A Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) is a U.S. denomination for battery electric vehicles that are legally limited to roads with posted speed limits as high as 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) depending on the particular laws of the state, usually are built to have a top speed of 30 miles per hour (48 km/h), and have a maximum loaded weight of 3,000 lb (1,400 kg). NEVs fall under the United States Department of Transportation classification for low-speed vehicles.
A NEV battery pack recharges by plugging into a standard outlet and because it is an all-electric vehicle it does not produce tailpipe emissions. If recharged from clean energy sources such as solar or wind power, NEVs do not produce greenhouse gas emissions. In the state of California NEVs are classified by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) as zero emissions vehicles (ZEV) and are eligible for a purchase rebate of up to $1,500 if purchased or leased on or after March 15, 2010.
Pike Research estimated there were 478,771 NEVs on the world roads in 2011. As of December 2010, the GEM neighborhood electric vehicle is the market leader, with global sales of more than 45,000 units. The two largest NEV markets in 2011 were the United States, with 14,737 units sold, and France, with 2,231 units.
Read more about Neighborhood Electric Vehicle: U.S. Regulations, Community Design, Sales, Examples
Famous quotes containing the words neighborhood, electric and/or vehicle:
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“You utilitarians, you too love everything useful only as a vehicle of your inclinations—you too really find the noise of its wheels intolerable?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)