Published April 24, 2012
By Huw Evans
If you think about it, in many cases electric vehicles especially make sense for island dwellers.
There’s usually a relatively short distances between settlements, it’s expensive and hazardous to import oil, plus there are smaller populations and a greater number of higher income residents. If there ever was a location where driving a pure EV every day seemed the logical choice, an island is it.
We already know about Mitsubishi’s push on the Hawaiian island of Oahu with its i-MiEV electric vehicle and indeed Better Place has already undertaken a plan to construct some 70 charging stations through the archipelago, including Kauai, Maui and the Big Island in addition to Oahu (Pike Research’s EV Geographic Forecast predicts 14,700 Plug-in Electric Vehicles on Hawaiian roads by 2017).
Further island projects for Better Place EV charging construction include the Japanese Home Islands and even Australia.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, other islands are putting in place their own EV infrastructure plans. In Bermuda and also the Cayman Islands, a company called Cayman Automotive Leasing is introducing Electric Vehicles, while another firm, Amp Electric Vehicles, has signed an agreement with local solar charging station outfit U-Go Stations to begin importing converted SUVs to Bermuda (encouraged by the island’s government which waves tariffs on EVs).
In places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, solar charging stations make a great deal of sense, in view of the amount of sunlight these nations receive (Bermuda alone receives some 2950 average sunshine hours each year). As a result, the concept of true zero emissions motoring looks like it could well have a bright future in paradise, based on early indications.
Pike Research
