[George Bieniaszek]

We own an electric golf cart and love the quietness and power it has. We have over 4500 trouble free miles on it in the 2 years we owned it. With regular use, you can expect the batteries to last between 2.5 - 4 years on the average.

You can purchase a Battery Minder which will keep the batteries at 100% charge, BUT, if you are going to put the cart into storage for 2-4 years, and not use it, you are looking at purchasing new batteries for the cart no matter what you do. Having the batteries sit for that period of time does more harm than good for them. Batteries will discharge while in non-use at approximately 3-4% per month. So in 2 years they are totally dead and more than likely cannot be revived. A new set of batteries will run $650-$800 depending on what configuration your cart has.

A second issue is that the cart is "street legal". Once Florida registration is put on the cart and it is listed as a street legal cart, you cannot go back to non-street legal status. So now you have to keep it registered as a motor vehicle and carry insurance on the cart when you start using it regardless if you slow it down to 19 MPH.

Unless the cart is a smoking great deal, realize the cash outlay in a complete battery replacement once you put it on the road along with registration and insurance expenses.