Figured I’d introduce my EV that’s parked beside our prime.

Most people say they go for the prime (or other PHEVs) as a steppingstone between ICE and pure EV. For our household it was a little different.

November 2, 2017 I came across a deal too good to pass up and picked up my 2nd Smart Fortwo, but an Electric Drive listed for $4,800 with 26k miles.

We drove our gen 3 Prius the 100 miles to the dealership and I left on my first EVenture. With a range around 75 miles, realistically, I set off on the 100 mile trip home knowing nothing of chargepoint or other charging stations. I knew I’d never make it all the way home so I stopped at work (about 3/4 of the way home) and plugged in for a few long hours with the supplied evse to get enough juice to make it all the way home.



The first night at home we put my gas smart in the side yard so I could park in the garage and charge.



Then went about cleaning the garage out some to fit the cars better.

Hey look, we’ve got a 3 car garage now!



I all but stopped driving my gas smart and enjoyed the quietness of EV driving and the fuel savings that go along with it.



Then around March, my better half noticed that we weren’t spending much on gas anymore (45 miles, 5 days a week, with premium required really adds up even if it is somewhat efficient) and since we’re on solar not much on electricity either and wanted to see what we could do about the Prius (which now became our “gas guzzler” of cars used most often). I showed the info and specs of the prime and at first was turned down. Fast forward another couple of months and special financing and rebates and we were at the local Toyota dealership looking hard. Numbers just didn’t want to work with them. Later while coming home from vacation we stopped at a dealership in the Bay Area for the hell of it and between trade-in offer and incentives we got the numbers where we needed them and drove away in a 2017 Prime advanced in blizzard pearl.



I’ve put over 11k miles on my smart now and still as happy with it as the day I bought it. I’ve only had 1 problem with it and that was a dead 12v battery which caused a bunch of error messages and an uncomfortable driving situation. Closest dealership is further than the range allows so it was a trip to U-Haul and then to dealership.





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I still have both of my smarts, the Prime, and the jeep zj work horse.


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That’s why I kept my gas smart too for longer trips. I just upgraded the exhaust on my gas smart so I’ve been driving it more lately.


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It was one of the parking lot lights at work and was just a standard 120v.

I’ve gotten as low as 48-53 miles per charge on a cold morning with light heater usage. Lowest I got was 38 miles on the guessometer on a really cold morning with my heater running almost full blast.

Charging is extremely slow at 3.3kw/h on level 2. Full charge on level 1 20%-100% can take about 14-18 hours. My recent drive was 3.3miles/kWH, but I’m a bit leadfooted.


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True. Each persons needs are different.

In my first full year of ownership I’ve only driven my gas smart about 10 times. Twice for meets, twice for road trips, a few times because I only had 6 hours between shifts and 2 or 3 times because it was so cold I had range anxiety (DTE at full charge only showed 5-10 miles more than my full commute even after reset and I like to have at least 20 extra miles as a “safety net” for leadfootitis.)


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