Pint-size 'Hummers,' other roadsters keep Westhaven folks up to speed
By CHARLES BOOTH
Staff Writer
FRANKLIN — A Volkswagen Beetle — too big. A Mini Cooper — a giant. No, give me something small.
That's the sentiment of a growing number of suburbanites who find themselves in neighborhoods that look more like miniature cities. And in these places, such as Westhaven and McKay's Mill, what better way is there to get around than in a tiny car?
In Bill Little's garage, an H3 Hummer and three roadsters take up only two parking spaces. The vehicles are dwarfed by a Chevy pickup parked on the concrete next to them.
Little put the key in one of the roadsters and drove it into the rain Friday morning. It glided silently outside like a golf cart, but it's actually a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle, or NEV for short, and Little, who moved to Williamson County from Louisiana, sells them for about $9,000 through his company, Bayou Buggies.
"They're real popular in California and Florida in retirement communities," Little said. "They have golf-cart communities where when you get inside, they expect you to drive your golf cart. They're quieter and they don't make much noise. They're safer."
In 1998, the federal government designated automobiles that don't exceed 30 mph as low-speed vehicles that can drive on streets with a speed limit of 35 mph and under. But these vehicles must be licensed and have seat belts, headlights, turn signals and taillights.
"These are new in this area. I hear the comment all the time, 'I've never seen anything like this,' " he said.
The first NEV body style was the California Roadster model, based on the 1932 Ford Roadster. It was followed by the Hummer, which is a GM-certified vehicle, Little explained. "This year they should come out with an Escalade and next year a Silverado."
GEM a 'Jetsons' car
Meet Jason Winn. He lives in Westhaven, and when he wants to visit friends a few streets over or take his son to the swimming pool, he gets behind the wheel of his Global Electric Motorcar. Unlike Little's NEVs, Winn's electric car looks futuristic in a European sort of way.
"We describe it as our 'Jetsons car'," he said, comparing the round car to the vehicles used by the futuristic cartoon family.
The Winn family was looking at getting a golf cart to get around the neighborhood, but then he found the GEM on eBay.
"The guy delivered it to the house from Cookeville," he said. "It gave us more functionality." Their GEM has four seats, a trunk and its top speed is about 30 mph.
"When you're running through a residential community, someone who might have a lead foot can only have so much lead in their foot," he said. "You can throw all the toys and sunscreen and towels in the back and head to the pool or take it anywhere that would be farther than a normal walk."
A safer kind of traffic
On a given day in Westhaven, you might see a golf cart, an NEV or GEM carrying families slowly down the street. They're not the norm yet like they are in other communities around the country, but Southern Land, the company developing Westhaven, is encouraging them for the residents.
"It's a lot more neighborly than riding around your neighborhood in a car," said Jim Cheney, a company spokesman. "That's the ideal thing to have traveling around the interior streets of the neighborhood instead of a car. We certainly encourage it. We have a lot of people on foot. They're certainly not like driving a Suburban down the street. I think people that are living there feel the same way."
Cheney called the vehicles a "technological component to walkability," because they're intended for short distances only. And drivers aren't hidden from each other behind steel and glass like they are in the regular cars, which makes going to community events just a little easier.
"When you have three kids, strollers, a cooler, picnic baskets, blankets, toys, we can see these people substituting driving a car to something that runs on electricity."