Smart's All-Electric Drive

The story of the new Smart Electric Drive ForTwo began as a classic knee jerk response tale that ranked with the best of them. When gas prices are high, a car that throws out practically everything except its ability to get where it's going for cheap seems like a great idea. The gas powered Smart ForTwo was first released when gas was worth its weight in gold at a whopping $5.00 per gallon in some areas. Are smart cars electric?

The answer is yes!

Similar to what's happening now! The Smart ForTwo, powered by a tiny gas engine was hailed as the next king of the automobile kingdom and sales went through the roof. Fortunately, for most Americans, gas prices soon dropped like the stock market, and sales of the Smart Fortwo were soon at the bottom of the heap.

But you can't keep a good electric clever car down for long. Damiler and smart, GmbH leap back into the race in 2012 with a brand new electric vehicle option – the 2012 Smart Electric Drive. They've got a long road ahead of them and will need to think way out of the box to get the job done!

Buy for such a new adventure it looks as if this tiny all-electric car may have what it takes to improve the future of transportation for our country – and maybe for the rest of the planet too.

Smart Electric Drive Looks

Maxims about books and judging them by their covers come to mind because the outside of the new Smart Electric Drive looks almost identical to its predecessors.

There are a few new shades of green and, of course, the new Electric Drive logo, which reads like something out of a Looney Tunes feature and is displayed boldly on the side of every vehicle. Green color combinations are the only choices you will get for this vehicle, which some might find oddly appropriate, and which is actually intended to make a conservationist statement about what's new in the interior of this "book." Those Smart looks suddenly seem more tolerable now that the engine is completely electric.

Similarly, the cabin looks much the same as that of previous Smart cars. The instrument panel is splashed with the same metallic green that you have grown to know and love. As usual, there is plenty of space inside, even for larger folk, and all the controls are user friendly, pleasant to look at, and well within reach.

There are two new instruments to help you keep tabs on the car's new electric system. The Smart ForTwo ED makes use of a regenerative braking system to help restore as much as ten kilowatts of power at a time to the battery as you drive. The two new pods let you know if your battery is currently either charging or discharging and how much. Also new is an extensive integration kit for mobile Apple technology that iPod, iPhone, and iPad lovers will appreciate.

But if you've been judging this book by its similar looking cover, you will be pleasantly surprised when you take a look inside the engine compartment.

The Smart EV lives up to its name. The former automatic manual transmission, three cylinder, 1.0 liter, mega-power-saving gasoline engine just wasn't good enough for the Smart folks anymore. It has been replaced with a genuine completely electric motor that delivers a twenty kilowatt output and has the capability to boost to as much as thirty kilowatts. The horsepower on this "lightning bolt" comes to a grand total of 40 when boosted – just under 60 percent of what the previous gasoline engine used to give. The torque on this car comes all the way up to 88 pounds per foot – almost 20 pounds more than the original ForTwo.

The new motor is connected to a fixed gear with a top speed of barely over 60 miles per hour. Even if the top speed is a little low, this car can still go from zero to 40 in only seven seconds. The battery is an on board 16.5 kilowatt-hour pack made from lithium-ion. This battery pack was developed by Tesla Motors, a company that Smart's parent company has a ten percent share in, and is known as Level II technology in the Smart world.

Level II Technology

This Level II technology is currently the latest in the world of electric vehicles. Level III will not come out until Smart's parent company, Daimler, finishes the electric motor and proprietary battery pack combo that they are developing for their 2013 Smart ForTwo ED models, which will finally wean the car once and for all off technology borrowed from Tesla Motors.

For the time being, however, Level II packs a powerful punch. You may charge your Smart EV in a standard 220 volt outlet, which, although not common, is easily made from combining two 110 volt outlets. This charge takes a total of about three and a half hours as long as the level of charge in the battery has not fallen to below 20 percent. If you've completely exhausted your battery, this extra jumpstarting may raise the charge time to as much as eight hours or more.

If a 220 volt outlet is not available to you, a regular 110 volt outlet will do fine for charging your Smart car. Unfortunately, you will have to leave it plugged in for up to 14 hours in order to get a full charge. Fully charged, the car has a range of just over 80 miles or four to five hours of driving time. These figures, of course, vary according to road conditions and driving speed.

Compared to previous Smart cars, this one is definitely not the runt of the litter. With a curb weight of a gigantic 2,100 pounds, any responsible Smart ED review would have to mention that this vehicle has ballooned, to put it mildly. Of course, this is normal for an electric car. Electric motors and their battery packs simply tend to weigh a lot more than their gasoline powered siblings – three hundred pounds more in this case. On the other hand, any responsible Smart ED review would also have to mention that all this extra weight does little to negatively impact the drivability of the ForTwo Electric Drive.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, the bit of extra weight may have actually done this car good. Unlike its older brothers, it feels firmly planted on the road and doesn't bounce around like a cardboard box. The steering is confident, even if it is still lighter than other cars, and the regenerative braking system finds a fine balance between being too gentle and being too clutching.

Smart Marketing - Not

Smart is marketing this new ForTwo not as a replacement for the family car but as an extra vehicle for those little trips into town or around the block. Even though it can't necessarily replace your car right off the bat, especially for long trips or cross country journeys, it sure does its job of commuting short distances with splendor.

The original ForTwo definitely wasn't tops in our book. The noisy engine combined with the complex and unsatisfying automated manual transmission system made for a jerky drive in what sounded not unlike some kind of World War Two bi-plane. But now, with the three cylinder engine gone and a fixed gear system in place, suddenly you can hear a pin drop as you drive. You find yourself enjoying the drive in this tiny vehicle as it quietly, smoothly, and cheaply scoots down the road.

Because of the comparatively enormous amount of torque the new Smart sports, you won't be left behind in the high-acceleration environment of city traffic. Unless you're out on the highway, it's difficult to get the car going over 45 miles per hour but this is usually not a problem in city driving. Both the power and speed keep up with the majority of other cars on the road when driving in the city and, even though it might be a slow poke out on the freeway, it holds its own in most other driving situations.

The Pricey Smart Cost

The cost, however, may be a deal breaker. Beginning in the summer of this year, Smart has plans to rent out 250 models in the US alone. This is part of an international launch of 1,500 models, and, yes, you heard it right: rent. Four-fifths of these units will most likely go to business and government use and the rest will be offered to the first lucky customers in line. The price will be the same for government, business, or private consumers – a grand total of $28,800 for 48 months of rent, which comes to about six hundred dollars per month. Added to this is a down payment of $2,500 and a mileage cap of 10,000 total miles per year.

Even though this initial offer seems to us to be one of the lamest around, it won't last forever. Direct sales of the new Smart electric vehicle will begin in 2012 and it has been announced that the sales price will be greatly superior to the current leasing offer.

Having been reared in a gasoline-powered universe, we expected to hate and loathe a car that just might represent a killing blow to everything gasoline. However, when we found ourselves in the driver's seat of this amazing little Smart car, we found that it didn't feel much different than what we were used to driving around on a daily basis. And even though the low grumble of a gasoline engine gave way to the high pitched whine of an electric drivetrain, it was one that performed beautifully and quietly, responding well to our every command.

Although we aren't totally convinced about the benefits of replacing burning oil with burning voltage, the new Smart car feels like the next branch in the evolutionary tree of the motor vehicle. Keep your eyes peeled – this new model may only be the first in a revolution of electric transportation.