Wichita golfers will soon be riding Yamahas

The city of Wichita is going for gas over electric as it replaces about half of its aging golf-cart fleet.

The City Council is expected to approve a purchase Tuesday to buy 120 new carts, according to a city report. They’ll be the 2016 Yamaha YDRA Drive model.

The new carts will have gas-powered, fuel-injected engines and will replace battery-powered carts that are “well past the end of their useful life,” said a staff report from the Parks and Recreation Department.

Golf Manager Troy Hendricks said electric carts have to be recharged for three to nine hours a day depending on the age of the batteries. With the gas-powered carts, workers can simply refill the tank and send them back out on the course.

They’ll last longer, require less maintenance and be environmentally cleaner than the electric 2001-2002 carts the city is replacing. Yamaha’s fuel-injected engines emit less pollution than comes off the current carts’ batteries when they boil during recharging, Hendricks said.

Yamaha is the only company that makes a fuel-injected golf cart, the city report said.

Brand new, the carts cost about $4,500 per unit. The city is getting about $400 off each, because they were used for about two weeks for ground transportation at the national middle- and high school rodeos in Wyoming and Tennessee.

Electric carts cost about $3,800 new, but battery replacement becomes an issue about every four years, Hendricks said.

“We’ve replaced the batteries (in the current carts) at least four times each at $600 a set,” he said.

The price tag on the new carts is $446,000. The Parks Department will spend about $150,000 that’s budgeted in the golf fund for cart replacement and borrow the rest from a $1 million fund earmarked for the development of a new park.

The Yamaha carts will be deployed at two city courses, although department officials haven’t yet decided which two will get them, Hendricks said.

The purchase will be considered at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, which starts at 9 a.m at City Hall, 455 N. Main.

This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Wichita golfers will soon be riding Yamahas."