Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Gas vs Electric Golf carts
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Old 03-04-2012, 09:51 AM
George Bieniaszek's Avatar
George Bieniaszek George Bieniaszek is offline
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We have a 2010 EZ-GO Electric cart with 4x 12 volt batteries. I think that we have a safe range of approx. 40 miles. My thoughts are that the more batteries you have, the better the range.

4x12 volt is good, 6x 8 volt better, 8x 6volt best as far as range.

As far as which is cheaper to maintain and run, this is a very rough estimate. The cost of battery replacement is approx $800. Thay money will buy approx. 230 gallons of gas at $3.50 per gallon. If a gas cart can average 45 MPG then you can travel approx 10,000 miles.

We are live in The Villages 6-7 months per year and average 2,500 miles per year in our cart. So it would take approx 4 years to hit 10,000 miles, probably 1 year sooner than a complete battery replacement for the electric.

Again, this is a rough estimate. I did not include the cost of charging up the batteries, but I also did not include the extra maintenance that a gas cart requires, i.e. oil changes, tuneups, cost of 1 battery.

My thoughts is that the maintenance costs are the same. As a previous poster stated, electrics get hit with a big bill every 4-5 years, while gas carts spread the expenses out evenly.

With TV getting bigger and bigger, we are considering on getting a gas cart as our primary cart and keeping the electric as a spare because of the range issues with the 4x12 volt configuration.
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