten and twenty years. No, we won’t all be gliding around in electric cars. We’ll be walking, cycling, and taking buses. The energy arithmetic is inexorable.

  14. In re: Jackie #8 above:
    Yes, what a shame that wind farms can’t be located offshore

    Offshore wind works well in areas with relatively shallow coastal areas along the continental shelf. As Hawaii is a group of volcanic mountain peaks, the depths increase very quickly close to shore. It is probably impractical to offshore a wind farm in thousands of feet of water. See: https://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/uploads/image1-211.jpg

  15. A few utility-scale solar installations should power Hawaii, and some of the lesser islands now on diesel generators are going there rapidly.

  16. @bobbybobbob: I think you are wrong in nearly all counts.

    Regarding efficiency. Even if a 50+ MPG ICE car existed, most EVs being produced today have more than 100 MPG-equivalent consumption. So I don’t see how they don’t compete… You’ve got to be joking when you say that electric cars are inefficient compared to ICEs. I suggest you do some research on “wells-to-wheels” energy use of ICEs vs. EVs. This depends on the country, but EVs are generally 3 times more efficient than ICEs. Even if all the electricity for an EV comes from burning coal or gas, it is still more efficient than an ICE! It’s just economies of scale, really. An ICE is basically a mobile power station. It is much more efficient to produce electricity from oil at a large power station than in the small power stations in the form of cars.

    Regarding subsidies and car durability. I bought my car second hand, at market prices, so the subsidy question is irrelevant. Why would the manufacturer sell at a loss? While the electric drivetrain of Teslas is known not to last a long time, I don’t know if the same is true for other cars. Even assuming it is, after 20 years you will have replaced a lot of parts in your gas car (diesel is even worse), which you don’t have to in an electric that has far fewer moving parts. I’ve never had to mothball a car for a couple of years, doubt this is a problem that will affect many people.

    Regarding renewables, cold weather. I don’t live in the US (perhaps I should have started with this?). Where I live there is snow on the ground for at least 3 months of the year, and temperatures around 0F are not uncommon. About 98% of the electricity generated in the country is renewable. In fact, my electricity plan is 100% renewable, so my car runs only on renewable power. But I know this is not feasible for places like the US right now. However, it is certainly possible with a massive investment in nuclear and some fossil fuel plants for peak demand.

  17. “It makes more sense to simply make gasoline cars much lighter, which is easy. ”

    Sure, it’s easy if you are willing to discard vehicle safety standards. A BMW Isetta (1950s bubble car -look it up) weighed only 800 lbs. The downside is that any collision in an Isetta was almost sure to send you to the hospital if not kill you. Tens of thousands of people are alive today because they drive around in modern cars with crumple zones, air bags, etc. instead of Isettas.

  18. Regarding durability, the big issue in electric cars is the batteries. Electric motors should last much longer than gasoline engines because there’s no dirty explosive combustion process. Electric motors in, for example, refrigerator compressors, are known to last many decades.

    The batteries usually don’t fail catastrophically (like my gas powered Audi did when it destroyed its own valve train). Rather the battery performance declines a few % every year so it’s only a question of whether you can tolerate the reduced range. There are lots of Teslas on the road and the current data is that they keep around 80% of battery life at 100,000 miles, which is not bad. Maybe at that point you can sell your car to a commuter or a student who doesn’t really need the full battery range. That’s generally the history of cars – the original owner doesn’t keep them forever – at some point they get passed down to a more price sensitive owner who is willing to (can only afford to) live with a less than perfect car.

    At current prices, after 10 years it probably costs more to replace the batteries than the vehicle is worth at that point. But battery costs are coming down, so it might be feasible by the time the electric cars being sold today actually need new batteries. Battery life is also getting longer. If the rest of the car doesn’t rust away or become obsoleted by self driving cars, electrics should last LONGER than gas powered cars.

  20. Costa Rica gets almost all of its energy from hydropower plants due to abundance of rivers fed by seasonal rainfalls. Perhaps Hawaii should invest in geothermal energy and in oceanic wave/tidal power plants

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