Inside the E Vehicles garage. Click to enter high-resolution photo gallery.

Hawaii has lots of sun for solar power generation, not a lot of long roads (except for on the aptly named Big Island, also known as the Island of Hawaii), and an environmentally conscious population. These are just a few of the reasons that I argued last fall that Hawaii is an ideal state for electric vehicle companies to set up shop. I'm not retreating from those positions, but I realize that it's not as easy as having the "perfect storm" of components lined up to make EVs take over a state. I learned this by talking to a few people in the alternative energy car world in Hawaii, and today and tomorrow I'll be sharing their thoughts with you.

First, on the EV front, I visited two electric vehicle shops in Honolulu in November to get the straight dope on EVs in Paradise (are we still calling Hawaii paradise? Is that still cliché enough to be cool?) I sat down with Brad Ulep, who has been bringing NEVs to Hawaii since November 1999 with his company E Vehicles of Hawaii. Today, E Vehicles of Hawaii sells the Dynasty (it's the one in the picture above, and looks a little like the VW bug) and models made by Columbia in Wisconsin throughout the islands. Business isn't brisk, but it's not dead either. E Vehicles of Hawaii sold about 80 EVs in 2006 to both private and public institutions. Julep said some companies that really should buy EVs – like HECO, the Hawaiian Electric Company – hasn't bought one.
"All Hawaiian Electric wants from us is to borrow a car every Christmas for the parade," he said. "This year I didn't even let them."

Follow the jump for the entire interview, and click on the image above or the thumbnails below to see a high-resolution (1,280 pixel wide) image gallery of 23 pictures from Enova and E Vehicles of Hawaii. The motorcycles in the pictures are by Johnny Pag, and E Vehicles of Hawaii sells them because, as Ulep said, selling electric caes is a struggle. The 250 Spyder has been a huge success for Doc White Cycles (the motorcycle half of E Vehicles of Hawaii). About half of the images in the gallery are from Enova Systems, another EV proponent in Hawaii. I'll have my interview with Todd Martin, manager of Enova's Hawaii office, up later today here. Then, tomorrow (up now), we'll take an in-depth look at biodiesel in the middle of the Pacific and give you all the details on the Bio-Beetle.

On to the interview...

I'm currently in sunny Hawaii doing research on a book. Having come from Michigan, where gas prices had dropped down to $2.20 a gallon or so before I left, the $3 a gallon signs up at all the local stations here reminded me that transportation fuel is a big cost here in "paradise". Walking around the other day, I had the most obvious brainstorm: Hawaii is the ideal testing ground for electric vehicles. Seriously. Electric car companies should be falling over each other to release EVs here, and the major automakers shouldn't be far behind. You can read why after the jump.