Mindy Kimura, program manager for Hawaii’s road-usage charge at the Hawaii Department of Transportation, described an eight-year process from feasibility study and federal pilot to legislation and launch. Kimura said Hawaii’s legislature adopted enabling legislation (Act 222) and that a small-scale enrollment for electric vehicles began July 1, with full per-mile participation for EVs mandated statewide by 2028.

“For the first three years, EV drivers have the option to either choose a per-mile road usage charge at $8 per 1,000 miles or a $50 flat annual fee,” Kimura said, adding that the per-mile default is capped at $50 to give many participants the lowest cost option at launch.

Hawaii used a demonstration project and extensive public engagement — focus groups, phone surveys and community meetings — to build trust and calibrate policy, Kimura told the Vermont committee. The state tied road-usage accounting to existing annual vehicle safety inspections and registration renewals so odometer readings could be used to calculate miles driven; registration renewal notices show the per-mile charge and the number of miles recorded.

Kimura described a multi-agency implementation approach involving state DOT, four county DMVs, county finance departments and county IT vendors, and an implementation working group that coordinated vendors, contracts and testing. The state also developed customer-facing materials, an online estimator (highrock.org), monthly postcards to EV owners and county-level outreach. Kimura said web traffic peaked after postcard distribution and press releases and that about 87 questions had arrived since launch, 92 percent of which were neutral inquiries.

On scale and timeline, Kimura said Hawaii has just over 40,000 registered EVs and is planning a phased expansion: mandatory per-mile RUC for all EVs by 2028, PHEVs and hybrids enrolled in 2029, and a model-year phase-in of all light-duty gas vehicles between 2030 and 2033. She said HDOT is supported by a CERT grant of about $5,760,000 to fund technical implementation, policy research and outreach.

Why Vermont is watching: Hawaii’s strategy demonstrates a hybrid launch (choice of flat or per-mile, initial cap) tied to existing registration systems, strong vendor coordination and targeted communications. Committee members asked Hawaii to share fiscal analyses and materials; Kimura said she would provide those documents to the Vermont committee for follow-up.