 Welcome to Stand Energy Man, Stan Osterman here from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies, part of the state of Hawaii's D-Bit, and we're here to help make jobs and do things in Hawaii that have to do with high tech and transportation. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about transportation today. With one of my partners in crime from the State Energy Office, Margaret Larson. She and I are both electric vehicle junkies. She kind of tends towards batteries, not like hydrogen, but we find a lot of common ground in just electric vehicles. So we're going to talk to Margaret today about maybe some of the things that are going on in the legislature. We're going to talk about some of the things going on in our office, in our state, and around the state that are kind of late-breaking news in electric vehicles and transportation in Hawaii. And before we get started though, I'd like to thank Rachel and Eric from last week talking about strategic planning and filling in for me after I had a little bit of surgery at Strob. And I appreciate them jumping into the last minute and taking care of that, so I could get some plumbing work done and get all squared away, and I'm up to 100% back to normal. So thanks to Eric and Rachel for doing that. You did a great job, by the way. So today, Margaret. Hi. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. Glad you're feeling better. Yeah. Me too. Last Monday I wasn't feeling so good. So it was good to be here. But thanks for being on the show today, especially fairly short notice, and let's jump right into the corridor, the electric vehicle corridor thing that, you know, I got some great feedback. I was talking to the Department of Energy, and of course they're not directly tied to your effort there, but they read your report, and this is back in Washington, D.C., and they said it was an outstanding piece of work that you put in, and they were really happy to see that we had attached a hydrogen piece to the electric corridor as well. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that project? Great. Federal Highways put out a call for nominations for states to nominate alternative fuel corridors across the nation with the intent of connecting locations and popular destinations so that folks can drive from across the country in an alternative field vehicle. They put that nomination out. We submitted our proposal, which we nominated two corridors, one on Oahu and one on Maui, and we were actually designated. We got that designation, I think, this October. And so what is now designated? The one on Oahu, because it was through the Federal Highways, they wanted to basically focus on designating federal roads, I guess, or state roads. Like H3, H1? Like H3, H1. Yeah, exactly. And so that's what we focused on. However, we did put the caveat that our corridor extends for a one-mile buffer on each end, so it can still touch our surface streets or our county roads. And then, same on Maui, we actually did corridors for Molokai and Lanai. Now, the designation was slated as pending, signage, or signage-ready. And the signage-ready is more so you would put signs along that corridor where you actually have charging stations or hydrogen-fueling stations. The corridor on Oahu, we titled Electric Drive, so to incorporate hydrogen. On Maui, we don't have that designation, but I think it would be easy to add on once we're ready to look to hydrogen for Maui. Did we do anything on the Big Island at all? We're currently working on the Big Island and Kauai proposals. We didn't mean to leave them out in this first round. It was just a matter of manpower and time at the office, but we definitely recognized that. That was a big effort. I don't think people realize how big effort that was. Yeah, actually, our proposal was a really great exercise for us to develop the maps and look at all the different analytics to go behind the maps of the number of EVs in that area, the population, income levels, et cetera. So it was helpful to kind of look at that and gear our charging infrastructure around those corridors. Right now, there's no money attached to those corridors or the designation of such. However, I think it can help to open doors. It really sends a signal that we are EV and eDrive ready and or are currently working towards the mass adoption. I think that's important. A lot of people miss the point that if you don't make the effort to be a part of these programs, it sends a huge signal that maybe you're not serious. So when you do participate and you do make the effort to lean forward and be part of these programs, it sends a signal to the folks authorizing money and appropriating money that Hawaii's serious, and yeah, they should be included in the program. So I know the money didn't come right away and it may not come for a while, but I'm sure it'll help get some money attached to it. Because that's how they do things. They look for people that have skin in the game, and this report makes skin in the game for electric vehicles in Hawaii. Exactly, exactly. And we've already used the notion of that we have designated electric drive corridors already in some other proposals that we've submitted since then. So we are hoping that we can leverage that to see more investments here in Hawaii. OK, let's talk. We titled the show, catching up with the 2017 Legislature a little bit. I know you've even watched a lot of the bills go through. I've only just started. Rachel's been doing a bunch in her office. But a couple of the bills that I know that we're looking forward to, one was it's been up twice now. We're hoping this year it gets through is to actually include hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the definition of electric vehicles under the law so that we can, instead of rewriting a bunch of laws for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, we can just kind of incorporate them under the same umbrella as all electric vehicles and doing things like that. We're hoping to get a little bit of funding for the DOT buses at the airport to build their station for them this year. So I know that the DOT is looking at maybe trying to get some money to build that station and I'm going to work with them on that. What are some of the ones that you're aware of? Definitely those two. And I had a question for you, actually, about one of them. But there's quite a few focused on transportation, including transportation. There's a couple focused on looking to set transportation goals. Ones that look towards 100% by 2045 and others that look at mode share goal settings. So the transportation goal topic is hot and heavy this session. And let's see, there's a few relating to the charging infrastructure requirement that is currently on the books. However, it does lack enforcement. And oftentimes because it lacks enforcement, then there's kind of a lack of people actually putting in charging stations. Is that the 100 parking stalls you need to put in charge of the station? Yeah, so the legislation that I've seen either wants to increase the number. Right now, you just need to install one. If you have 100 stalls that are available to the public, then you just need to set aside one, not one per 100. So there's a couple bills that look at expanding that number one to more, maybe by a percentage or whatnot. And then others also look to the county authorities to help with enforcement mechanisms. So that'll be interesting. It is a need for sure to look to enforcement. It's just kind of tricky as to how that can be done considering the law looks to current infrastructure as well. So although building codes might help with new construction, it is a little bit tricky to figure out how you're going to go back and enforce. Is there anything that's keeping us from charging? Like for example, right now a lot of those plug-in stations in parking lots are like premium places right up near the front. So you're already getting great parking stall and you're getting free electricity. And it's a great incentive. Are we looking at maybe allowing or making it so that you have to pay at least a token amount for the electricity so that people actually also have some skin in the game? The law that's currently on the books doesn't require that you offer free charging or free electricity for that. So it just means that you have to put in a charging station, but you don't have to offer free electricity. So a site host being like, if you're a mom and a pop, then you want to put in a charging station because you have 100 stalls. Then you can install any charging station and they can actually have a credit card capability where you just scan the card and it's charged up. The other is that when the law first went out, it did specify the charging station or the parking stall needed to be up front. But then there had been sense modifications that basically said wherever the charging station or the charging station can go anywhere in the parking law as long as it's not replacing ADA stalls. So we found that it's actually not always feasible to put the EV charging station right up front near the elevator if your electric panel or your electric box is way on the other side. And also it's not so much of having that premium parking right up front that's needed, it's more about just having a charging station. Although we would want site hosts to not stick them in the back or stick them down by the dumpster where you can't find them. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I did have a question though about the hydrogen, the bill wanting to include hydrogen, the definition of electric vehicles so that you can take advantage of the HOV lanes and the free parking. I am friends on Facebook with the Big Island EV Association. And I see their comments coming out and one of the comments was mentioning how that if that bill passed, their concern about hydrogen vehicles when there's more on the road, hydrogen vehicles taking up EV stalls. How do you think that we can avoid that from happening? Because I know one would think like well they won't need that charging station so they're not going to want to park there. But parking's a premium, they may want to park there. It's already a challenge to even get EVs to park there and not be iced out. I don't think that would be hard to deal with because you could easily modify the county parking regulations to say that even though a fuel cell vehicle is an electric vehicle, if you can't plug into the plug-in station you don't use the stall. And so I mean right now none of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that are out there use a plug-in part and it's mostly because they're trying to keep the cost of the vehicles down so they don't have that option. It actually though, like our buses that we do for the Air Force, they actually can plug in as well. So if you are a plug-in capable and you are plugged in, okay that's okay. But right now none of the commercial cars are and it should be kind of stipulated that you have all the rights but in a parking space you need to be plugged in because we're looking at the same kind of thing too. We're also looking at things like for all electric vehicles, whether hydrogen or plug-in, there's no gasoline tax and that's where a lot of the revenues to fix our state highways and roads come in. So how do we start compensating the Department of Transportation for revenues they lose from gasoline tax and things like that. So those are kind of future things we want to look at in legislation. Yeah there is a bill actually that looks to in adding a surcharge for electric vehicles that I think about $100 and so we're looking into that. We do feel that EVs should be paying their fair share, everyone should be paying their fair share. However, we're kind of looking at maybe that surcharge right now could be premature given that the Department of Transportation is conducting a road user charge study that actually looks at the possibility of replacing the gas tax. To my understanding of this, they're replacing the gas tax with a vehicle miles traveled tax. So basically taxing you for how many miles, how much you use the road. So we're hoping that through that study it'll kind of make suggestions for legislation rather than potentially prematurely like adding a surcharge. And really at the end of the day I think it'll be interesting to see with the DOT's legislation and we're going to coordinate with them prior to submitting testimony. However, it'd be interesting to see what percent EVs actually have an impact on that loss revenue compared to more fuel efficient vehicles. I think as the category standards were increased, I think it's really not to point fingers but I do think as vehicles become more efficient in general and more hybrids can maybe contributing to that loss of revenue more so than just the 5,000 EVs, although it's great that we do have 5,000. That's true and I think it's a lot more complex issue than most people realize because for example most plug-in vehicles like a Tesla in particular with a lot of batteries is a heavy heavy car. It's not a lightweight car like a Leaf. So you'd have to differentiate by car weight and most of the weight taxes for the registration right now but looking at the real complexes they have your car or truck. Right, maybe that's a better way to do it. It's tougher on the road so mileage and the weight of the vehicle have some form of it. It puts all of it together in there. So it's something that's going to take a good study and a good look at and to be fair to everybody to make sure that it's done right. But it's something that we know that the DOT's got to look at but just they got to take it into account. It's helpful that it's been introduced this year just to at least have that a good discussion and I think it was introduced last year as well. So it's definitely a good topic to discuss and there's a need for that. It's just how can you do it in a sustainable manner and that's going to fit everyone's needs while still helping to further EV adoption. Well we're going to take a quick break here and talk about some other shows here on Think Tech and we'll be back in about 60 seconds. Hello I'm Marianne Sasaki welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues politics governmental topics and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha I'm Carl Campania host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers our producers our conversion technologies our investors and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Come back to my lunch hour stand energy man here on Think Tech Hawaii with Margaret Larson from the State Energy Office my partner in crime in all things electric transportation in Hawaii and we're talking about some of the things going on in the legislature and and what's new in Hawaii we actually have a meet a fairly regular meeting at least once a month we try and do it at least once a month sometimes more often than that and get the the key players like Mitch Ewing from the H&EI and folks from the State Energy Office in my office at HCAP to talk about what's going on in the state so we'll cover a little bit more about what's going on in the state and then I'm gonna tell you what what we're doing at HCAP to to do our part in the whole thing and it has to do with getting our own vehicle for a change but I talked to Mitch yesterday and I know we're supposed to have a meeting today too and he's on the big island with some folks from visiting from Italy believe it or not on an energy and they're talking hydrogen with blue planet on the big island but there's a lot going on on the big island with with grid and hydrogen transportation his station on the big island is is coming along they're they're having the same kind of permitting issues I think that Toyota is and surfco here with education with the county is already but it still takes a little bit to get it through the mill but once he's finished he should have a hydrogen station at know-how on the big island so the first outside the military base hydrogen station on the big island certainly will be in Kona and now and at that point they're they're looking at hoping to get some of those paris over there to be able to fuel them and then at that point we'll also deliver the two hydrogen buses to volcano National Park and they'll be able to to run off the hydrogen there so there's things going on on there so are we hoping that this year 2017 year the rooster is going to be the year for hydrogen on the big island I'm hoping so hoping so too yeah because you know it's funny the folks in my office and the folks that I deal with on the mainland that deal with hydrogen they're all so excited because in 2016 we just saw this ramp up of activity in hydrogen and it's not just in Hawaii and it's not just in California it's on the east coast it's in Europe Europe is going crazy Denmark has an entire island that's all hydrogen you know all plumb for hydrogen doing hydrogen they're doing great things with power to grid to grid power a storage and what called power to gas gas to power in Europe that has to do with hydrogen just so much stuff going on people are getting really excited about the you know the future and using hydrogen in some of our vehicles so there's just tons going on there here on Oahu we've had we work with Hawaii gas they're doing a lot of stuff and they're they promise to help support the hydrogen networks on Oahu and they need a little bit of help with some legislation as well so we'll work with them on that and last year the legislature passed some funds your way to support with planning for a hydrogen fueling station near the airport right that's for the Department of Transportation yeah that's that's actually going to be met with DOT this week to to get into more detail on the project itself they're looking at converting 12 to 16 40-foot buses to do all of the shuttles for the rental car agencies so that none of the separate agencies will rent to have their own buses it'll be a one pool of buses and they'll all be hydrogen fuel cell powered and we need to replace or retrofit those ones the original plan was to have nine buses that were part of a five-year temporary contract run by Roberts Hawaii and then start to transition those buses from Roberts to the state and convert them as a transition but they we reassess that and it looks like the state's just going to purchase either brand new hydrogen vehicles or brand new vehicles and convert them to hydrogen at the end of that contract or near the end I think so we're going to design a station that we either be right at the airport or on Lagoon Drive or possibly at the foreign trade zone and move hydrogen to the airport when needed for these buses so we're looking at the money that what they was proposed the legislature we're actually looking at several options to design stations that can support that effort and that will lead into state agencies doing hydrogen forklifts and hydrogen fleets and other plug-in electric fleets and things like that and I think that there's some initiatives by DOT currently to actually start purchasing electric vehicles for their fleet they've made a unilateral commitment to go to electric vehicles so yeah I'm really happy that the state DOT and Ford and the folks at DOT there they're leaning way forward and doing their part more so than probably any other state agency to to go green with their transportation sector yeah we've definitely been working with them to identify what types of vehicles could be matched with electric vehicles and I've been working with the EPA and the DOE to say now what type of vehicles are out there that are all electric when it comes to medium and heavy duty vehicles so we can see if there's a good match there kind of same with the hydrogen kind of realm because right now I think that's where a lot of their their fleet needs are yeah yeah and a lot of people ask me about like pickup trucks and you know and you know why I mean let's let's face it the Toyota Tacoma is probably out sells every vehicle on the island and people always here have a tendency to want to get pickup trucks yeah and that's one of the things that you just don't see in the electric vehicle realm so we're actually talking to a lot of the manufacturers about hey when are you gonna start doing more in the pickup truck frame and when you try and do a battery pickup truck you end up putting a lot of batteries in and it starts to hurt the weight of the vehicle and then the efficiency of the vehicle so they're not we're not sure when that's gonna happen but GM just came out with a military vehicle based on their Colorado 4x4 and that thing is it's just unbelievable it's a beast yeah I think our friend Chris Colquitt was right was helping to support that yes and the Army is gonna bring that out here and demonstrated at Schofield at some point really yeah I've been working with them and they're working group to when they showcase it and test it to bring it out here and they didn't set a timeline they picked like six bases across the US and one of them is gonna be in Hawaii oh yeah that actually looks like a really cool vehicle they've done a big press release on it it's awesome but but even a little old age cat guess what we're we're gonna get a Polaris gem a little electric neighborhood electric quadra yeah quad vehicle two seater but what'll be different about it is we're not just taking it as an electric vehicle we're gonna actually install a solar panel on top we're gonna convert it to a hydrogen fuel cell range extender so it'll be able to go 300 miles on a tank a hydrogen and a charged up battery so we'll still have a plug on it it'll still have a plug on it but you can just park it in the sunlight and it'll keep the battery charged and if you if we want there's another option we can get with it we're not gonna get it right now it's expensive but you can actually take a little hydrogen electrolyzer and put it in the back because got a little like flat bed in the back and you can make your own hydrogen with solar and water in two days in two days it'll fill the tank up with hydrogen from empty to full and so we're we're gonna look at that but that's not our budget right now we'll have to who else has this type of vehicles already they're only where did you come up with that idea it's on their website that you can get a conversion kit the way I actually got exposed is last summer I went to Earth Day Dallas in tech Earth day Texas in Dallas with Blue Planet and there's a gentleman there named Mike Strisky and he's been on my show before and he has a hydrogen house in New Jersey and he runs a company that just went public and he sells hydrogen accessories including conversion kits like this so he's gonna actually sell us the conversion kit to do the conversion and we'll do some high school students here on Oahu to do the conversion with us and do a little TV production cool turning into a kind of a big deal so we're we're excited about it do you think this summer this fall I'm I'm hoping pretty quick here yeah cool well make sure you let us know yeah do we have time just very for the video okay we're gonna run a real quick video here this is a really neat video that we we got from the Department of Energy they did a show in conjunction with Motor Week and it's a great little video just this year Honda, Hyundai and Toyota all debuted production ready hydrogen fuel cell vehicles although initially they will only be available in limited areas things under the hood of a fuel cell vehicle look a little different than what you find under the hood of a gas or diesel vehicle in fact a fuel cell vehicle actually is an EV but it makes its own electricity from hydrogen there's no need to plug it in to recharge to see just what one drives like I jump behind the wheel of a Toyota Mirai sedan much like a traditional EV things are very quiet and had me asking is this thing even on but with the popularity and petrol Hungary reputation of SUVs it seemed only natural for me to check out this new hydrogen Hyundai Tucson as well and again the drive was very similar to a battery electric vehicle with that really quick get up and go so why hydrogen over battery electric for one the time it takes to refuel so it just takes a few minutes to fuel and so there it's more similar to gasoline vehicles as opposed to charging the battery another plus for hydrogen vehicles their range the EPA estimate for the Toyota Mirai I drove is 312 miles the Hyundai Tucson boasts 265 miles per tank and each one of those miles is pollution free the only kind of emissions that come out of hydrogen electric vehicles are a little bit of heat and H2O even considering the energy it takes to produce deliver store and transport hydrogen or what the fuel cell technologies office defines as well to wheel emissions hydrogen comes out ahead if you look at today's gasoline vehicle on average based on all the assumptions we have roughly almost about a pound of carbon emissions per mile of driving if you're producing hydrogen from natural gas there's about half of that in terms of emissions a total well to wheels emissions so why aren't we all driving hydrogen vehicles well it starts with the high cost of the fueling stations the fuel cell vehicles and the hydrogen fuel itself but the West Coast California in particular is making strides and California the state has actually set aside funding specifically to install hydrogen stations similar to other alternative fuels collaboration seems to be key in making hydrogen more mainstream take this fueling station in Washington DC it's a partnership between the Department of Energy and the National Park Service and with the station right in their backyard the greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition is making moves to talking with DC government about purchasing hydrogen vehicles now that a station is logistically available Washington DC has over the years been an innovator as it related to alternative fuel programs and I see again the District of Columbia government the Department of Public Works making some major efforts to bring hydrogen to the city other than California the three automakers have yet to announce which market areas the fuel cell vehicles will be offered in next but after my drives there's no denying the potential and practicality of hydrogen powered cars so this time the future of this future fuel looks like it may be much sooner than we thought he's energy man's had the chance to drive all those vehicles and their awesome vehicles I actually had to pick favorites but I like the Hyundai as well the Toyota is really great but I'm in SUVs too and that that Hyundai is really a sweet vehicle to drive they have a lot of get up and go anyway we're hitting end of our time here Margaret and I appreciate you coming in yeah and do keep doing great work at the energy office I mean that the quarter project really got a lot of great attention in DC so nice job there thanks for having me on your show and thanks for bringing me to the beach today yeah it's good to be in the meeting Friday and ready for the weekend so everybody thanks for being with us on the standard energy man and we'll see you next Friday