Electric Vehicle Testing

How well do pure electric vehicles perform under real-world conditions in a climate with a wide range of seasonal conditions?  These are some on-road and off-road vehicles we’re going to charge on solar power and find out.

We are installing electric vehicle charging stations in the area around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to enable visitors with electric vehicles to visit the Park and other tourist attractions in the area.  Black Bear Solar Institute owns and operates, or has sponsored, about 8% of all public EV charging stations in Tennessee, including all installed in the Tennessee State Parks.

Electric Vehicle Long-Term Testing

John Deere Electric Gator TE put into daily use caring for orphaned and injured black bear cubs

E-mail: Suggestions@BlackBearSolarInstitute.org

Have Suggestions for Vehicles to Test?

On August 21, 2012, Black Bear Solar Institute’s all-electric Nissan LEAF made the first-ever crossing of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park by an electric vehicle, from Townsend, Tennessee to Cherokee, North Carolina, reaching the parking lot for 6644 foot Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee and the National Park, along the way.  Photographs, video and objects from this crossing are now in the Smithsonian Institute Museum of American History’s Transportation Collection in Washington, DC.