Quote:
Originally Posted by tuccillo
My wife and I are new residents and are looking for a golf cart. We are down in the Lake Deaton area. We will play a lot of golf. I don't see us taking it to Spanish Springs all that often but Sumter Landing is certainly somewhere we would go.
I have talked to a few Golf Cart stores and there seems to be a very strong bias towards gas carts with the rational that electrics have a limited range and need the battery packs replaced every year and a half. I am trying to separate out fact from fiction. It seems to me that that range for a new 48v battery pack is about 40 miles assuming 80% discharge and a 5 year lifetime is not all that unusual (not sure what the range is typically reduced by after 5 years). I am mechanically inclined so the battery pack would get the needed attention if we went electric.
Can someone explain why there is such a bias towards gas carts (perhaps the commission plans favour pushing gas)? I am being short sighted by even considering electric? Thanks
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Having owned both, I have a couple of thoughts. One, I don't believe it is good to discharge the battery pack 80%. Most advice I have read is 50% on a regular basis. I agree with the range you mentioned, with a new pack, but the range will reduce as the pack ages. I took meticulous care with our batteries and didn't get close to five year life. Three plus years seems more accurate to me. One other consideration is the incidence of one battery/cell going bad and limiting range. Then you're faced with either replacing one battery or the entire pack depending on the age.
Our problem with electric carts was that after using them extensively during the day, they were unavailable because they had to charge, or you use them and experience charge anxiety. One contributing factor to that is the digital meter on the cart. There were many times when it showed low charge, but the volt meter showed adequate charge. But it really cramps your style to have to stop, lift the seat, and check voltage with a meter. It got so we never trusted the digital meter. That just increased the instances of range anxiety.
So, we got a gas cart. I do miss the quiet of the electric, but it is so nice to just get in and go. We stop for gas when out for golf or an errand. Fill up when it gets near half tank. We don't keep gas in the garage and notice no gas odor.
I would say that our first cart had eight six-volt batteries and we seemed to have great range. Our second cart had six eight-volt batteries and that's the one that sent us to a gas cart.
We also didn't expect to travel as much with the cart as we wound up doing. In the high season, we wind up getting tee times all over the map, so we do put many more miles on the cart than planned.
The bias toward gas is simply range.