{"id":348690,"date":"2021-07-27T06:03:59","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T20:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=348690"},"modified":"2021-07-27T06:03:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T20:03:59","slug":"hood-says-hes-into-building-the-infrastructure-for-electric-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/hood-says-hes-into-building-the-infrastructure-for-electric-cars\/","title":{"rendered":"Hood says he\u2019s into building the infrastructure for electric cars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The son of Coldwell Energy chief executive officer Dave Hood and his wife holds a photo of one of two electric cars they are bringing to Saipan this August. (FERDIE DE LA TORRE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Coldwell Energy chief executive officer David Hood, it\u2019s not just about selling electric cars. Rather, it\u2019s about removing the mystery of the cost versus the savings that can be derived from electric cars. It\u2019s about building the infrastructure for charging stations and service to make electric vehicles convenient and affordable for everyone here in the CNMI.<\/p>\n

In an interview Friday at his office at MH1 Building in Puerto Rico, Hood said he is planning to bring to the islands this August a 2021 all-electric Nissan Leaf and a Tesla for testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here to kind of give the island a quick nudge to get these renewables going,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s my goal. I want to just promote the use of these cars here and how we make it smooth for everyone to have one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hood said his overarching goal right now is building the infrastructure to make this transition to electric cars smooth for everyone. What he wants to see, he said, is for electric cars and any other renewable energy cars to \u201cbecome affordable for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hood believes that people in the CNMI need \u201ca little nudge\u201d to get that going because it just hasn\u2019t happened yet here. \u201cAnd so I\u2019m going to sponsor this myself. Bring them here. Test these cars. Make sure how they operate here, because they\u2019ll operate a little differently here with the conditions that we have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hood said they\u2019re going to work on the mileage, the charge times, how they charge them, and if they will use solar when they charge those. He said the idea is to explore how to make it possible to get these cars under $50,000 \u201cso that they become affordable for most people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hood said that\u2019s his goal\u2014to get the infrastructure in place so that people could have electric cars. \u201cRight now, there\u2019s really nothing if you think about it. There are no charge stations. You could charge it at home, but there needs to be more things out on the road,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hood said the infrastructure could be in the parking lot in one of the hotels where there\u2019s a charge station there. \u201cYou get some VIP parking because you\u2019re running the electric car. So you pull in there and you can charge your car. Let\u2019s be honest, people are going to forget to charge their car and they\u2019re going to drive it,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n

Hood underscored the need to get the infrastructure in place so people don\u2019t feel they\u2019d be stranded if they buy an electric vehicle.<\/p>\n

Hood said there going to be a lot of work to get the infrastructure in place and that\u2019s where their company will play a key role.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do that in the U.S. already. The cars are available. So it\u2019s not like I need to build the car. They\u2019re available. We can have them here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hood, who has been in the renewable energy business for 10 years now, said he has been on the island for a while now and he just want to see the CNMI move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to cooperate with everybody. The more people that want to get involved, great. Our door will be open for all the information that we gather. We will definitely consult with others on the data that we gather when we are going to use the cars here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hood said the charge times will be different here because of the weather condition. \u201cIf they\u2019re just a trickle charge, that\u2019s easy. Just plug into a 110. Problem with that is it\u2019s very, very slow, so there\u2019s 220 chargers and now we are creating a solar charge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hood said there are two possible sources of power\u2014Commonwealth Utilities Corp.\u2019s grid and solar\u2014and the charge stations could be connected to the power grid or not.<\/p>\n

Hood said electric cars go up to 300 miles with one charge. Using a gasoline-powered car, he drove from Capital Hill to Pacific Islands Club in San Antonio and back and that\u2019s 26 miles.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do that seven times, eight times with [an electric] car before you charge it,\u201d Hood said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not trying to corner the market here. Don\u2019t get me wrong that I\u2019m going to get greedy here and do it all this myself. I want everybody to get involved. I want this to be a good thing for the island,\u201d he said, adding that they are going to work with different companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Coldwell Energy chief executive officer David Hood, it\u2019s not just about selling electric cars….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":348692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}