Electric Vehicles Are On The Rise In Hawaii. Can Charging Infrastructure Keep Up? … Many Hawaii residents living in apartment buildings and other multi-family dwellings lack direct access to electric vehicle charging stations.
About once a month, Dennis Leonetti wakes up around 4 a.m. to make the 12-mile drive from his Waikiki apartment to Pearlridge Center to plug in his Tesla.
The shopping mall parking lot is currently the only place in the state with a set of Tesla Superchargers, capable of adding 200 miles of range to his Model Y in no more than 15 minutes. His apartment complex lacks its own charging station, he said, and he relies on publicly available ports to charge his car.
“There’s nothing wrong with Pearlridge,” he said. “But you have to drive to get there.”
Leonetti’s trek speaks to a growing problem facing electric car owners in Hawaii. As more and more drivers in the state make the switch to electric vehicles, or so-called EVs, managers from townhouses to high rises are dealing with requests to install charging stations in their parking structures. But costly regulations, infrastructure barriers and lengthy permitting processes have delayed many buildings from installing these chargers, slowing the EV adoption rate.
