Almost every "best way to get around Pacific Beach" article is written by whoever wants to rent you the thing. This one is too — we rent golf carts. So we've left the trade-offs in, including the four situations where the answer is clearly not a golf cart.
The short version: one or two people going a few miles should rent a bike or an e-bike. Four to six people with a cooler, chairs and kids should rent a cart. Anyone leaving the beach grid should rent a car. Anyone drinking should call a rideshare.
Here is the whole thing in one table.
The comparison
| Option | Cost/day | People | Range | Beach gear | Parking | Weather | License / min age | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beach cruiser | $22–$30 | 1 (2 on a tandem) | 2–5 miles before it's a workout | A basket, if you're lucky | Free, anywhere, instantly | Fully exposed | None; shops set their own rules | Solo riders, the boardwalk, tight budgets |
| E-bike | $75–$85 | 1 | 8–15 miles, easily | A basket | Free bike racks | Fully exposed | None for Class 1/2; 16+ for Class 3 | One or two people covering real distance |
| Moped / 49cc scooter | $125 delivered | 2 | 20+ miles | Almost none | Easy, motorcycle spaces | Fully exposed | M1 or M2 motorcycle license; 16+ | Two riders on a budget who both hold an M-class |
| Street-legal golf cart | from $160 first day, $130 after | Up to 6 | Every road posted 35 mph or under | Cooler, chairs, boards, kids | Car spaces — and half-length gaps cars can't use | Roof over you, open sides | Regular driver's license; 21+ to rent from us | 4–6 people plus gear, moving together |
| Rental car | $31–$105 | 4–7 | Anywhere, including freeways | All of it | The single hardest part of a beach trip | Sealed, heated, air-conditioned | Regular driver's license; 20–21+ depending on the company, surcharge under 25 | Day trips outside the beach neighborhoods |
| Rideshare | ~$14 a trip midweek | Up to 6 in an XL | Anywhere | Whatever fits, at the driver's discretion | Not your problem | Sealed | None — you're a passenger | The night you're drinking |
Now the honest part, row by row.
The beach cruiser wins more often than we'd like
A cruiser from Cheap Rentals in Mission Beach is $25 all day or $28 for a full 24 hours. PB Surf Shop is $30 for the day, $40 for 24 hours, helmet and lock included. That is not a close contest on price for one person, and it never will be.
The bike also does one thing no motor vehicle in this comparison can do: it's allowed on the boardwalk. Roughly three miles of continuous paved oceanfront from Crystal Pier down to South Mission Beach, 8 mph, no traffic, no parking. Motorized vehicles have been banned there since a 2020 city ordinance, which includes our carts, mopeds and e-scooters — and e-bikes, of every class. That last one catches people out constantly, because state law calls an e-bike a bicycle; the city does not, and SDPD writes tickets for it on the boardwalk. Only a pedal bike is genuinely allowed. If the boardwalk is the point of your trip, rent a pedal cruiser and stop reading.
Where the cruiser falls down is arithmetic. Five people means five bikes, five locks, and no way to carry a cooler. Five cruisers at PB Surf Shop's day rate is $150 before anyone has carried a chair.
The e-bike is the right call for one or two people
An Electric Bay Cruiser at Boardwalk Beach Rides on Mission Boulevard is $55 for four hours or $75 for the day, and riders must be 13 or older and at least 5'4". Wheel Fun Rentals runs $22 an hour, $55 for a half day, $85 for a full one — but that branch is downtown on North Harbor Drive, not at the beach, so factor in getting to it.
At that price an e-bike is not a cheap option — two of them for a day costs more than a cart. What you're buying is range without effort. Pacific Beach to La Jolla Cove is roughly five miles each way; that's a genuine ride on a cruiser and a pleasant errand on an e-bike. For a couple with no gear and no kids, it's the best version of this trip.
California treats legal e-bikes as bicycles: no license, no registration, no insurance. Under-16s can't ride a Class 3, helmets are required for anyone under 18 and for every Class 3 rider regardless of age. What that status does not buy you is the boardwalk — the city ban above covers e-bikes too, so ride it on the street and push it if you end up on the boardwalk.
The moped is the one with the license problem
Delivered moped rental is thin in San Diego and it isn't cheap. Cloud of Goods delivers a MadDog 49cc to Mission Beach at $125 for one day, $250 for two, $850 for a week. Peer-to-peer listings look cheaper until you read them — the sub-$100 San Diego entries are stand-up electric kick scooters, one rider, not mopeds.
For two people on a budget who both actually ride, a moped is fun and parks anywhere. But read this carefully, because rental counters are inconsistent about it and the DMV is not:
In California a moped requires an M1 or M2 motorcycle license. Not a regular Class C car license. It also requires DMV registration with its own plate, a helmet at all times, and a rider at least 16. That's not boilerplate, it's the actual law — and "the shop handed me the keys" is not a defense at a traffic stop or, worse, at a claims adjuster's desk.
Separately: if you were planning to fall back on rented app scooters, don't. Bird, the last shared e-scooter operator in San Diego, pulled out in November 2023 and the city has been trying to coax operators back since. Check before you count on it.
The rental car wins the moment you leave the grid
A car is the only option here that does everything. If your trip includes the Zoo, Balboa Park, Coronado, Legoland, a Padres game or the drive up the coast to Del Mar, rent a car — a golf cart legally cannot get you to any of them, because an LSV can't be driven on a road posted above 35 mph.
Car rental in San Diego averages about $43 a day across all classes, with small cars nearer $31 and minivans around $105. What the daily rate hides is parking. The Catamaran, right on Mission Bay in PB, charges $47 per day for self-parking on top of a $46 resort fee. Beach-area street parking within a block of the sand is a summer blood sport. The car solves distance and creates a new problem at both ends of every trip.
Rideshare wins the night you're drinking
There is no clever answer here. If you're going out on Garnet Avenue, don't drive anything — DUI law applies to a golf cart and a moped exactly as it applies to a car.
A typical midweek beach-area hop prices out around $13.60, and the same corridor on a Friday or Saturday between 10 PM and 1 AM runs roughly 1.7x that, near $25, because drivers reposition downtown. Two or three of those in a night is real money, and you'll spend part of the evening waiting on pickups. It's still the right call.
So what does the cart actually win?
Exactly one thing, and it's worth naming precisely rather than overselling:
Moving four to six people plus beach gear, together, in one trip, inside the 35-mph beach grid, without solving parking twice.
That's it. Not cheapest — a bike is cheaper. Not fastest — a car is faster. Not most flexible — rideshare goes anywhere. But if your group is five people, two coolers, four chairs, a boogie board and a toddler, every other row in that table turns into a logistics meeting. The cart is one vehicle, one rate, one parking space, and everyone arrives at once.
Rates are from $160 the first day and $130 each additional day, plus tax, with a $200 deposit hold per cart. Split across six people over three days that lands near the cost of one e-bike each — and the e-bikes can't carry the cooler.
Two more honest caveats. Everything open-sided is a different proposition from October through spring than it is in July; evenings by the water get cool, so bring a jacket for the drive home. And we run a small fleet. On a busy summer Saturday the truthful answer is sometimes "we're full — go rent bikes."
Booking
Check your dates — it takes about two minutes. Delivery is $40 for Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Mission Bay and select La Jolla addresses, and free to Campland on the Bay and Mission Bay RV Resort. A valid driver's license is required, drivers must be 21 or older, and ID is verified before pickup.
If you're still weighing whether you need any vehicle at all, we wrote the car-free version of this argument in Getting Around Pacific Beach Without a Car, and the full price breakdown lives on our pricing page.
Prices checked October 2026 and quoted from each operator's own page: Cheap Rentals, PB Surf Shop, Boardwalk Beach Rides, Wheel Fun Rentals, Cloud of Goods, KAYAK's San Diego car rental averages, Hertz's under-25 policy and the Catamaran Resort FAQ. Third-party rates change without notice — confirm before you book. Rideshare figures are third-party estimates from RideWise, not quotes; real fares move with demand. Legal points: CVC 21260 (low-speed vehicles and the 35 mph rule), the California DMV page on motorcycles, mopeds and scooters (M1/M2, registration, helmet, age 16), AB 1096 (California's three e-bike classes), the January 2020 boardwalk motorized-vehicle ban and the city's confirmation that it covers e-bikes, and Bird's 2023 exit from San Diego. We rent street-legal carts, so this comparison isn't neutral — we've tried to state where the other options genuinely win rather than pretend they don't.
