Road-legal golf buggy suits greens to a tee

Photo: Chris Sunderland

Jerry Hanss with his street legal golf buggy.

The world’s first road-legal golf buggy has arrived in the UK — and is being supplied from a business in Oldham.

Offering a low-cost alternative to electric and hybrid cars, the EMerge electric vehicle is aimed at specific, lower-mileage applications.

With a starting price of around £6,000, a top speed of 25mph and a range of 30 miles on a full battery charge, the vehicle costs less than 4p per mile to run, and Springhead man Jerry Hanss reckons it is the most cost-effective green vehicle on the market.

Jerry is the managing director for ePower Trucks, the company behind the EMerge, based at the Prince of Wales Business Park, Vulcan Street, Derker.

He said: “Golf buggies are very low cost and fun vehicles to drive, but until now they have not met the appropriate safety standards for road use outside America.

“Our EMerge ticks all the right boxes for road safety and is still a very cost-competitive product. We think there is a substantial niche market for this type of vehicle.

“It is designed for very specific applications — and it is the most efficient, cost-effective, clean and green vehicle for those applications.”

Jerry, originally from New York but now happily settled in Oldham, has secured full EU Type Approval for EMerge as a road-going passenger vehicle, after adding a number of automotive safety features to the basic golf buggy chassis, which is already a successful product in the USA.

His company has also fitted some additional features to combat the British weather, including an onboard heater and all-weather enclosure.

“EMerge is designed for closed campus environments, where a lot of vehicles spend their whole working lives in an area measuring just a few square miles,” says, Jerry adding: “In these circumstances, it really doesn’t make economic or environmental sense to use a petrol or diesel-powered vehicle.”