Should we ride golf carts into a greener future?

A report from The Villages, Florida, America’s largest model of multi-modal transportation.

Golf carts in The Villages, Florida.

For reasons overtly political and even sordid, the massive, ever-expanding Central Florida retirement community The Villages has a national reputation. Heck, there’s even a two-hour Vice documentary on the place. It’s truly fascinating stuff. The Villages also happen to be home to an estimated 80,000-100,000 golf carts and residents use them for large amounts of their weekly activities. Are boomers actually pioneering a transportation model that could benefit all of us?

I’ve been visiting The Villages for years, as my wife’s family relocated from Ohio about a decade ago. One weekend visit and they were hooked. And what’s not to love for retirees of a certain age? Ample, mostly free golfing; dozens of pools and recreation centers with every activity you can think of; multiple “town squares” packed with shops, restaurants, and live entertainment 365 days a year; a wide range of housing price points; Florida sunshine; and all of it tightly-packed, geographically, accessible by golf cart.

And cart driving isn’t just a novelty, or something my toddler son insists on doing when we visit (although, of course, he does). Villagers go everywhere on golf carts, and there’s a well-planned network of cart-only roadways designed to help residents cover major distances. After installing its first golf cart lane in 1990, The Villages began to factor golf cart access into its expansion plans, and in my in-laws’ neighborhood, built in the 2010s, there are plentiful golf cart roadways and even cart-specific bridges over Florida’s Turnpike and other major roadways. When we’re in The Villages, we go out to dinner on the cart, get our groceries on the cart, head to the town square on the cart, even get coffee in the drive-thru on the cart. We routinely drive five or more miles in the cart for various trips about town.

Of course, this country consists of existing towns, not ones being built from scratch in Central Florida. But would it make sense to replace some of our larger vehicles with smaller ones, like golf carts, especially in warmer climates where the carts could operate year-round? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Most Villagers drive gas carts (more on that later), but even those offer substantial savings in MPG and CO₂ emissions over driving a regular gas car. Where a gas car averaging 25 MPG emits about 350 grams of CO₂ per mile, a gas powered golf cart emits less than one tenth that amount. Per federal estimates, retired Americans average 181 miles of driving per week. If a Villager were to drive half that distance in their golf cart each week, that’s close to a 50% reduction in CO₂ emissions.

Now for the bad news: the EPA doesn’t regulate tailpipe emissions on golf carts like it does on passenger vehicles, so the reductions in CO₂ emissions are simply due to the carts being smaller and having smaller engines. In reality, cart motors produce far more pollutants — hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides — because they lack the catalytic converters that help regular cars meet emissions standards.

Manufacturers could start outfitting their gas carts with more expensive pollution-fighting tech, but there’s a simpler solution available right now: electric carts. About 85% of golf cart sales are electric, nationwide, with lithium-ion battery costs sharply decreasing, making longer range electric carts essentially equivalent in price to their gas counterparts. And in places like Peachtree City, Georgia, another planned community, the vast majority of the town’s 11,000 registered carts are electric, reducing not only tailpipe pollution but noise pollution, as well — not to mention all of the emissions from gas cars that aren’t being used. Certain political proclivities might make Villagers less inclined to get off the dino juice, but the overall operating costs of switching to electric carts would be hard for anyone to deny — it’s hardly fake news.

Golf carts in The Villages

Now, the least expensive initiative we could employ to drive greener is to drive less. But for Americans who’ve grown up as avid drivers, used to the boundless freedom that the automobile provides, smaller, electric vehicles used for shorter distances would enable folks to keep driving but pollute less.

And we don’t necessarily have to jump through legislative hoops to start experimenting with cart life. All 50 states already have regulations on the books that permit Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), also known as Low-Speed Vehicles (LSVs), to share roadways with full-size cars. We’re talking about golf carts with more oomph, capable of speeds up to 25 MPH, that are allowed to drive on roads with 35 MPH speed limits in certain areas. And, in many jurisdictions, these can be driven legally by teens.

Mostly, this happens in coastal/resort areas with limited amounts of traffic, but imagine a thoughtful expansion of this policy. Where I grew up, in the DC suburbs, I could easily reach almost any amenity via 35 MPH roads: grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, shopping, and even a movie theater. Yes, we should be emphasizing bike travel as well, but why not consider NEVs in the green transit mix? Down here in The Villages, we’re even seeing more all-season NEVs like the fully-enclosed Atomic Coupe, which offers a climate-controlled interior. And I’d love to see some of the European models make their way over, like the awesome Citroen Ami (and its even awesomer Buggy configuration) or the Renault Twizy, which I drove on vacation in Bermuda.

With average new car prices approaching $50,000 in the US, there’s also an economic argument. Imagine folks ditching their second car and replacing it with an NEV that costs a fraction of the price, and using it for shorter trips at a reduced operating cost. Just like they do here in The Villages.

As I drove my family in our cart back to my in-laws on New Year’s Eve, I considered another potential future use case for NEVs. We’d just left one of the faux town centers, Brownwood Paddock Square, my son having demanded to leave the New Year’s Party after Daddy unleashed his best Ozzy impression while the cover band romped through “Crazy Train” (“But it’s a song about trains!” I argued in futility). It was packed with Villagers, their families, and folks from the surrounding community — the squares are open to the public. Moreover, it was packed with golf carts. Tailgating carts. Ones adorned with a favorite sports team’s logo and colors. Some still decked out with Christmas decorations. Some made to look like hot rods.

I thought about my kid and his generation and all the data that’s showing teens are choosing online interaction over in-person. The number of teens getting their driver’s licenses has dropped dramatically. I remembered reading about Peachtree City and how their teens use golf carts as a social vehicle, literally. They provide connective tissue that unites teens in physical spaces. Sure, the kids probably drive too fast, and yes, they seem to account for a disproportionate amount of accidents, but so do teen drivers of regular cars. It turns out by saying, “Okay, Boomer,” and following our parents’ and grandparents’ lead by embracing that golf cart life, we’re not only helping our kids have a greener existence but a more wholesome one as well.