| 777 | Date: Saturday, 30 Oct 2010, 14.29 | Message # 1 |
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| The Smart fortwo invaded my Brooklyn neighborhood this week. But this wasn’t the usual micro-sized cookie whose U.S. sales have been crumbling after an initial wave of buyers. Instead, this was the Smart fortwo electric drive, which the Mercedes-built Smart – distributed in the U.S. by industrialist and racing legend Roger Penske – will begin leasing this October.
As with MINI, which has a small test fleet of its MINI E electric cars on American roads, Smart is rounding up drivers for a fleet of 250 cars that it will lease over four years at $499 a month. That price doesn’t include a high-powered, 220-volt home charger that can juice up the Smart in about 3.5 hours. And as with any EV, Smart sees its little 2-seat squirt as an environmental champion that burns no gasoline, emits no tailpipe pollutants and can help reduce dependency on imported oil.
I took a spin in the Smart electric drive and actually enjoyed it more than the gasoline model, which has been handicapped by disappointing fuel economy and a seriously clunky transmission that makes for a lurching ride around town. (Smart did say that the transmission has recently been modified for a smoother all-around experience.)
Already an urban-centric vehicle, the Smart seems to make more sense as an electric commuter car, and it’s clearly a money-saver: At roughly 10 cents per kilowatt, a good workable average for the cost of electricity, the electric Smart costs about $2 in electricity to cover 100 miles; a car that gets 25 mpg would cost $12 to cover those 100 miles, with gas at $3 a gallon.
With a 16.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery designed by Tesla, maker of the Tesla Roadster, and a peak 30-kilowatt electric motor, the Smart offers a conservatively estimated 83-mile driving range, enough for four to five hours of city driving in average conditions. (Smart’s Mercedes parent holds a 10-percent stake in Tesla.)
Smart says the EV model will hum from zero to 60 kph – or 37 mph – in 6.5 seconds. In my drive, the Smart felt a bit tortoise-paced compared with electrics like the MINI E and especially the Tesla Roadster, but it also has a much smaller and lighter battery pack and motor than many EVs, to the point that the Smart gains only about 300 pounds in its electric transformation. Yet in big-city Brooklyn driving, the Smart also had no trouble keeping pace with traffic – half the time you’re just coasting up to the next light or in a line of slow-moving cars, anyway. That battery fits snugly into the space occupied by the gas tank in the standard version, where fortunately it doesn’t steal any passenger or cargo space from the Smart’s 2-passenger cabin.
And its regenerative brakes, which capture wasted heat energy and return it to the battery, felt much more natural than those in the MINI E. When you step off the throttle, the regen effect feels linear and natural, where the MINI E wants to drag itself to a halt. And naturally, our convoy of frog-green Smarts drew tons of admiration and questions from the green-minded folks who congregate in urban areas.
Smart also showed off a new iPhone application that will let owners remotely monitor charging while also controlling media with hands-free commands, including connections to tens of thousands of Internet radio stations.
Count the Smart as the latest bid to test the viability of EVs, an effort that will accelerate later this year when the Nissan Leaf EV and Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid go on sale, with a Ford Focus-based EV coming late next year.
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