“The automobile has long been central to the great American vacation in national parks, While our treasured landscapes offer familiar vistas time after time, the automobile has changed greatly, and parks want to meet the needs of our visitors who drive electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.” National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith

BMW is just about finished with a two year project to install 100 electric vehicle charging stations to America’s National Parks. Tech Crunch reports BMW partnered in 2017 with several U.S. agencies, including the National Park Foundation, National Park Service  and Department of Energy, to donate 100 electric vehicle charging stations to be located in and around national parks across the US.

Over 90 such stations have been installed and the rest will be complete by the end of the month. Its a drop in the bucket in the over EV charging infrastructure but National Parks and the open roads leading to them tend to be “EV charging deserts” discouraging the use of electric vehicles to access our nations outdoor cathedrals.

The charging stations locations are concentrated in areas where there is  a strong electric vehicle market. The agencies and BMW also considered the distance from nearby charging location. So far stations have been installed at the Everglades and the Grand Canyon, two of the most visited U.S. national parks, as well Death Valley in California, Rainier and Olympic national parks in Washington and Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.

 

images from wikipedia.org nationalparkservice IG

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