LANSING, Mich. — Thirty electric vehicle chargers will be installed in 12 of Michigan’s most popular parks along the Lake Michigan shoreline beginning in June, the start of a multi-year effort to offer charging at most of the state’s more than 100 parks.
The plan is designed to take advantage of the huge Chicago-area tourist traffic to Michigan’s western shore, and to work with officials in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana to promote the Lake Michigan shoreline tour.
Currently, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has just three chargers in three of its parks in the eastern half of the state, including Belle Isle State Park in Detroit and Bay City State Park along Lake Huron.
Scott Whitcomb, DNR director of the Office of Public Lands, said the roll out of the chargers this year is an effort to make sure EV drivers from Chicago and Detroit know they will have a source to charge their vehicles.
In 2023, chargers will be added to some parks in the Upper Peninsula, including the state’s largest state park, Porcupine Mountains State, and going north along I-75 from Metro Detroit, including the popular Hardwick Pines State Park.
The chargers will be Level Two chargers, meaning a full charge could take an hour. Because the parks have campsites and most have beaches, visitors are expected to be in the parks more than long enough to accommodate a full charge, Whitcomb said.
The chargers will be free for the first two years, Whitcomb said, thanks to corporate sponsorship.
The parks run from Berrien County, at the very southwest of Michigan and the closest locale to Chicago, to Emmet County at the tip of the Lower Peninsula at the Lake Michigan side of the Mackinac Strait.
There will be two chargers each in the state parks of Warren Dunes in Berrien County, P. J. Hoffmeister in Muskego County, Charles Mears in Oceana County, Ludington in Mason County, Orchard Beach in Manistee County, Leelanau in Leelanau County, Interlochen in Grand Traverse County, Young in Charlevoix County, and Petoskey and Wilderness parks and the Oden State Fish Hatchery in Emmet County.
Holland and Grand Haven parks in Ottawa County will receive four chargers each.