I’m starting a small LSV rental operation and will have 4-5 Gem E2 and E4 running a lot. My question is what suggestions do y’all have on extending battery life and life on a single charge? I’m trying to familiarize myself with the vehicles but get a lot of conflicting reports on battery life and i’m trying to decide what kind of set up i’m going to need. I’ll be buying the new 2014 models.
Thanks in advance for any input. Great Forum and i hope to be a regular contributor!
Danny
Plug it in after EVERY use. Get the 9 8volt battery option Don’t go below 60% charge and for sure don’t go below 50%
I would say if the cost wasn’t too bad I would up grade the charger…mine likes the new charger a lot better…
Yeah i’m trying to learn more about the new chargers. If it saved a lot of hassle i wouldn’t really care about the added expense.
Thanks for your thoughts
Installed chargers work ok on the new unmodified machines and should last for years. The new vehicles have a good warrenty. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
I
Just curious. Are you renting these to consumers or businesses on short or long term rentals/lease? I imagine consumers (esp. day-trippers) will beat the crap out of them. I expect business on long-term lease/rental would tend to be more responsible.
I used to work for a company that rented 50cc moped’s to day-trippers in a college town. Couldn’t keep them on the road due to constant maintenance requirements. The day-trippers just didn’t care and destroyed them as fast as you could get them back on the street. After about a year, the business gave up day rentals - couldn’t make any money on them and they were a LOT less expensive to buy than GEMs.
Al
If you are renting to day trippers buy the cheapest fleet model Club Cars you can get.
someone makes a new charger that is like a spider charger …it will send like 10 amps to each battery separately…I wish I would have looked into this type of charger …I have the supercharger now and have no complaints but I think that it would be better to be able to charge each battery on its own…this is the way my boat chargers are 3 separate leads and they all are 10 amps…I have several batteries that are about 5 years old and that’s fishing tournaments every weekend and a lot of fishing during the week …on the super charger and the stock chargers all the current started on one end of the pack and charges all batteries until full ( so it will go through all batteries all the time)…also if you let a battery get too low some chargers will not charger until the volts get up…just my 2 cents
Quickcharge corp makes the spider charger by special order. Runs about $800 from memory. It takes some mechanical tweaking to fit since its not same dimensions as OEM charger. But agreed it is better solution IMO.
Al
Spider chargers are valid if you have different loads on different batteries or if you have a mixed set of batteries and loads (like on a boat). On a “Pack” application they are superfluous and an unneeded complication.
Except I don’t believe that all the batteries in a pack are equals, especially as the pack ages. My understanding is therefore that the entire “pack” by design gets overcharged in order to give the weakest battery sufficient charging to come to full strength. Being able to “balance” the charging so weaker batteries get more of a charge and stronger batteries less seems to make intuitive sense.
Basically the Spider charger is 6 units in one package and a heck of a lot of wires. If any single element malfunctions you are down. Since there are 6 units you have 6 chances to have a failure instead of 1. IMHO not worth it. I have had charger problems. I’m very happy when my 1 charger works.
999 TIMES OUT OF A 1000 if you bought your batteries as a set they will all “wear out” within 6 months of each other.
This is a charger for the commited “Gadget Freak”. How ever if you like it “GO FOR IT”. 
Point well made!!
this is true …the system in my boat is 5 years old and is a 36 volt system …three batteries in a row and take a beating as well does the charger…the boat in ruff water is about the same as hitting the batteries with a hammer rapidly…same for the charger …no ;problems…I still think when you put voltage into a pack the first battery will get a lot more of the charge and so on down the pack…if the last battery is week then you will cook the one’s infront of it while the charger tries to charge the battery to full pack charge…I have a supercharger on my cart now and haven’t had any problems…just my thoughts…I had to mount the supercharger under the dash …it is heavy and well built
If you will take your volt meter and measure the voltage on each battery during the charge cycle you will see minimal difference between them.
From experience, this is true IF all batteries/cells are “good”. If one is “bad”, not true.
Al
Agree but in a normal situation pack batteries are pretty comparable until they reach 75/90% of their “normal” life span. When we start to see cart performance diminish is when we start to find the under performing batteries. A spider charger might cover that up for awhile but in the end you make the guy at the battery store happy.
Rodney
I Agee. I just wonder if the spider charger extends the life a year or maybe more. If so the cost of the charger MAY make it worthwhile. I have no empirical evidence so it’s all speculative at this point. Your earlier point about additional points
of failure is a good one which I hadn’t considered before.
Al
This is a lot of good info here. I really appreciate the input. I’m surprised on the thoughts that these machines / batteries won’t hold up for day trippers. Ive talked with many rental fleet owners across the country and most if not all operate GEM models and never mentioned anything about a ton of stress on their vehicles aside from the batteries and even still they were getting 2 + years out of them.
GEMs are more complicated and have more parts. Club Cars are a far simplier machine.
How ever I love my 4 Seat GEM and wouldn’t have any thing else.