What the article refers to as golf cart technology has been around for decades. In the UK, for example, we used to have large numbers of electric milk floats delivering milk in most towns[0]. So I'm not clear on what the authors think has changed. Maybe its just a Tesla bashing headline to get more views. I clicked on it because I had earlier read about one of the Tesla co-founders new company targeting electric trucks given they are much bigger polluters[1], and wondered if there was some similar logic here.

[0] According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_truck "for most of the 20th century, the majority of the world's battery electric road vehicles were British milk floats"

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/31/tesla-cofounde...