Electrify America Isn’t Crazy For Opening Up An EV Charging Station In Hawaii
It’s easy to assume that Level 3 charging is all about long-distance trips. This is because DC fast charging stations are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of drivers who are planning such trips. As opposed to the slower Level 2 chargers, DC fast chargers can deliver up to seven times more power and fill up an EV battery in a much shorter time, meaning less time spent waiting for a charge. This makes them ideal for drivers venturing out on longer journeys and needing to replenish their battery’s range quickly.
With most EV charging happening at home, and most drives within one battery’s worth of range from home, it’s easy to assume that you’ll never need a DC fast charger around town.
So, on the surface, Electrify America’s recent announcement of a station that opened in Hawaii might seem weird. There just aren’t any roads coming to or leaving the state, because it’s a chain of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Even worse, there’s no car ferry service between the islands. So, you might think that Electrify America was a little crazy to install a fast charging station there.
The new station, located on Oahu, has four 150 kW stalls and opened on March 2nd. And, the company is quite proud of it. Not only did the company write a quick press release, but it also included an image with one of its chargers next to surfboards. Specifically, it’s located in Pearl City, and it puts the number of states the company operates in at 47, which isn’t bad when you consider there are only 50 states in the US.
Why Electrify America Isn’t Crazy For Doing This
With just about all driving in Hawaii being within range of home, you’d think that they wouldn’t get much use, but Electrify America isn’t the first to build a DC fast charging station in Hawaii, or even on Oahu or in Pearl City.
If you look on Plugshare, you’ll see that Hawaii has quite a few CCS and Tesla stations. Plugshare says there are 41 stations as of this writing, and Oahu alone has more than half of them. So, clearly it’s not some crazy idea that Electrify America cooked up.
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The truth is, once you’ve owned an EV for a while, you’ll find the need for local DC fast charging eventually. For someone like an Uber driver (something I did in 2018 and 2019), the need for more charge comes at you pretty fast. For commuters who have home L2 charging, there’s the occasional day that comes along where you need to do an extraordinary amount of driving without leaving your city. This probably happens more in Hawaii when you consider that the average elevation is over 3,000 feet above sea level, which means EVs need to climb a lot of hills.
And, all this is before you consider that some people don’t have home charging at all. If you drive an EV and can’t charge at home, being able to get a quick charge during the weekly grocery run or when running other errands is essential. Those of us with home charging probably experience this scenario when something goes wrong with home charging (I once had a dog chew up my charging cord).
So, Electrify America is doing something good with its latest station. Hawaiians might not drive their cars to other states, but they still need a charge just like every other state.
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