I believe the overwhelming majority of new carts sold in The Villages are gas carts. If there was a serious air pollution concern, as there is in CA, I could see some merit in your suggestion but that isn't the case here. It is not as if electric carts don't have an environmental impact, they do because they consume electricity (albeit mostly generated using natural gas) and lead-acid batteries (which take energy and other resources to manufacture). The market has effectively spoken: people prefer gas carts. You can claim that the local golf cart shops "push" gas carts but most people believe that gas carts are more suited to their needs. If lithium-ion batteries, which have a long list of very significant advantages over lead-acid batteries, were at a lower price point the situation might be different.
At some point PV panels for your house and lithium-ion batteries (or another battery technology) for golf carts will become cost effective and widespread. The problem is trying to find a balance between forcing people to pay for expensive technology so as to create economies of scale (and cost-effectiveness) and letting people buy what they want. "Incentives" and "subsides" are code for forcing people to pay for those technologies.
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Originally Posted by jimbo2012
There is no restriction to install PV panels here.
I am big advocate of solar, but when looking at the cost in installation including a Federal 30% tax rebate it still takes a long time to re-coop that investment.
Of course the other side of the coin is that doing so is better for the environment in reducing your carbon foot print, but the first thing to do is ban gas golf carts 
Now if the state would give us incentives that would change things. |