EV charging stations
I appreciate James Lehner’s “Free charging stations” letter published in Your Views on Feb. 27.
I agree — electric car charging should not be free. There are costs to operate and maintain the chargers. For them to be sustainable, there must be a fee for use.
Some station owners like Target offer free charging for the first two hours of use and a fee beyond that. However, most stations require payment for use.
Regarding placement, station locations are generally influenced by installation costs. In general, the further from a building and its power supply, the more costly it is. This is one of the reasons we find charging stations close to buildings.
Local businesses have many incentives to host charging stations. There are rebates, tax credits and other benefits that offset costs to property owners.
Additionally, they benefit from the extra revenue from customers who tend to shop longer and are willing to pay for car charging.
Electric cars are very efficient and cost less to maintain. They don’t pollute our air and contribute to emissions. They become cleaner as our grid transitions to renewables. (We are now at 60% renewable.)
Importantly, electrics are becoming very affordable. However, we have a long way to go toward our clean transportation goal. There are fewer than 1,300 electric cars here, less than 1% of the over 185,000 vehicles on our roads.
The case for more public charging stations is to support everyone who needs to own one. Many residents live in apartments, condos and rental homes where installing a home charger is impossible or difficult. They will rely on ubiquitous, reliable public chargers to make the shift.
Public charging allows us to make our transition to clean transportation equitable.
Noel Morin
President, Big Island EV Association
Revisiting ‘fireside chat’
We are well-served to remember that geopolitical situations evolve, sometimes quickly, and that nations’ responses change in kind, irrespective of intents and who sits in the Oval Office.
On Dec. 29, 1940, in a “fireside chat,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt assured an anxious public: “There is no demand for sending an American Expeditionary Force outside our own borders. There is no intention by any member of your Government to send such a force. You can, therefore, nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as a deliberate untruth.”
Fast forward 82 years and we find in (ironically) the Roosevelt Room of the White House another president assuring our nation’s press corps that we will not send forces into Ukraine. (I pray this remains true, but acknowledge that those listening to FDR while sitting beside an old crackly radio decades ago prayed the same.)
There are certainly significant differences between the situation then and affairs now, but other parallels between the two — including heightened internal racial strife and foreign influences in U.S. domestic affairs — are reflected in FDR’s “chat,” making it a worthwhile read for today. (For us gray hairs, it is also worth recalling that WWII draft norms at one point included a maximum age of 64 — though few at older ages saw combat — and, at times, a call-up by age with the oldest taken first.)
John Atwell
Kurtistown