Electric Smart - Any feedback

[melcragg]

I quite fancy getting an electric smart [If there are any left]. Anyone here had any experience of them? What is the 'real' range? They state up to 90 miles. Any info qould be appreciated. Thanks

[ColSmart]

There were never that many Electric Fortwos sold in the UK, considering the excessive extra price for one, ie, you oould buy a petrol Fortwo and still have £5000 left over for fuel

258 sold approx according to this website link below, most likely a lot of them are company cars for Public relations value, "oh, look our company goes green, etc"...

https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=...lectric+fortwo

Anyway, to help you with some owner experience on what it is like to live with an electric Fortwo, where the main priority is ensuring you have enough electric storage in the batteries to get home, you will find a dedicated forum on this Canadian/American website below, where you can read some horrendous stories of load shedding of lighting put off at night, wipers put off in the rain, avoiding routes with steep hills, etc all to save on electrical power to crawl home.

My own opinion is that the electric car has no real future for the typical private owner, till the range is that of a petrol or diesel car.

http://clubsmartcar.com/index.php?showforum=173

[mccsmart2002]

I've driven the 1st generation 450, as well as the 2nd generation 451, and well as the current 3rd generation 451.

The first 2 were very short drives at Mercedes-Benz World so not really a real world test. The latest one was driven on real roads at smartimes in Belgium and I was impressed with the power and torque delivery.

It was smooth and very responsive with instant power delivery, just like my Nissan Leaf.

[markinnz]

I don't understand why most companies are producing electric cars with such pathetic range! Nearly all of them can only scrape up 80miles.

But then you have Tesla ... which I want! So if you have the money to buy me one and need someone bumped off let me know! ;-)

[mccsmart2002]

In a nutshell, a large capacity battery pack with a high amount of kWh of energy storage cost £££s. Tesla, for example, have long range BEVs (Roadster, Model S, Model X), but they cost far more than mainstream BEVs, (Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-Miev, VW e-Up, e-Golf, smart fortwo electric drive, BMW i3, Renault Zoe, etc.)

Without going in to too much detail, a traditional internal combustion engine using fossil fuels contains far more energy density than the equivalent BEVs. However, internal combustion engines are, at best, around 20-30% efficient, where as BEVs are around 80-90% efficient. Also take in to account that to produce 1 gallon of fuel uses approximately 4.5kW of electricity, which is why oil refineries need their own sub-stations.

It won't be too long before BEVs with realistic real world ranges are available to match internal combustion engines and are common place in terms on both numbers and price.

I hardly ever need to do a 200-300 mile journey in one go, so range isn't really an issue for me. Any longer than normal journeys are made possible thanks to Ecotricity's rapid charger network on their electric highway. When this isn't practical, Nissan for example offer 14 days per year free use of a 'normal' car.

[gdavison]

We tried to buy one .. as others said the first UK allocation all went to companies and fleets and very very few where sold to private buyers ... getting info from a dealer is impossible as they simple dont get told by Mercedes whats going on re the EV version. As such we went to Mercedes at Brooklands and spent a long time talking to then in summer 2014, they tell us there are a few 451's available in the system, however they are all spec'd and are a "buy this one or nothing" deal.

The new Renault'esq Smart will get an EV version, however not for some time. We are perfect buyers for a EV smart as my wifes commute is about 1.2 miles to work and a few Super market trips a week. I also just ordered a Tesla "D" as a replacement for my RS6 (which at best will arrive July 2015)

[gdavison]

We tried to buy one .. as others said the first UK allocation all went to companies and fleets and very very few where sold to private buyers ... getting info from a dealer is impossible as they simple dont get told by Mercedes whats going on re the EV version. As such we went to Mercedes at Brooklands and spent a long time talking to then in summer 2014, they tell us there are a few 451's available in the system, however they are all spec'd and are a "buy this one or nothing" deal.

The new Renault'esq Smart will get an EV version, however not for some time. We are perfect buyers for a EV smart as my wifes commute is about 1.2 miles to work and a few Super market trips a week. I also just ordered a Tesla "D" as a replacement for my RS6 (which at best will arrive July 2015)