Smart Fortwo Electric Drive Passion: VERY SLOW

The $600 lease payments may be applied to the purchase price of the car in 2012. The cars being offered now are beta; I'm pretty sure Smart expects all of them to be exchanged for next years' car.

The 'lease' is really a misnomer; a better description is "start paying now for a car *likely* to be offered for about $30k, and drive a beta for about a year for free."

'Course, if you do not like what eventually is offered in 2012 wrt to the car or the deal, too bad. I wonder what will stop a SMART dealer from adding 'market adjustments' and creative fees to the poor sod locked into this rent-to-own scheme.

 

Wow, it felt peppier...I rode in a Smart ED at the AutoShow and it had me fooled lol. 22.5 seconds to 60mph? Ha!

 

It's really disappointing this is the best they could come up with.

This makes the i Miev look like a cheetah with 0-60 in 13.5 seconds.

 

But isn't the idea of the Smart EV to make a CITY car? Not sure what the speed limits are in the US in cities but over here it's usually 30 mph and 40 mph on city highways. It should be more than ok in a city and obviously weak on the highway. What were the Smarts 0-30 mph times?

When I drove the Nissan Leaf the other week it went like stink upto about 40 mph before easing off a little by the time it got to 60 mph.

 

Maybe it's not that the car is not suitable for american roads, but that american roads are designed to require stupidly overpowered and fuel thirsty cars.....

 

The roads aren't designed for stupidly overpowered cars, just people are programmed to "need" them.

 

And to think this car is infused with Tesla DNA! Let's hope their joint effort with Toyota on the Gen II RAV EV fares better.

 

Cool review of the UK Smart EV;

 

Grumpy, you will see a lot of variation depending on the location of the poster. Most people in the U.S. live near large metropolitan areas connected by limited access divided highways. These typically have speed limits from 65 to 85 mph.

We don't have divided highways in my part of the woods. The highways in this area are not divided and not limited access. They have traffic lights and driveways scattered about. The U.S. highway passing through the nearest city has a speed limit of 35 mph in the city.

Tom

 

We have them in car2go here, and I tried one on one exit on the highway. I didn't get up to speed It feels fine driving dt, which has special car2go parking spaces. It is to use these spaces that I use the cars, and I like the EV better than the gas version.

 

The smart fortwo is the sort of car that gives EV's a bad name. The public already thinks they are small anemic golf carts that shouldn't be allowed on the road. So mercedes made a small anemic cheaply made golf cart, calls it an EV, and just solidifies ignorant peoples' views on EVs.

 

But it is likely to sell like hot cakes in its home market where parking spaces are as rare as hens teeth and petrol costs 3x what you're used to.

The Smart EV is only a few thousand more than the petrol/diesel counterparts here with a HV battery lease option or pay more to buy the HV battery outright. A car isn't all about being a jack of all trades. The girlfriend loves her Toyota IQ, not because it's fast or big but because it's tiny and can be parked anywhere.

An EV city car makes more sense than a GT. Batteries are limited by range, so why try and make a hugely expensive GT than can cover 300 miles between charges? A small city car used for nipping to the shops or parking on narrow streets and is likely to be a second or even third car won't be needed for long journeys, so a smaller and importantly, cheaper battery is required.
It's actually sounds a great idea to be.

Horses for courses.

 

Hey GC,
I agree with most of that. I've driven it only because we have special spots reserved for special car2go versions of the smart fourtwo. City cars EVs don't make much sense though. If you look at a spark ev or a leaf versus a smart you seem to get a lot more for your money in that spark or leaf. Neither seem that big or hard to park. It could be a pricing thing, and euopean prices may make the smart car relatively better deal than it is here.

 

Size is relative.

Believe me, there's a big difference in parking an IQ or a Smart compared to a Spark or Golf or similar. In very narrow streets 6 inches or a foot make the difference between parked or not. My Prius is a liability for parking in the city of York. It's too long and many a time I've had to miss a space for that reason.