What do Napoleon Bonaparte, a 192-year-old tortoise named Jonathan, and a Subaru Solterra have in common?
They’ve all called one of the world’s most remote locations home. While Napoleon and Jonathan’s residencies on the island of St. Helena date to the 1800s, the Subaru EV is a newer inhabitant. It arrived on the island recently to take part in a project aimed at figuring out the logistics of charging electric vehicles––and therefore, advancing sustainability––in an isolated, rugged environment.
The UK division of the Japanese automaker recently announced the initiative to install what it’s touting as the “world’s most remote public electric vehicle charge point.” The project’s partners worked together to install an EV charging station near the Museum of St. Helena in the island’s capital city, Jamestown.
What makes the test run unique is that it’s taking place more than 1,000 miles away from the closest mainland. St. Helena––a British Overseas Territory––is more than 1,200 miles off the Southwest coast of Africa. The goal, per a news release, is “to test the feasibility, reliability, and adaptability of electric vehicle use on one of the most remote inhabited islands on the planet.”
Go remote: St. Helena was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 and settled by the British in 1659, according to its government website. The island features numerous microclimates and is home to more than 500 plant and animal species that aren’t found anywhere else in the world.
At 47 square miles, St. Helena is similar in size to San Francisco, but has less than 1% of the population, with fewer than 5,000 residents.
Perhaps its most famous resident is Jonathan the Seychelles giant tortoise, who came to the island in 1882 and is the world’s oldest known living land animal. Before Jonathan’s time on the island, Napoleon spent the final years of his life there in exile.
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Trial run: In addition to being a useful case study for Subaru and EV charger manufacturer Easee, the project aligns with St. Helena’s goal of transitioning to more sustainable energy sources and eliminating emissions from transportation by decade’s end. Some 25% of the island’s power currently comes from wind and solar, according to the release, but the government’s goal is to boost that to 80% by 2028.
“The next step is to roll out the infrastructure so that we are using electric vehicles more and more on the island,” Mark Brooks, the island’s minister for treasury and economic development, said in a statement. “There are a lot of diesel and petrol vehicles primarily, and we want to change that behavior and start to use more electric vehicles.”
Per the release, there are only four EVs in use on the island right now. But the charging station will remain on St. Helena, and the island government incentivizes residents to import EVs and plans to add more EV chargers to support a “small fleet of electric cars being imported for tourist and islander use” this year. Going electric would help cut down on the costs of shipping fuel to the island.
“From Subaru’s perspective, it’s an honor to be involved in a project that could potentially lead to a fully sustainable future for St. Helena,” Lorraine Bishton, managing director of Subaru UK, said in a statement. “If you can operate an electric vehicle in this type of environment then you really can anywhere.”