Range anxiety is a thing of the past for visitors to Estes Park, Colorado.
Just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, the National Park Village is a popular site for people making trips to the country's 15th-most visited park in 2022.
Businessman Jim Sloan installed two electric vehicle charging stations after buying the site with his daughter, the Denver Post reported in 2021, and they have added four fast-charging stations since.
"When we acquired the property, we wanted to increase its sustainability, both for us as investors and for my tenants," Sloan told the Post. "My thrust is to accommodate the traveling public visiting the national park and help to overcome their range anxiety."
The Biden administration is working toward installing 500,000 EV chargers around the nation, and it also hopes half of all new vehicles purchased will be electric by 2030.
In Colorado, "investor-owned utilities and some rural electric cooperatives are investing in charging equipment," the Post reported. The state has a goal to get 940,000 light-duty EVs on the road by 2030.
EVs emit zero planet- and health-harming tailpipe pollutants. Manufacturing them and the batteries they use, though, adds to the heat-trapping gases that blanket the planet. But that process is offset after 18 months of operation, according to Earthjustice.
Another critical factor for EVs is their range. If drivers can't get very far on a full battery or have no way to charge a low battery, it defeats the advantages of EVs. So, the availability of charging stations is paramount to the adoption of this mode of transportation, which was invented nearly a century ago.
The change has been a long time coming, then. But as similar projects at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and other parks around the country show, this is certainly the dawn of a new age — facilitated by companies such as Electrify America, which has just one goal: to build a nationwide network of charging stations.
The National Park Village chargers were installed by IPOWER Alliance and FreeWire Technologies.
"I care more about these deployments than I do about some of the city deployments we have," FreeWire CEO Arcady Sosinov said.
"You have to create that feeling of availability for electric vehicle drivers. If there's even one location they can't get to, they're less likely to buy an electric vehicle."
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