As it was undesirable to use the gasoline engine for the cart in a vinyl house, we produced by way of trial two electric carts that used battery as electric source. The results of the performance test are summarized as follows.
1) The outline of the battery carts; the cart No. 1 was equipped with 12 voltage motor and the cart No. 2 (improved cart) was equipped with 24 voltage motor. It could be loaded with 50kg for the standard and had travel speeds of low speed (about 30cm/s), middle speed (about 45cm/s) and high speed (about 60cm/s). Further, it could go back with the same rate for each speed.
2) It seemed to be sufficient that the maximum motor output of the battery cart was 130W, For example, in the case of the cart No. 2, when it loaded 50kg and travel speed was low, middle and high, input were respectively 80W, 85W and 100W.
3) The overall efficiency on input basis was 30% at maximum.
4) Continuous operation hours were 3 hours for the cart No. 1 and 4 hours for the cart No. 2 when they were loaded 20kg and travel speed were high.
5) There was no significant difference in operation efficiency between the harvesting operation that used hand-basket and the cart. But the travel distance of the operator was shorter for the cart than for the hand-basket, and it was recognized that the cart had effect on labour reduction. However, in the case of cucumber of a little yield, there was not so much difference between both travel distances, and the favourablity of the cart was vanished
