So my 13 year old son is turning up the heat on getting him something to drive. We're looking at everything from 49cc scooters to go karts to golf carts. We live in a golf cart community, so we're looking at those. However, I don't know jack about them....I've literally never stepped foot on a golf course in my life. I know they're typically 36V or 48V...or even those super cool (but ridiculously expensive) GEMs which are 72V. However, the battery cost is a concern.
Do they use the same batteries as a car, or do I need to buy them from one of those specialty places that wants to charge $200/battery? What specs should I be looking for in a battery meant for golf cart use? Do cold cranking amps matter?
wae
Dork
6/27/17 7:30 a.m.
What I know about these comes from researching them for use as house batteries for an RV, so there's that. They way it's been told to me is that there are basically three types of battery: auto, marine deep(ish) cycle, and whatever a golf cart battery is. An auto battery has the whole cold cranking amps discussion because it's designed to deliver a large surge of power for a short period of time and then get re-charged. If you continually drain it down and re-charge it, it doesn't last very long. Golf cart batteries are designed to have a lower draw over a much longer period of time, but can be drained and re-charged repeatedly without the same kind of damage. They are not designed for the kind of heavy, sudden draw of starting an engine. The marine batteries are a worst of both worlds -- it's basically an auto battery that has more resilience to being repeatedly discharged but it's not particularly good at either one. That's why an RV ideally has an auto battery for the chassis and then true deep cycle (like golf cart) batteries for the house.
Most of the golf cart batteries I've come across are 6V, heavy as sin, and expensive. There are some 8V and 12V golf cart batteries out there, but most folks that I've come across go with the 6V. Maybe they're more common and less expensive? Wire them in series and you get the capacity of one battery at 12V. Wire two in series wired together in parallel with two others wired in series and you get 2x the capacity of a single battery at 12V.
The basic premise of a golf cart battery is that it can provide 12V at however many amps over a long discharge while an auto battery is built to give you everything it has in one quick burst. CCA is basically irrelevant to your needs, but the amp-hours and reserve capacity is what you want to look for.
Two Trojan t105's in series. Six volt deep cycles that are the standard for RV's and golf carts. They can be repeatedly drained and recharged, but you need to keep them topped up and have a decent four stage charger or they will die early. It is really not a cheap solution.
My home course has gasoline powered golf carts. I prefer them to electric.
Thanks. I figured cold cranking amps were irrelevant to golf carts, since they're not being cranked over, but wanted to be sure. Golf carts are more slow, steady drains followed by recharge, right? Yeah, I've seen cart batteries of 6V, 8V and 12V, guess it depends on the size of the golf cart.
Reason we're looking closer is that we're about to head down to Disney World late this week for a long summer vacation. We're buying annual passes to Disney (all you Disney haters can kiss my Mickey 
), so we'll be making 5 or 6 trips to Florida over the next 12 months. Golf carts are a dime a dozen down there so we could drag one home with us on one of our trips. Just want to understand more about them.
I've been looking at batteries for my solar backup. The best deal I have found, and I haven't looked for a while, but the best I came across was the 6V "golf cart" batteries at Sam's Club. That's on a Dollar per Volt-Amp-Hour rate.
Golf carts are going to use some number of them in series/parallel to get whatever voltage the system wants to run at. Also, at one of our Brits in the Ozarks car shows, we had a late 1800's or very early 1900's electric car once. The guy was driving it around the show, giving rides, etc. It had a large bank of the 6V "golf cart" batteries, steered with a tiller, etc.
