This paper develops the high-efficiency drive system of the small-size electric vehicles (EVs) driven by the brushed dc motors. A power circuit for driving the dc motor is designed with the H-bridge circuit and buck converter by considering both the efficiency and cost. In order to change smoothly the rotating direction of dc motor driven by the proposed power circuit, an operating sequence for both the field current and the armature voltage according to an accelerator pedal angle is suggested. Through the simulation studies and experimental results with the low-cost 8-bit AVR, the performances of the proposed methods are verified.