Those two new electric cars we told you about last week, the ones Red Bank planned to buy to replace the three-wheeled Cushmans used by parking enforcement?
It turns out they can’t meet the state requirement that they be able to go at least 20 miles per hour.
The cars, which are essentially golf carts, do more like 17, though they can be tweaked to go just above 19 mph, says Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels.
Last night, at Sickels’ urging, the borough council rescinded the resolution authorizing the purchase from golf-cart seller Vic Gerard Golf Cars of two vehicles for $13,750 each.
The request for bids will be tightened up and reopened, borough officials said.
“We’d be breaking the state law by driving them around on borough streets,” said borough attorney Tom Hall.
“To meet the criteria for Low Speeed Vehicles, state statute says a car can’t exceed 25 mph,” Sickels said. “But it must be able to attain at least 20. The bid proposal [from Vic Gerard] said the cars met the 25 mph standard, but it didn’t say anything about the minimum.”
Sickels said he came across the minimum while preparing the paperwork for the purchase. At around the same time, he got a phone call from Remsen Straub of Remsen Dodge in Hazlet, who represents four manufacturers of low-speed electrics all of which meet both federal and state standards questioning whether the Club Car Carryall 2 vehicles sold by Gerard were up to snuff.
Straub was the dealer who loaned redbankgreen a GEM e2, which we featured in a story about Neighborhood Electric Vehicles last week. The GEM 2 meets the federal and state standards.
Gerard was the only bidder for the contract. Straub told us after our story ran that he was unaware the bidding had been opened.
