A SMART CAR (FOR SOME)
Electric city cars are better than ever, but it’s still not for everyone
The car wash “DRIVE FORWARD” green light flashed in front of me, so I inched my Smart Fortwo EQ Cabrio up dutifully, waiting for the “STOP” light to illuminate and see the suds flow over the little car. Instead, the green light was replaced by a blue light telling me to “DRIVE BACK.” So I slotted the lever into reverse and carefully inched backward, then was again instructed to pull forward.
I repeated this little dance back and forth until I realized no amount of hoping and re-positioning would make the “STOP” sign appear.
That left me in a car wash that refused to wash my car, with a very closed door in front of me and very annoyed drivers lined up behind me, waiting for this tiny bar stool on four wheels to get out of their way. So when I say I had to reverse out of the car wash, I also mean the cars behind me had to do so as well. The car wash attendant was equally unimpressed.
“If your car is too small, that’s your fault,” she said, as if this was the third Smart to get trapped in the car wash that day.
I suppose I should have known that the diminutive 2.7-metre Smart Fortwo EQ Cabrio was just too small to be picked up by an automatic car wash’s sensors. When you’re living with an electric Smart car, life sometimes requires a bit more forethought and planning.
For 2018, the familiar gasolinepowered Smart and it’s herkyjerky kinda-sorta automatic transmission is completely gone; the entire Smart range in Canada is now electrically driven. You can choose the EQ coupe, or the EQ Cabrio as we tested.
Admittedly it’s a low bar, but the electric Smart is the smoothest, most zippy Smart we’ve ever had! But there’s no Tesla-esque “Ludicrous Mode” to be found here, the rear-mounted motor churning out but 80 horsepower and 118 pound-feet of torque. Acceleration is just a hair above adequate and top speed is a laughable 130 km/ h. I can’t even imagine how long it would take to reach 130 or what it would feel like because I spent my time on the highway with the Smart trying to conserve the battery and maximize my range.
Smart says it can go 160 km on a single charge and I found it to be up to the task, even with the AC running constantly during these muggy summer days.
The Smart is perfectly stable on the highway, but the tiny wheelbase makes it rock back and forth over bumps like a poorly lifted Jeep. You might think the spinal abuse would end once you reach the streets where the Smart was seemingly designed to excel, but you’d be wrong. The small wheels find the bottom of every pothole (and there are many) and you can feel every single one.
Another interesting inconvenience of the Smart is the soundproofing, or more accurately, the lack thereof. The Smart EQ weighs just 1,085 kilograms and I’m assuming quite a bit of sound insulation was jettisoned to achieve that figure. There is so much wind and road noise inside the cabin when driving that I was constantly checking to make sure I had the doors closed all the way and that the windows were rolled up. It makes you feel like you’re outdoors all the time.
If you do want to be outdoors, the Smart Cabrio is happy to assist. The fabric top and glass rear window roll/fold all the way back to the trunk, giving you a true open-air experience. You can also remove the roof “rails” that connect the windshield to the B-pillar, but neither I nor several co-workers could figure out how to do that.
With the top down, and the electric motor working away silently, the EQ is a purely serene drive for a convertible. The steering is light, visibility is excellent and parking is extremely easy with the top up or down.
During the week with the little Smart, I got in it for my morning commute to find that the car would not turn on at all. I could shift into D but the car refused to move. An ominous message appeared on the dash saying “Malfunction, visit workshop.” I switched the car off and on many times before getting out and evaluating my options. Then I decided to give it one more try and, of course, it beeped into life and served me without issue for the rest of the week. Odd.
Inside, the interior is clearly more Smart than Mercedes, but the seats are comfortable and the driving position is very good. Our test car had the $1,395 touch-screen option and, while colourful and well laid out, the system was slow to respond to user inputs. Also noteworthy was that the stereo is extraordinarily tinny, even by subcompact car standards.
And now we reach the biggest component of this small car: the price. Our tester has a base price of $32,050 and with just a handful of options, that price rises to a full $34,890. If you live in B.C. or Quebec (or if you live in Ontario and buy it before September 10) you’ll have access to EV rebates to ease the price pain considerably. But if you have no government dollars to partially fund your cute EQ, it’s a pretty hard sell.