Parking-enforcement officers in Belmar, N.J, a town of about 6,000, use ‘neighborhood electric vehicles’ to save money and be green. Belmar’s mayor began the trend back in 2004. (Courtesy of Borough of Belmar, N.J.)
States make way for low speed vehicles
More and more permit them to travel on state roads where speed limits are low.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ September 3, 2008 edition
Ken Pringle could be driving his Jaguar. But the senior elected official in Belmar, N.J., mostly chooses to silently cruise town roads at 25 miles per hour – top speed for his all-electric “Mayor-mobile.”
That’s what kids in his tiny, oceanside borough dubbed Mayor Pringle’s bulbous “neighborhood electric vehicle” or NEV after he bought it on eBay for $5,000 in 2004.
Way back then, gas was just $2 a gallon and only a couple of dozen states allowed NEVs on state roads where the speed limit was under 35 miles per hour. But now, with gas hovering around $4 a gallon, more states are moving to allow them and Pringle’s NEV predilection looks prophetic.
That’s right: In America, land of the muscle car, the hot new way to strut your stuff on the road is gliding in electric near-silence at 25 miles per hour. From Belmar to Lincoln, Calif., the big car buzz is all about down-shifting to the slow lane.
At least 40 states have now passed laws to permit NEVs to operate on many state roads with more working on new regulations. Meanwhile, some 40,000 NEVs are operating nationwide, says the Electric-Drive Transportation Association. Kentucky and Massachusetts are considering regulations to permit low-speed vehicles (LSVs) on state roads. LSV is a federal designation that includes NEVs, and also some gas-powered vehicles.
Federal standards established for LSVs in 1998 set equipment requirements and operating standards. What separates NEVs from golf carts, for instance, includes minimum vehicle speed of 20 miles per hour and a top speed of 25 m.p.h. They must have windshield wipers, headlights, taillights, and turn signals, to name just a few differences.
State laws vary. In New Jersey, Pringle successfully lobbied the state to allow LSVs in 2004. Rhode Island and West Virginia permit them on roads posted at 25 miles per hour. Kansas allows them on roads up to 40 m.p.h. and Montana up to 45.
Seizing on their growing popularity, leading manufacturers, like Global Electric Motorcar (GEM), a Chrysler subsidiary, are ramping up production. So is Toronto-based Zenn Motor Company, whose NEV looks more like a regular car than a golf cart. Its sales have jumped 68 percent over the same period last year. Tomberlin and Miles Electric Vehicles have also seen sales surge.
“The biggest increase we’re seeing is due to gas prices going up and people seeing our vehicles as a way to significantly cut costs,” says Kara Saltness, marketing manager for Miles Electric Vehicles in Santa Monica, Calif.
Neighborhood electric vehicles can have a range of up to 50 miles per charge, which costs about $1. But things are even better for NEV owners in Lincoln, Calif.
In 2006, Lincoln passed laws that led to special signage (“You are entering a neighborhood electric vehicle-friendly community”) and NEV lanes. Residents of the gated communities who lobbied for the laws can easily cruise downtown. It’s common to see mall parking lots with charging stations, where retailers pay to top off NEV batteries for free. Studies put the number of NEVs operating in Lincoln at about 600 – and growing.
David Honeywell, an engineering manager at a local tech company, was one of the first NEV drivers in Lincoln. He joined in the gated communities’ fight for NEV access to roads. Once the laws passed, he hit the roads. But he had an unusual problem.
“I was getting stopped by people all the time, saying ‘What is it?’ ” he says. So he created a website – www.lincolnev.com – and printed it on cards that he hands out, “just so I could get some shopping done.”
Mr. Honeywell was irked by naysayers’ claims that NEV advocates were just exchanging tailpipe emissions for even dirtier smoke stack emissions from power plants. So he studied the issue, crunching numbers he has had verified by experts on the California Air Resources Board.
He found that an NEV charged in California, where clean-air standards are tougher on power plants, is more than six-times cleaner than a gas vehicle when it comes to carbon-dioxide emissions and many times that for nitrous oxide. When charged at an average location in the US, NEVs still produce three times less carbon dioxide.
Even so, long suffering electric-car purists often look with disdain on NEVs. Bob Rice, president of the New England Electric Auto Association, calls NEVs “training wheels for real electric cars.” They give full-blown electric cars that operate at highway speeds a bad name by slowing up gas-powered vehicles, he says.
Others call them “glorified golf carts.”
But not Tom Akins, a retired teacher in Cañon City, Colo., who bought a used GEM just over two years ago and has put 3,600 miles on it. Five days a week, he drives his 12-mile route for errands, only having to use his gas-powered pickup truck once a week – mainly to keep it running well and take trips out of town.
It’s true, he says, that sometimes faster vehicles will ride his bumper. But he and others say good sense and common courtesy prevails – and most NEV owners know when to pull to the side of the road to let others pass.
NEVs are curious, fun, and green. But will the concept last?
Guy Peeters is used to getting odd glances at what he drives. In his gated community of Brooksville, Fla., about 40 miles north of Tampa, people are used to seeing golf carts on the streets. But they are agog over his Tomberlin “neighborhood electric vehicle,” or NEV, with its tall roof, bright red frame, lights, and wipers.
“People are kind of surprised by it,” Mr. Peeters says. “I did have some problems getting it registered, too. They looked at me like I was from outer space and didn’t realize that state law permits them. Mine was one of the first they had seen.”
With gasoline hovering around $4 a gallon, NEV popularity has increased across the United States. But some analysts are less confident about their future. Plug-in hybrid vehicles, due to arrive on the market in a few years, will travel at highway speeds on electric power for 40 miles or so – and even farther when a gas-powered engine kicks in. That may deflate today’s soaring demand for low-speed NEVs.
“We’re seeing more interest now in all electric and alternative-fuel vehicles as gas prices increase – that’s natural,” says Bruce Harrison, an automotive analyst at Global Insight, a Lexington, Mass., market-research firm. “We’re not sure NEVs will be doing too much after plug-in electrics arrive.”
Still, Ian Clifford, founder and CEO of Zenn Motor Company of Toronto, says consumers are adopting a utilitarian approach that buys the “right tool for the right job” and will buy a low-speed vehicle for in-town shopping and a higher-speed hybrid for highway commuting and longer trips.
“This [NEV] is a class of vehicle that is not going away,” he writes in an e-mail response to a Monitor inquiry. “For the consumer who never uses the freeway, they will be able to not ‘over-buy’ their transportation needs.”
The mayor of Belmar., N.J., Ken Pringle, says the vehicles are just plain fun to drive. He organizes his travel week around his own Global Electric Motorcars NEV and has gotten his town to buy NEVs to save on fuel and maintenance. Belmar’s costly gas-powered scooters previously used by parking enforcement officers and the recreation department have been replaced by NEVs.
“I’ve found that I tend to stay closer to home because I want to use my NEV so much and it’s the most fun way to go,” Mayor Pringle says. “But I don’t have any doors on it, and sometimes when we’re going out to eat and it’s windy out, my wife puts her foot down, and we have to take the car.”
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Comments
2. Electric Car | 09.04.08
I feel that electric vehicles as a concept is definitely going to last. Whats more, EVs are going to getter better and more versatile since more and more people want to buy them, and manufacturers will have to factor in all kinds of different requirements from different buyers.
3. Marvin | 09.04.08
But this cannot be a majority. Most people live on roads with much higher speed, or next to interstate, which has no reasonable other way to go anywhere. Also with bad weather like snow these vehicles are not safe.
marvin
4. dan | 09.04.08
really dangerous to allow 25 mph carts mix with 35 mph traffic. and the silent feature makes them a threat to bicycles and pedestrians. keep them on the golf course.
5. motortrends | 09.04.08
yes… H O A K Y. just put in an order for Goss132 cars. it’s like a regular sedan, and at a cost the city CAN’T AFFORD to ignore. Certainly better looking!
6. Rick | 09.04.08
This is a good idea, but even though it produces less exaust due to factories producing the power to run the things, what happens every few years when you have to pay to replace all the batteries that it needs to function? The led acid batteries will cause a major land fill problem and will cause pollution to our soil, water, and plants. If we all trade gas engins for electric ones then we will be using more and more led acid batteries and they only last at most 5 years. So the cars will be more expensive over the long run, cause as much, if not more pollution due to disposal of the batteries and clog up our roads with trendy golf carts.
I don’t see any change in the fact that these “green” people will be trading one polluter for another.
Sell them all and buy a horse. That is as green as you can get. And you will have someone to talk to as you travel.
7. Annoying Troll | 09.04.08
Isn’t it inherently unsafe to operate these vehicles on the same roadways as vehicles propelled by internal combustion engines or will speed limits be dramatically lowered and strictly enforced to protect those who elect to operate these slower machines?
8. Rick | 09.04.08
One more issue that they never talk about is the EMP being produced by electric motors. They state that many people who buy and drive electric cars sell them or trade them in because of health issues they have after being expoed to the Electro Magnetic Pulse put out by many electric motors and charging systems. These have been known to produce everything from migrane headachs, to cancer and brain tumors. I’m not completely sold on the idea of electric cars yet. Maybe Hydrogen or steam power.
Still say buy a horse. Sell the fertleizer to help make more veggies.
9. K. Carl Milbrodt | 09.04.08
Rick thinks we are changing to a different pollution stream. If maintained properly (with distilled water), kept topped off, not discharged beyond the recommended level, and charged with the proper voltages, lead acid batteries will last easily 10-15 years. And there already is a recycling network set up to completely recycle dead lead acid batteries, so larger lead acid battery useage will not increase pollution. I have seen electric vehicles with 20 year old batteries still running.
10. parker | 09.04.08
Good points Rick.
Another gimmick to trade one type of pollution for another. Where do people think the electricity comes from hummm coal, oil? Oh and the plastic, that most of the EVs are constructed from uhhh …. it’s petroleum based.
11. MGF | 09.04.08
[@Rick]
Battery recycling technology is well understood. The batteries used in
these vehicles aren’t going into landfills; they’re going back to
the remanufacturing plant to be ground up and made into new batteries.
There’s nothing inherently “lost” as a battery ages. It just gets
“scrambled up”, in simple terms, and needs to be rebuilt. I don’t know
where this notion comes from that lead acid batteries go to landfills,
but it’s false.
As for “EMP”, I think you’ll find somebody who believes that almost
anything causes cancer, migraines, brain tumors, plague, palsy and
palpitations. We live in a sea of electromagnetic energy, much of it
coming from the huge fusion reactor that sits out in space bombarding us
with lethal nuclear radiation. We’ve evolved in that environment, and
we’re well adapted to it. Some people go out and deliberately expose
themselves to it, typically accompanied by a cool drink. The term “EMP”
applies to a very specific kind of transient electromagnetic event,
typically caused by the detonation of a fusion or fission weapon. It’s
many orders of magnitude greater in effect than anything we can produce
with motors or batteries.
Electric vehicles aren’t a solution to all problems, but they’re a good
start on some specific transportation needs. Breathless fear-mongering
doesn’t solve problems. As for “steam power”, I suggest you learn about
the real hazards of superheated steam before suggesting that the great
unwashed masses should adopt it as a power source.
MGF
12. Philip F. | 09.05.08
Rick says that “The led acid batteries will cause a major land fill problem and will cause pollution to our soil, water, and plants.” Not true according to the facts I have seen.
The BatteryCouncil.org says, “Recycling automotive (lead-acid) batteries is one of the most successful recycling programs in the country. Almost 98 percent of all used lead-acid batteries are recycled, making the lead-acid battery the most highly recycled product in the nation.”
Also, Rick’s horse uses corn and it is harder to recycle the horse that Rick proposes using!
13. Gayle Capik | 09.05.08
Websites that solicit comments trouble me becuase they invite snap judgements and opinions. If you care enough to tell us your opinion, then maybe you’ll care enough to become better informed. I highly recommend visiting David Honeywell’s website at http://www.LincolNEV.com Additionally, two Technical reports on Lincoln’s NEV planning have been authored. One was published by the Americal Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Both reports address safety, and confirm that NEVs are, in fact, very safe. If a community is well suited for NEVs, like Lincoln, then city officials should really consider adopting NEV Transportation Plans. Designed and Planned NEV Routes (like Bike Routes) enhance safety even further. Thank you.
14. DGB | 09.05.08
We took a family trip to Italy this summer. They are MILES ahead of us in energy efficiency…
Their towns and cities are populated by electric scooters, and motorbikes/cycles… Probably 60 mpg PLUS…
In the hotels… You use your entry keycard to activate the lights, and the air conditioning in the rooms. When you “leave” you have to take your key, and that turns off the AC and lights… Very clever..Very “green”..
We need to wake up, conserve and use scooters and electric buggies, and also DRILL our own U.S. oil, expand solar,wind, tidal energy, and…. Nuclear power..T. Boone ought to put nuclear plants alongside his wind turbines in the central US corridor from Canada to Texas… They can connect to the same transmission lines, and would be easy to protect and defend in the heartland.
They are also a much better use of that land than ‘corn” for very ineffcient and publicly subsidized corn ethanol…
We’re fools if we don’t. Iran,Russia,Venezuela, Saudi Arabia et al, will eat our lunch one day…Every petrodollar we send them, is a missile potentially purchased, and POINTED, our way…
In addition, with China and India rapdily industrializing, we risk a clash with them over oil and gas resources.
U.S. Nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas and ANWR and offhore drilling.
We need to use ALL of our resources…
16. Malcolm Brown | 09.07.08
We are in a crisis. The price of oil, coal and gas will increase faster then inflation as the pond runs to dry over the next 80 years, in the lifetime of our children. Most of the previous commentators seems to get it, but the rest of the country does not believe how serious it is. They also had some good suggestions, in particular about siting the nuclear plants near the remote wind farms. BTY, it will cost hundreds of billions$ and take years for those new transmission lines. We better get cracking.
17. uthor | 09.08.08
I’m all for riding around in carts or on scooters, but I have a hard time believing Montana would allow these vehicles on 45 mph roads. Around here, 45 mph means 55 mph. I would never get onto a road like that being limited to 25 mph. 45 mph roads all the way to work is one of the reasons I wouldn’t get a scooter or a moped (plus, I already have a “big boy” motorcycle).
Now, if you could get a special lane in the city for these things without holding up other traffic, that’d be a huge bonus. The speed difference would be inherently lower, the NEVs would be seperated from traffic, and you would get a bonus riding around one of these during rush hour traffic jams.
18. Charlotte Fairchild | 09.08.08
Peachtree City uses golf carts for most city paths just for them. There are already people going to work using the Silver Comet Trail in Georgia and Alabama using bicycles, but only security is allowed to use the golf carts on the Silver Comet Trail.
Even golf carts have enclosures, air conditioners in some, and protection from the weather. It makes sense for me to have something like this to go to a grocery store 2 miles from my house, or the post office two miles from my house. I am a writer, so I don’t leave home that often and don’t believe I need an expensive vehicle to pay taxes and insurance and then gas on top of that. There are no bicycle lanes in West Georgia that I know about, and that would make things better. But a couple of bags of groceries on a bicycle is not the same as something like a golf cart.
Maybe more people will consider these new options. Thanks!
19. Bob Duguid | 09.09.08
“reality will set you free” EVs will be my next purchase. employers that have charging stations at the place of employment should be given tax incentives.
clean enviroments will help all of us.
Bob Duguid
20. Pam | 09.13.08
People driving and passengers of these small vehicles are death waiting to happen until we demand that communities provide seperate roads for them and larger vehicles. Stand up and demand it!!!
21. Pam | 09.13.08
I saw a small gas 4 wheeler that got terrific MPG couldn’t the noise those make be muffled down and they be modified for around town and nearby and people use them also, they were only about $500. I don’t know how fast they would go but seem less dangerous than a scooter to me.
22. Guy Wiilson | 09.15.08
The NEV electric vehicles are clearly another step in the right direction. Many small steps create momentum; let’s keep going.
23. Guy Wilson | 09.15.08
P.S. I used to drive both a golf cart and a car. The golf cart became my vehicle of choice for convenience and easy maintenance. For longer trips and in bad weather I used the car.
24. Roland | 12.30.08
I am disabled and am not able to get a drivers license due to my disabilities (one being partial seizures that prevents driving for an extended period - petit mal, others being leg, back and arm disabilities that prevent carrying much or walking far). I am thinking about getting an EV to at least be able to do grocery/item shopping at the Wal-Mart and strip mall across the street. Right now I am doing almost everything through the Internet but that doesn’t help with anything needed a little quicker or some items that may be more economically bought at the nearby stores during a sale (with a fixed income, sales would really help). Are there any other disabled people that use EVs for something like that? Also, anyone in TX with experience using an EV for short trips and use in strip mall locations? Thanks.
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1. Allan Risley | 09.03.08
Mark,
Its very encouraging to see evidence of sanity! The NEVs you write about, and the reduction of U.S. usage
of crude oil by about 800,000 barrels a day, are indications that conservation could make a big difference
if every one one would take that attitude. thanks for this article and your cooperation on my project.
Allan Risley