 energy 808 the cutting edge and we're talking about electric vehicles the best and worst places in the country to own electric vehicles and thus that means that the places which incentivize them that's what we're really trying to get from Julianne Olander she's with bumper.com and bumper.com has made a report on this question of the best and the worst places to own to buy to use an electric vehicle. Welcome to the show Julianne. Thank you for having me at this date. Tell us about before we get to the report tell us about bumper.com. What do you guys do? Where are you? What are your activities and operations? Well bumper.com has an easy to access website and it's a great tool for plugging in the VIN number for a vehicle if you want to find out information about your own car and the maintenance schedule you can find out information about that if you're looking to buy a vehicle and want to get some background information on it find out if it's in any accidents or if there are any major red flags to look out for. Also great for if you're planning to sell your car trying to time you know looking at the current market value of it and trying to time the best the best opportunity is to sell your car. What's the relationship with the blue book? Do you have the blue book on or access to the blue book from your site? It has similar information you know accident records, theft records, any liens on the car, sales records so it's pretty it's pretty comprehensive and has a lot of information. You know I've seen a lot of ads on television over the past year maybe I wasn't watching before about companies in the United States that will A sell you a car including used cars online and B that will you know let you make those kinds of decisions you know what it's worth and whether it's been in accidents what the public record is on that car and see you know buying cars both sides of the issue and there's I would get so off hand of course my path maybe three or four of these companies and I surmise from that that there must be more action going on now about buying and selling cars outside of dealerships am I right? Yeah before and I was a you know it's a great time to be selling your used cars you get more you know now with supply chain issues and difficulty and you know waiting for a new car it's a great time to buy a new car and shop around. Why though why is now a great time is it because new cars are hard to come by because of the chip problem or what? Yeah I think newer cars are harder to come by their dealers are able to you know tack on higher higher prices right now it is a demand and but if you you know have a spare vehicle that's sitting around and you're looking to sell it at some point now might be a great time because the prices have probably never been higher on used cars. You get more now for it then you know you might when if people don't have an alternative you know if buying new cars not really going to work out for them at the moment that they need something right now then you're going to be trying to to use the others. Yeah strikes me also that over the past year year and a half my people have been locked in locked up locked locked down locked down at home they haven't spent as much on optional you know choices and especially big choices like cars so they avoid that at the same time they don't spend you know other regular items they stay at home and they eat they eat and they watch television and a lot of them do that and work and that's pretty much it they don't spend a lot of money so they've been accumulating money and I think if you look at you know the accumulation of savings over the past year for a lot of people not everybody but for a lot of people you find out that their bank account is flush and they're sitting around there wondering what to do with that money now that they believe and this may or may not be accurate they believe that we're coming out of COVID so I suspect and unlike your thought on it is that the reason that buying cars is popular right now is that people are they have the money they want to spend the money and a car is a great place to spend the money is that right I think some people certainly their bank accounts have benefited over the last couple of years but for others no it might be you know in recovery right now the financial recovery for for many many Americans but for those who have been fortunate to have steady work during the pandemic and have been able to reduce their expenditures you know not driving as much not spending you know in the hundreds of dollars in gas a month and being able to reduce other expenses like eating out for some people you know eating out might take a huge chunk of their budget so yeah certainly a portion of the population has um been able to save and um is optimistic about the future and might be ready to to make that purchase now yeah the other thing I wanted to ask you about was electric cars you know in Hawaii we we've been talking about electric cars I want to say that in a population of maybe a million cars which we love cars and who I love cars more than southern California that's the way to get around right um we you know we we we have I think 16 or maybe 17 000 electric electric cars as a percentage it's really not that many and we have a new initiative that the utility and the Hawaiian Electric just announced they want to put a lot of uh no charging stations I'm gonna say a lot it's not that many but it's more than we ever did before yeah right and so guess what I'm really asking you is how in a national way how how have electric cars been doing in general Katie can you comment on that um how have they been doing in terms of demand and and sales of her um well I know that in Hawaii um I think it's you know the demand has been increasing tremendously um far more than the infrastructure and so you definitely have a solid demand um and desire for electric vehicles um and um um you know you have the the base uh you know foundation of infrastructure and you've had a lot of growth in the past five years as well and it's great to see that you have more more planned growth which will double or triple the infrastructure um and so it's just a matter of I think the infrastructure being able to keep up with the demand demand has far out you know out increased the the existing infrastructure and so it'll just be important to try and get that is that up to speed in the state when you say infrastructure you mean charging stations charging stations yes and um not just charging stations but how many ports are on a charging station that's that's really important as well because you could have you know one charging station and one force so that means only one person can charge it at a time and the next person's got to wait an hour for that person to leave so the more reports you could put on a charging station obviously would be the more convenient for um for the drivers so you show us your your website you talked about the various things at bumper.com does and they're not all directly related to electric vehicles um but you have made a report you made a survey report done some investigations some analysis on electric cars around the country in order to rate the best and worst places in the country to own one and use one and buy one and so forth why did you do that why now why this report? Well we recognize that there is a growing demand and acceptance of electric vehicles that money is being poured into infrastructure in general right now and electric electric uh infrastructure is definitely is a part of that equation and so we were really interested in knowing well where's the best place to you know what are the top places of owning electric vehicle and which states you know have a lot more work to do to to get there and so Hawaii fell in the top 10 and um you know I looked at um a number of factors I realized the infrastructure was part of it in a very important part of it but also there's the incentives as well um people like to know what affects their pocket book directly um I can go into the different components of that if you oh yeah sure I'd like to know how you conducted the report and then we talk about the the conclusions you came to yeah what methodology what data did you collect and how did you collect it? Well I collected all publicly available data um some of it coming from like the alternative fuels data center where you can go and um put in your location and find out all the addresses of all the charging stations so if you're you know planning out your driving routes and you're going through a state that maybe doesn't have as many um you want to know exactly where those those are so you can plug that into your your GPS um in other areas that's not as important because you know you're going to come across them pretty frequently on your drive um so I looked at a number of factors not just the existing infrastructure but also um realizing that you know you can have existing infrastructure but what is the new growth which is really kind of measuring how accepting is that state of electric vehicles and providing easy access and convenience to the electric vehicle drivers so not just looking at the existing infrastructure but the growth in the infrastructure looking at how many ports are on the charging station which just makes it you know more convenient for drivers um looked at a number of um also to be you know the not just the relative ranking of um electric vehicles as a percentage of all motor vehicles in the state and so as you pointed out it's only about one percent in Hawaii but that's better than most other states in California ranks first but Hawaii's right there as well and so most other states it's way less than one percent so um and I think that's only going to grow for state by California Hawaii and others as well um then I also looked at a number of incentives so price of gas as an incentive for owning electric vehicle if gas is high in your state as it is in Hawaii just like in California um you know we have the highest gas prices in the country and but that's uh for electric vehicles that's a good thing because that you know is an incentive to consider alternative uh methods of transportation and um you know who likes to spend time lining up at the gas pump and you know should those lines of cost go can be pretty long um and you know you you see that price right away maybe fifty eighty dollars a hundred dollars depending on the size of your vehicle to fill up whereas um even though Hawaii has high electricity rates as California does as well um it costs about ninety five dollars to fill up your the charge of your car and go a thousand miles so while uh traditional you know gas power diesel power vehicle maybe it costs you ninety five dollars to go uh three hundred miles um you know it might be costing a nine ninety five dollars to drive a thousand miles on an electric vehicle in Hawaii so even though you have a higher price of electricity compared to other states like Louisiana has one of the least expensive um electricity rates um but yeah it's not necessarily a great place for electric vehicles right now because of other factors lacking charging stations for example so just trying to balance out these sets of factors and um creating a state ranking for each of them kind of adding up all those rankings and then re-ranking based on infrastructure and incentives and then creating an overall ranking that's where uh Hawaii came in at number ten something unpacked that uh some of that with you okay we had we had a state tax credit for um anyone who bought an electric vehicle until about I want to say three or four years ago maybe maybe around that and the legislature and its infinite wisdom terminated that and of course the number of cars electric vehicles sold in my in my observation of either when flatter decline for the lack of that incentive would that be would that be something that you would include in the metric as a metric or maybe a subjective metric on whether a state is a good place uh if somebody's going to give me you know several thousand dollars to buy the car I will be incentivized and I have not been because they terminated the credit yeah no that's uh that's a good point um I I looked at just the you know sheer number of incentives you know rebates and and credits and things like that but not the dollar value and that would definitely be something to look at uh for the future but it's also a measure that's changing for different states as he pointed out how I terminated that uh that rebate um and you know though while there is a federal uh tax credit um my understanding is that um is per manufacturer and once you know you reach sort of a threshold in teslas for example then there's no more of those uh tax rebates available for that particular manufacturer so to the next one but if you had your heart set on a tesla well you're out of luck for the um you know the federal tax credit so um yeah states I think overall could do better at incentivizing potential new buyers to to turn to electric instead yeah to me I mean it's a natural flaw it's it's a logic thing if you want to deal with climate change then you reduce fossil fuel and to reduce fossil fuel you have electric cars powered by electricity which is not generated by fossil fuel and you incentivize people to buy them then if I was king of the universe I would make this happen almost immediately I would have every because I know how much fossil fuel comes out of these cars is used by these cars how much greenhouse gas is generated then so if we really were serious around the globe like at cop 2026 in Glasgow we would find a way to make everybody get off fossil fuel in cars right now and for generation of electricity also and put them on electric cars but that hasn't happened and my next question to you is so in the build back better bill which is now pending in the senate you know it's like uh remember saint Sebastian in the bible uh where he was shot with arrows a million arrows I expect the build back better bill is going to look like saint Sebastian in a week or two with all kinds all kinds they're gonna they're gonna slice him up pretty good but in there you know being optimistic about it there's a credit for electric cars and charging stations too and I don't know the mechanics of how this money is going to be distributed state by state but is it fair to say that this will have a effect which is proportionate to the population of the state and therefore it will have essentially equal effect in all states do you know have you thought about that would that be in this report or the next one um it would be on the next report but yeah that is that's a very interesting concept to think about because yeah we don't know exactly how it's I don't know exactly how it's getting divided amongst the states and if um let's say for electric vehicle infrastructure is that getting divided amongst the states too or does that favor certain states over others which would definitely um play a role in you know re-rank states in a couple of years and see where we're at uh which is you know something we're definitely interested in doing is looking towards the future and seeing how things are how states are changing over time um but yeah that's a great it's a great point and um I don't really have a clear answer where those dollars are are going exactly and how they're being distributed amongst the states yeah right and how and how the states distribute them um among the people because not all states are as efficient as other states and some of them um are going to redirect the money to um other other places which are not necessarily intended by the federal legislation so um you know you would have to make if you wanted to you know get down to the detail on that you'd have to make a an evaluation of how how effective the state was in distributing the money for the purposes intended right each state might have different um you know needs as well some states really need to put it into roads because you know the roads are full of holes and to you know take it a beating from winter weather so different states might have different different priorities and how about money spent the other thing I was going to ask you about is um and it's been a subject of discussion for as long as Hawaii has been talking about electric cars and charging stations is the extraordinary difference in as an incentive of the low low voltage I guess I would call it the low voltage charging station versus the higher voltage charging station the one where I think a level level two or three or something that if you have the lower you know it has to be like for hours and hours which makes it difficult in a commercial setting if you have the higher that it's almost as fast not quite as filling your tank with gas or ps hydrogen but I just I wonder if that's a part of the metric here um well I looked at the overall number of charging stations you know that are our public stations so that includes level one level two and higher your level one is typically that's the charger that comes with your vehicle when you buy it the basic uh basic charger um it'll get the job done overnight but you know typically it's about you can just you know you plug it into a regular outlet but it gets about takes for one hour of charging I think it gets you four miles so but when you move up to level two is an upgrade and some companies I think are starting to offer level two chargers those are the ones that you know require a 40 amp circuit to plug it to so like your washer dryer at home that has that sort of problem and plug it in and that's a lot quicker so I think it's around maybe 32 miles when you're charging it for an hour I believe a lot of the and then commercial um the level three and level four you know higher higher levels those are not for home consumption those are not for you know uh residents those are more for commercial and industrial settings and require um different level you know a DC level of electricity so they're not suitable for the home so I think the little best you can do at home is invest in that level two charger which you know usually requires a you know licensed electrician to set up the you know hook up the electricity um properly but you'll get a much quicker much quicker charge the PS you have to have a an existing electrical system to support the the additional voltage that level two would require but I want to ask you something else about that and it's um this this you know why electric is putting in or is is seeking permission to put in it it's part of the utility rate payer you know initiatives that means that rate payers in general will will pay the cost of all these charging stations and I guess there are hundreds contemplated and I want to say that I may be inaccurate about this but roughly half of them are the lower voltage and the other half are the higher voltage in other words they're not all high but it seems to me and I'd be interested in your thought about this that if you wanted to give people some uh range anxiety comfort yeah okay you could give them the lower voltage and they'll be a little more comfortable about leaving their home and not worrying about getting stranded somewhere but if you wanted to give them an incentive to buy an electric vehicle you want to give them the highest possible voltage so they don't have to hang around for hours while it charges um they you know they would like a as near immediate a charge as possible and if I if as a reveal salesman I tell them that they'd be much more likely um if I tell them that you know we have hundreds of these stations going in not only will you be able to avoid range anxiety for psychological point of view but also you know you'll have immediate charge wherever you go be beautiful um what do you think um yeah I definitely think being able to provide a higher level charge makes sense and maybe that's uh you know an add-on package to purchasing the the vehicle will give you the lower level but you know you got to pay some extra if you want the the higher level charger but if you're able to plug into uh public uh charging station somewhere and maybe only you know pay a few dollars to to charge up um that's certainly very convenient as well and the more commercial and industrial uh charging stations are going to be you know it's going to be a lot quicker to charge up so that would be probably better for you anyways if you know unless you have a lot of time on your hands so they will be able to charge up it's you want to do it as quickly as possible while you're running errands your grocery shopping it's nice to know hey I can grocery shop for 20 minutes and stand in line for five minutes and come out and my car's charged up and I can worry about it for a couple of days or you know depending on how much driving you do if you don't do very much driving maybe you don't have to worry about it to the next week but um yeah you you mentioned before that uh you take a look at the locations of these charging stations if I put the charge and some people have talked about this but put the charging station at a gas station okay which seems like a rational logical place to put it um that may be a bit of a distance from say a shopping center may not may not be that close and I may be sitting there in my car waiting for a long time before it's charged but if I if I put it you know in some reserved stalls in a shopping center and some people have done this in Hawaii then I could go shopping in fact it helps the economy yeah that's true the great point yeah I mean it's interesting yeah you are seeing them going more at more in shopping centers and commercial areas because it makes complete sense to do that I think gas stations make sense when people are you know going on longer trips so maybe you know at the major stops where people are fueling up anyways getting some a food you know taking a food break you know stretching their legs on a trip it makes sense to have charging stations at those locations where people would be stopping for you know those types of reasons but uh yeah I think you are going to see them more and more at shopping malls and restaurants and places like that where it would it would just be convenient to be able to you know top it off while you're eating right especially on a fast charger yeah so um you know one thing is that the dealerships uh in Hawaii and I suppose this is so everywhere um are still focused on on fossil fuel cars um yeah sure you know we'll we'll bring one in if you want but let me tell you about all the wonderful features we have on these fossil fuel and they do have great features and you know Detroit and and Japan and wherever else South Korea you know they're trying to do that they're trying to make these fossil fuel cars just wonderful and there's a lot of sale points and so when you go to a dealership uh which you're going to get is a let me show you the fossil fuel car and they're not going to push the electric car that much but uh one thing it seems to be emerging this goes back to the you know the point of those databases on your bumper.com website is um I think what's happening here is the dealerships are being circumvented you know by sales that are directly off the web so if I can get on a you know a website and buy an electric vehicle at a a price that is not a negotiated you know dealership type psychological pressure type situation I know what the cost is it's the same everywhere and I just push some buttons and now I have an electric car en route to me almost immediately without going through the aggravation and anxiety of dealing with a salesman should I say and a dealership um then um I'm better off in fact I'm incentivized to buy that car a lot quicker than I would if I had to go and and see all the bells and whistles on fossil fuel cars what do you think is that a is that a real possibility here is it happening will it happen will it feed into your analysis of this uh well I think people will still want to be able to test drive vehicles I mean we we like to have choices and um we like to have choices in you know what type of car we buy and you know there's increasingly one more choices of electric vehicles but I think people are still going to want to take a car for a spin before they they buy it and that's going to require a trip to a dealership so I don't think that dealerships are going to go away I think if somebody knows exactly the type of car they want it's certainly an incentive to be able to do that purchase online without having to spend two three four hours of dealership because it takes a long time to go through that process but if you can purchase it on the car and let all that paperwork take place in the background without you having to physically be there I think that's that's a great incentive um but you know perhaps dealerships will do that for the gas and diesel cars as well you know I don't see why that can't go in that direction of online sales for any type of vehicle yeah okay uh let me let me I just say that um there will be issues going forward about the availability of rare earths like cobalt for batteries and and the availability of chips for all the electronics that are in all cars now and I it's hard to anticipate how that's going to how that's going to affect you know is it is Hawaii a good place or not so good a place to to own an electric car but I so we can't cover that it's too it's too vague right now maybe in another show julian we can cover that but I do want to ask you um is it's number 10 good enough um didn't surprise you in any way that we hit number 10 and not number one and what can we do to hit number one because it's a good thing yeah no it's a great thing to be in the top 10 but I know that Hawaii um because you have the existing infrastructure because you have the demand um you know you can only go south so far on an island so um it's perfectly suited for the distances that you can drive and um I think if Hawaii really focuses when I know that there's going to be increasing infrastructure in the state and if Hawaii really focuses on look at more ports and just make it more convenient um for drivers and just try and keep pace with the demand for the cars because we already have that demand people in Hawaii already want these types of cars and it's convenient for them recognize the impacts on the environment that it's a good thing um so they feel good you know about owning an electric car so you already have a population that's supportive of this and so I think just trying to keep pace with that um demand you know you're um in a great in a great place for moving way up on the list yeah I agree with you in the sense that Hawaii is remote and people always have this thing about trying to keep up with the mainland that's why Hawaii is an early adopter on all kinds of technology this is a kind of technology that they want to adopt and it's really not so much a matter of their interest but the barriers that stand between them and the car um and there are some of those okay so what what do we have to do as a state as a legislature in order to get to number one what would you recommend to us so that the next time you you know do your analysis and calculate your list we could be number one what give us some advice um focus on you know putting as many forth as possible on the charging stations as many as that you know that you're allowed and that will take um and also focus on the incentives um and you know if we have price of electricity you know that factors into the recharge cost which is one of the one of the factors um because uh Hawaii does have the highest rates of electricity in the country um and trying to you know bridge the difference in price between electric vehicle and a non-electric vehicle that differences that differed by state Hawaii's kind of the not quite the middle of the pack but on the lower middle of the pack in terms of the price difference um so I think continuing to be in be able to offer incentives it's great to have you know um some of some incentives like free parking downtown or things like that but I understand that some of those incentives have expired um but I think focusing on um getting rebates there because as you pointed out before uh once the rebate went away you know um you're not as incentivized to to purchase that vehicle so I think really just focusing on the the meeting the demand with the infrastructure focusing on the number of ports that you put in so that a lot of you know multiple people can charge at the same time and um coming up with more incentives and um not hitting people with high electric bills so you know time of use of you know it's there's not penalizing people for charging not penalized people for doing the right thing environmentally and you would have similar advice for the other 49 members on that list if you want to do better you know these are the kinds of things you want to focus on yeah means don't you think that this is a dynamic list and if Hawaii doesn't do what you're suggesting it's not that we will remain constant on the list we will probably slide down right right I mean some people some states you know have low electrical electrical costs as you know something they already have built in which affects the recharge cost which you know affects a lot of different things so um but yeah you know there's definitely the possible like you said this is a dynamic dynamic process and society is always dynamic and so yeah there is a potential for moving up or down so Julianne I hope we can catch up with you next time you do one of these lists and see where we are then uh because it is it's dynamic in all ways it's dynamic in Hawaii it's dynamic relative relative to other states as well so I hope we can catch up and do another show with you and I I'd like to stay in touch with you for that purpose that'll be great thank you Julianne Olander of bumper.com thank you so much for joining us