A fun drive, but not for everyone
Smart Fortwo Electric Drive lacks size and range most Canadians need
Is the new generation of the Smart electric vehicle smart enough? In some parts of the world, it’s not just smart, it’s brilliant. But Mercedes-Benz has long known that its chipper little roller-skate is a niche product, and Canada’s geography, climate and prevailing lifestyles have kept it firmly in that niche.
With electric vehicles now being mandated in some places as sales lag far behind expectations, the gap between “just one more gasoline car” and “guess I have to think electric” is shortened. Every major manufacturer is on this path, though it’s arguably been only the generous government subsidies in many places that have kept sales above water. More on that in a moment.
The new Smart Fortwo Electric Drive looks like a standard-issue Smartie; over the generations, it has seen some minor tweaking of the front end for pedestrian safety regulations, and the newest incarnation sports bigger seats, still offset to prevent the occupants from jamming shoulders. It still turns on a proverbial dime, with a 6.95-metre turning radius. That’s the fun of a Smart car, really: tucking it into impossibly small urban crevices with ease.
The electric Fortwo means no more clunky transmission problems, a stubborn bugaboo in generations of the gasoline versions until much later years. The electric sports a 17.6 kWh lithium-ion battery housed beneath the seats, just ahead of the rear-mounted engine. The positioning means you don’t lose any cargo space in the rear as you do with most EVs and hybrids, something the cargo-challenged Smart can ill afford to do. It also makes for a nicely balanced ride with great cornering. The stick shift itself looks and feels like it was made after the car was done and somebody realized they forgot to put one in.
That battery has 96 pouch cells, which can be replaced individually if need be; the warranty is eight years or 100,000 kilometres. This evolution of battery design should lead to cheaper solutions, as well as car prices, in the future, we are told.
The 2017 Smart Electric Drive has a best-case-scenario charge time of 0-80 per cent capacity in 2.5 hours using a 240-volt outlet. Use your standard household 120V plug and count on it taking 13 hours to reach that 80 per cent. AC charging will only be available in North American markets, and while that 2.5 hours is half the time of the previous generation, Europeans will enjoy a 45-minute full charge, thanks to differences in electrical grid design.
Regenerative braking augments there serve, though a traffic monitoring system that uses a sensor to navigate congestion and conserve even more energy will not be brought to our shores because of regulatory bogging.
There is access to 60 kW of power, up from 55 on the previous version. It gives an impressive 0-100 km/h time of 11.55 seconds, but what really matters here is the 0-60 km/h in 4.9 seconds. After all, this is where this car will be required to strut its strengths — in the stop-and-go urban cores of the world.
Which brings us to Canada, and Smart’s applications here. Research has shown Smart that the average European makes two to three trips a day for a total drive distance of 35 km. In the U.S. and Canada, that changes to about four trips a day for a combined 65 km. The Europeans are comfortable with their range distance topping out at 160 km. While other manufacturers are fighting hard to extend that range, Smart seems unfazed by it. It’s not enough to tell me that your research says I’m only going to drive 65 km, so not to worry about it; in Canada, size matters.
We do have some densely populated areas, and that is where Smart finds most of its sales. But while it’s easy to argue that Canadian lifestyles rarely require the behemoths we seem so enamoured of, they do require more space than the two-backpacksand-a-double-double limit that the Smart can hold. And many in a Smart Electric’s best playground — those tight urban cores — have nowhere to park or charge a car.
Canada’s current fleet of electric cars stood at 22,763 in June of this year. Smart Electrics accounted for 1,111 of them. While they may be the cheapest electric on the market, it’s an apples to elbows comparison in many ways. The 2017 competitors in the segment, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV (4 door, $27,998), the Ford Focus ($31,998), the Chevy Bolt EV ($42,795), the Nissan Leaf (2016 was $32,698) and the BMW i3 ($46,900) are pricier than the Smart (no current 2017 pricing yet, but in 2016 it was $26,990). But those competitors are all four-door vehicles with storage capacity. The Smart will keep you out of the rain and deliver an absolutely fun ride, but it has a very specific pattern of use.
The generous subsidies available to new-technology buyers (in Ontario, the rebate on the Smart Electric Drive is currently $8,500) has made all of these cars more attractive to buyers. I asked the head of Smart, Dr. Annette Winkler, what would happen when the subsidies dry up.
“Subsidies should only be a short-term incentive,” she agreed.
She believes production costs will come down, making the vehicles competitive without the artificial support of government rebates. I believe until those prices are within whisper distance of internal combustion engines, all of these manufacturers should pray those incentives keep coming.
Most vehicles let you move up or down a rung on the family-needs ladder; you can usually get a car seat into your existing car when a new baby arrives, or you can still comfortably drive a four-door car even if the kids have moved out.
A Smart car, however, starts out exactly where it can only end up: a dandy little urban runaround. Driving.ca