Better Place Hawaii to cease operations

[alohart]

Today, I received the following email from Better Place Hawaii:

Subject: Better Place Members in Hawaii will continue to enjoy access to EV charging services

Dear Art,

As you may have heard, Better Place announced that it is winding down its operations in North America and Hawaii to focus on its first two markets, Israel and Denmark.

Better Place's first priority is to support customers and partners. Therefore, we will work to ensure continued public charging services for all our Hawaii members.

We will keep you updated and thank you for your confidence and support.

Brian Goldstein, Director
Better Place Hawaii

This is significant because, with over 150 public charging stations in Hawaiʻi, Better Place owns more than half of all public charging stations in Hawaii. They own several public charging stations in areas of Oʻahu where, without them, circumnavigating Oʻahu would be difficult with the i-MiEV's range. So even though the subject of the message suggests that their charging stations will remain available, the body of the message suggests that how this will be done is not yet known.

Without the ability to charge my i-MiEV where I live, I depend on public charging stations. The public charging stations that I have used most often have been those owned by Better Place. So I certainly hope some way to keep the Better Place charging stations operating, with hopefully reasonable prices, is found.