What are electric cars?

Dodson Electric has teamed up with several suppliers to create a viable form of transportation, that is not only affordable, but great for the environment. The street legal/highway legal fully battery powered electric car. This car is "green" in every sense of the word. It emits zero emissions, is noiseless and recycles light weight older cars! But before you grab the phone or run to Dodson to actually see our vehicles right now, take a moment to learn a little more about your choices available on the market today.

Below is a pretty thorough description of electric cars and vehicles. We quickly learned from the web that the recourses available to educate were pretty scattered and it was difficult to nail down one source that would help us define the electric car, so we have taken excerpts from various sources on the web and attempted to break it down so that it is a little more user friendly!

There are many forms and incarnations of the electric car from the hybrid, the hydrogen, wind, solar and more. For all practical purposes we are going to focus on 4 here, the refitted electric car aka the The E.V, B.E.V, the N.E.V and the Hybrid.

Today you have the choice as to what kind of alternative fuel car you want to drive.

An electric car is, quite simply, an automobile that is powered by electricity. These cars usually look just like their gasoline-guzzling counterparts, at least on the outside. This is especially true of gasoline-powered cars that are converted into electric cars which is what we do. However, there is one thing that may serve to make identifying an electric car easier, even before taking a look under the hood. Sound can help in identification, as electric cars are practically silent.

If you look under the hood of an electric car, you’ll see some major differences from what you could expect to see under the hood of a gasoline-powered car. An electric car has an electric motor and a controller for powering the motor. Rechargeable batteries are used to provide power to the controller. In comparison to traditional cars, electric cars have more wires. Gas-powered cars, on the other hand, have an abundance of hoses, pipes, and fuel lines.

Many people think the electric car is a new invention. This is a misconception, as they’ve been around for many years. In fact, electric cars were among the first automobiles and dominated the market at one point in time. In the early years of the twentieth century, electric cars held records for both speed and distance over land.

The electric car offers many benefits. Top among these is the fact that a car powered by electricity does not require the purchase of high-priced gasoline. Instead, an individual owning an electric car need only pay to recharge the vehicle’s batteries.

The Electric Vehicle (E.V) is understood as highway legal cars. For simplicity sake we are going to focus on pure electric cars in this section and hybrids a little further down. There are several types of E.V's from the conversions to production cars.

Dodson specializes in the conversion vehicles. These vehicles are recycled cars that have had their engines and any petroleum based components removed and then replace with battery powered components. Depending on what type of level you choose for these components, these cars can go up to 100 miles and reach speeds exceeding 75 miles per hour. The owner of these cars simply need to plug them in to re-charge the power source. They are relatively inexpensive because you are not spending extreme amounts of money on the body itself, you are recycling already existing vehicles and choosing your own options that fit your budget.

Production cars are production vehicles in that they are designed and built from the ground up and have a unique look to them. Depending on what brand you choose they can go as far as 200 miles on one charge and reach speeds up to 125 mpg. And just like the other pure electric vehicles, you simply plug them in to charge the batteries and they use no oil or gas of any kind. These cars range from and beyond $98,000 and there is a waiting list. While stunning vehicles, they have obviously marketed themselves for the upper income and hardly make it a reliable solution to the average American.

A more commonly used electric vehicle is a neighborhood electric vehicle. These are cars used strictly for local driving and not meant for the highway. An N.E.V. (Neighborhood Electric Vehicle) is a low-speed electric vehicle that looks a little larger than a traditional golf car and is limited to a top speed of 25 mph. NEVs are required to stay on roads with a posted speed limit of 35 mph or less. They are equipped with street legal equipment that includes headlights, tail lights, turn signals and brake lights, seat belts, windshield and rear-view mirrors.
NEVs are a great alternative travel solution for short commutes. They are perfect for driving in and around city centers, master planned communities, resorts, industrial and college campuses and any location that requires short-trip driving. No tailpipe emissions make an N.E.V a great indoor/outdoor vehicle for warehousing and maintenance department use.

With a cost of just pennies per mile, by using any pure electic vehicle for local driving and errands you can cut your fuel costs considerably. If you are cruising in a solar vehicle, you could be cutting your fuel cost to zero! Chargers plug into any 110-volt outlet. A full charge takes just six to eight hours, but batteries can be “topped off” by plugging the vehicle in to an outlet any time it’s not in use. The only ongoing maintenance required is a monthly check of the batteries to maintain the required levels of distilled water, and to check your tire pressure.

The Hybrid is an enormously popular car produced for the market today. We must include these vehicles in this page because they use a combination of electric and gas to propel the vehicles. Literally all of the car manufacturers have either units on the market today or are currently developing units for the immediate market. The basic gist of the hybrid is that you can run on battery or switch to gas, which increases your gas mileage substantially. Like any electric vehicle, it needs to be plugged in. The hybrid ranges from about $20,000 and up depending on the manufacturer you choose and style/model.

There are other types of electric cars out on the market, most of which are still in their infancy in that they do not make viable alternatives for daily transportation.