Bicycle Austin forum

Jack

Member

Registered: 2013-03-27

Posts: 344

Disruptive Electric Vehicle?

https://slate.com/business/2022/08/golf … -city.html

The piece proposes that the electric golf cart may be our urban transportation future. This riffs off a Harvard Business School piece that finds Tesla and the like aren't disruptive technologies--they are a way of extending the status quo.  I do know that in recent years Texas has had a number of bills proposed to liberalize on-road use of golf carts for short trips and I have more frequently seen golf carts on roads seemingly going to places like the nearby convenience store. 

I remember the pro-Segway "Ginger" points on short electric mobility, and also see similar points about the rental scooters, but this is a bit different an idea since we'd still have the parking burden for the carts, the carts can't (and that may be a good thing!) share the sidewalks, we'd still likely be talking of one or more owned per family (though maybe the scooter/bike model of app-based pick up where it is found and drop at the destination would work for a cart too, if it can be parked OK).  I see the cart as falling where today into the same space where I'd say, "walk or ride your bike instead of driving a car." If nothing else, maybe the carts could replace a significant percentage of "second cars" in addition to being a viable alternative to driving the pickup one mile to the store.

We might say "ditto, electric bikes" and I see a lot more of those on the roads too, but I'd wager that we might find more adopters of 4-wheel electric carts than "electric motor cycles/mopeds" for the (not necessarily so justified) personal safety concerns.  Plus the idea that a propane tank for the grill might be a hard thing to fetch by motorized bike.

MichaelBluejay

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From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,466

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Re: Disruptive Electric Vehicle?

Interesting, thanks for sharing, and for giving your thoughts.  I do think it's a step in the right direction.  E-bikes and scooters would be better for most purposes, but someone grocery shopping for a family can probably haul more in a golf cart-type vehicle.  And maybe the golf carts are a gateway vehicle to e-bikes/scooters (like a gateway drug).  I do remember predicting on this list about 22 years ago that the transportation revolution was gonna be scooters.  We're getting there.