E-Z-GO broke ground last year with lithium in its
Elite line of vehicles. It’s not clear why the company
has not equipped its stylish 2-Five PTV with lithium.
Perhaps it’s safety concerns with lithium batteries in
the hands of individual owners, rather than under
the supervision of the golf course fleet. But does
the market want it? Go to the Buggies Gone Wild
forum, and you will all manner of interest in convert-
ing the 2-Five and other PTVs to lithium.
For that matter, you can
contact ReLion Battery
or Trojan Battery and get
a drop-in lithium battery
equipped with the elec-
tronics for use with your
current charger. (Both
companies will supply
you with specific instruc-
tions regarding a conver-
sion from lead acid.)
Trojan Battery’s Trillium lithium battery
Bridging to the urban/suburban small vehicle
market
The various improvements in the current PTV mar-
ket, which promise significant advances in per-
formance are the building-blocks along the way to
a transportation system characterized by electric
power, mobility as a service (MaaS), self-driving tech-
nology, vehicle and environmental interconnectivity,
5G level data transmission, and, with autonomous
vehicles, a completely redesigned interior empha-
sizing new types of functionality while getting from
point A to point B.
All these characteristics, which are synergistically
interconnected, could easily warrant several de-
scriptive paragraphs, but the assigned space for
this article is insufficient to do this. So, what will
probably grab most of the attention is the element
of self-driving, or autonomous vehicle (AV) technol-
ogy. If you have followed events in the AV space at
all, you may be aware of Waymo, the autonomous
vehicle technology company. Funded by Google and
operating as a division of Google’ parent company,
Alphabet, Waymo is now in active testing mode as a
commercial transportation company in Phoenix, AZ.
Neighboring State of California has begun instituting
similar projects.
The Waymo vehicle pictured is simply a hypotheti-
cal small vehicle in which the autonomous driving
system in installed. Waymo is not necessarily man-
ufacturing the vehicles in which their systems could
operate. The picture is chosen because it illustrates
what could be likened to an enclosed PTV. Other
small vehicle companies specifically addressing
urban mobility have been cited in previous articles,
such as the Uniti from Sweden and the Baro One
from the U.K.
A hypothetical Waymo Autonomous Vehicle
In a stock analyst’s report from Jefferies, the author,
Rebecca Ungarino, cites another report from UBS in
which UBS auto analyst Colin Langan wrote, “…that
even though Waymo had just launched its commer-
cial autonomous car service outside of Phoenix,
Arizona, the MIT professors that the firm met with
believe it will be a decade before scale AV appli-
cations in complex urban environments become
commonplace.”
Note the key words: “decade” and “complex urban
environments” and “commonplace”. Substitute the
words “2-3 years”, “gated communities”, and …yes,
commonplace. That is the prospect for AVs in less
complex environments, including our gated commu-
nities across the country.
It’s up to the consumer
What you say? No way, I love to drive my PTV. OK,
noted, but some within the community might prefer
to have hands free to indulge in texting, reading a
Kindle book, taking Aunt Hattie’s urgent call remind-
ing you to be sure to feed her dog, and maybe even
streaming an NFL football game.
Along with AV will come the likelihood of radically
different vehicle interiors, once the need for driver
controls is eliminated. For example, seats and re-
tractable tables designed to be office-functional. All
sorts of possibilities. Maybe even a hot tub. Might
be stretching a bit, but you get the point.
Contact Steve at [email protected].
Or check out our website at www.smallvehicleresource.
com, where you will find an extensive database of vehi-
cle models and can make side-by-side comparisons of
vehicles based on a full set of specifications.
APRIL 2019
21