You Know Gas Prices Are High When Texans Start Driving Golf Carts:
Small battery-powered vehicles have been on the market for years but have mainly been used by workers driving around factories and university campuses.The small cars are powered by batteries charged by plugging them into regular 110-volt house current. Though they do look like golf carts, they have heftier frames and more powerful engines. Now, with high gasoline prices driving booming sales, many are going to ordinary folks like the Peterses, who have fallen in love with gasoline-free transportation.
Orders at ZAP, a Santa Rosa, Calif., maker of small electric cars, have exploded to about 50 a day from just five six months ago. Shipments at Chrysler LLC’s Global Electric Motorcars, or GEM, which made the Peterses’ cars, have jumped 30% from last year’s second quarter, with some of its 150 dealerships around the country tripling their sales.
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The Peterses’ cars get about 30 miles from a full charge, which at about 15 cents per kilowatt hour, amounts to a 60-cent fill-up, or two cents a mile. Compare that with 20 cents a mile for a car that goes 20 miles on one $4 gallon of gasoline. [...] Electric cars like the Peterses’ can cost from about $7,000 to more than $18,000, depending on the model and accessories, though they paid about $10,000 altogether for the two cars, which they bought used off the Internet.
I don’t think many people want to hop into a low-performing car that looks like it’ll collapse in a collision, but an all-electric Civic or Prius would make a fine second family car.