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Enough already about thirty to fifty thousand dollar electric cars. Here in the U.S., 86% of drivers commute alone in their cars and many of those commutes are very short trips. This country's average length commute is fifteen miles, so many commutes are shorter than that. Here in Boulder County, within the last three months, two small towns have legalized travel by golf cart.
In Lyons, a mountain town of 1,500 people and the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, twenty people or more are now using golf carts for short trips and many more are looking into using them. Legalities and guidelines have been worked out gradually to accommodate the new method of transportation.
One Lyons couple behind the move using carts for travel are local coffee shop owners who began commuting four years ago in this fashion. They now sport solar panels on their cart's roof and no longer have to "plug-in".
Not long after Lyons allowed the carts, nearby Erie, a Boulder bedroom-community of 20,000, has also decided to permit carts for transportation. Golf carts are not allowed on trails, but on streets with speed limits of 25 mph or less.
The driving range for an electric golf cart can be more than fifteen miles and speeds can be 16-25 mph or more. Some models have regenerative braking. They are available at a nearby dealership for as little as $1,500, but often cost in the $8,000-10,000 range.
Interested? Too bad we all missed that cash for clubbers program in 2009 which, depending upon individual state electric car rebates, might have paid for half or all of a new cart, or two, or three, or four....or ten of them.