Great Smoky Mountains National Park

[Ebony Star]

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is taking the lead with the adoption of cutting edge green technology. This summer, the Smokies will become the first national park in the U.S. to provide DC fast charging stations for electric vehicles! Visit My Smokies has the details on this exciting new initiative.

 

[mikes_fsd]

Here is the link for more info!
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Visitor Center Gets Eco-Friendly Addition

 

[Cyclone]

Oh. I've ways wanted to visit the national parks and this one isn't that far away!

 

[glenhurst]

Indeed. Retirement is just a few years away for me and my wife and one of the things we plan to do then is visit all the national parks in the US. Having DC fast chargers in those parks would make this much easier; in fact, there may be cases where it would be impossible to do so without such a charger in the park. Thanks to the Great Smoky Mountains Park for getting the ball rolling.

 

[Ebony Star]

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Visitor Center and the Oconaluftee Visitor Center charge stations are operational. You need a greenlot card or app. Card can be purchased in the visitor's center you if do not have one.

 

[RDoc]

Presumably these are CHAdeMO units?

 

[mikes_fsd]

Presumably these are CHAdeMO units?

All Greenlots chargers I've been to, (3 total) have one CHAdeMO and one CCS. But both connect to the same charger, so I do not think both can be used at same time... could be wrong on that point..

 

[CHRGIT]

According to plugshare.

 

[RDoc]

Hmm, IMHO Tesla needs to revisit building a CCS adapter. This is starting to be a much more common charging configuration and the CHAdeMo adapter is kind of a monster.

 

[drsrichardson]

Great news! It's getting easier all the time.

 

[SarahsDad]

Great news but I couldn't charge at the Oconoluftee Visitor center today because the spots were ICE'd. The place was packed with overflow parking (great weather, peak fall colors this weekend) but I wish there was better signage than just 'Electric Vehicle Charging Station' to dissuade ICE drivers from parking there...
(Photo is from Plugshare)

 

[jbcarioca]

This makes me happy! I am going there this coming week!

 

[Lanny]

Hi, We were in the Smokies a few weeks ago (that photo above from PlugShare is our car at Oconaluftee Visitor Center). We have a Greenlots account but had to buy a card from the gift shop for $5.00 because our AT&T service doesn't reach up there for the App to work. I think Verizon service might work. The Sugarland Visitor Center Fast Charger was offline when we were there. Yes, ICEing is a problem on busy days.

Lanny

 

[ChrisC]

That is why you should get a Greenlots keyfob / card. No network, phone could die, etc. Add the card to the collection in your armrest / glovebox

 

[glenhurst]

Don't you have to put money into the keyfob account beforehand? I've got one, but every time I've tried to use, it hasn't worked, and I've ended up using my phone instead. And I've gotten the impression that the problem was that I hadn't put any money into the fob's account, sort of like a debit card.

 

[ChrisC]

You do not have to preload it with money; it's just tied to your credit card like everything else (including the app).

However, at first I had the same experience as you: the Greenlots keyfob never worked, and I had to call in to get the session authorized. Finally one day I took the time to call into Greenlots and troubleshoot it, and it turned out that the numeric code on the keyfob (as I recall, a hexadecimal value like 5A3B7C) had been been mistyped into their data system. There was an a single character typo, so my keyfob was not actually properly associated with the account. If you call in, have them check that, and make them recite the keyfob code s-l-o-w-l-y and with words (alpha bravo charlie delta echo foxtrot) and compare to the code printed on yours.

That should do it. It's a pain because it takes 5 minutes, but you've got a few minutes to kill, right?