Quote:
Originally posted by the_rickster
1. i'm sure it's not $5000/ea if you're buying 20 or 30 of them.
2. they can always sell the gas ones to offset the price, and im sure the maintenance cost on electric is less costly.
3. its probably expensive to equip carts with gps, but courses do it all the time.
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They ARE around $5000 each if you were to buy them seperately. However, I dont think too many courses still buy them, as most courses lease carts for 5 or 10 year terms. This way they can return the old ones to get brand new ones. (unless it is up to the head pro to get them out of his own pocket, like bkw said). For instance, at Northlands, 5-10 carts are re-leased each season, allowing for the old carts to be cycled out and new carts brought in every year.
At present, there are 55 carts at Northlands and there are 10 more on the way... On average, there are usually 3 or 4 carts down in maintanence getting worked on, but those broken down carts are ususally the result of customers crashing into things and wrecking the alignment or brakes, and nothing to do with the cart being electric. so in that sense, you are right, electric carts are less costly to deal with then gas.
The only problem I have with Electric carts is that as the batteries get older, the charges do not last as long. As a result, when the same cart is going out for the second or third time in a day (you bastard 2nd twilighters who are too lazy to walk and take carts!), the likelihood of it dying on you is pretty good if you got an older cart. Each cart has 8 batteries, each costing 40-50 dollars a piece. This makes it difficult to justify spending the money on new batteries when the carts are only leased.
As for GPS at Northlands, it is on the way.. its just a matter of fitting it into the budget. I heard that each GPS unit costs several hundred dollars and that you have to close the course in order to have the GPS company come out and plot the course. I personally think the GPS will be a nice feature to have on the carts, especially since northlands is a difficult course with many blind shots. Unfortunately I know many customers will have an issue paying more money for the cart rental (5$ or so) when they do not intend to use it.
hopefully what i have said makes sense...
any more cart questions, just ask
