http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/2014/11/kailua-couple-to-be-first-in-hawaii-to-drive.html Kailua couple to be first in Hawaii to drive Mercedes electric vehicle Nov 17, 2014 Duane Shimogawa
[image / Vicki Yu http://media.bizj.us/view/img/4397921/mercedes*1294-0-548.jpg A Kailua couple will be the first Hawaii residents to drive this Mercedes B-class Electric Drive vehicle. ] A Kailua couple will be the first Hawaii residents to drive this Mercedes B-class Electric Drive vehicle. A Kailua couple who both work in the real estate industry — one in residential, the other in commercial —will be the first to drive a Mercedes B-class Electric Drive car in Hawaii. Rich Jankowski, a commercial real estate attorney, who represents such developers as Coco Palms Hui LLC, which is trying to redevelop the iconic Kauai resort and Vicki Yu, a residential real estate agent for Carvill Sotheby's International Realty, who has a background in environmental law, ordered their electric vehicle from an Oregon dealership and should be getting it by the end of this month. The couple, who looked at buying the BMW i3 and a Tesla, opted to go with the Mercedes EV because they have a long history with the brand, they liked the look and feel of it and it fit within their price range. Their search for a new car was accelerated on Halloween when Yu got into an accident in her Mercedes, which was totaled. "The decision was to get an EV," Jankowski told PBN. "That's what got us to this point." Yu told PBN that they will be utilizing their home's solar energy system to help power up the car. "We have way more power than we need," she said. "In Hawaii, you can't sell your power back to the grid, so for us, it's a no-brainer." The full-size, white Mercedes [EV], which comfortably seats five people, also will be helpful when she's showing her clients around. "We just got lucky," Jankowski said. "We didn't think we would get one." The price of a Mercedes B-class is as low as $33,950 when utilizing a federal tax credit, according to its website. For the Kailua real estate couple, they'll be happy to save about $140 a month on gas, while running their car on sunshine. Earlier this year, another attorney, Douglas Codiga of Schlack Ito, was the first Hawaii resident to drive the new BMW i3 EV. Codiga, whose clients include the Honolulu-based renewable-energy nonprofit Blue Planet Foundation, ordered his dark gray BMW i3 in August 2013 and picked it up in June at the BMW of Honolulu dealership. Hawaii has become one of the leaders in the United States when it comes to electric vehicles. The state ranked second in the U.S., behind only Washington state, in EV market share with 1.6 percent, according to 2013 statistics from Edmunds. [© bizjournals.com] For EVLN posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html#nabble+template%2FNamlServlet.jtp%3Fmacro%3Dsearch_page%26node%3D413529%26query%3DEVLN%2Bbrucedp2%26days%3D0%26sort%3Ddate {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/34k-Kailua-couple-1st-in-Hawaii-to-drive-Mercedes-EV-tp4672785.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
