the smart will not exist in electric form for a long time either. Is it worth to get hold of one of the last models?
(picture: clemens gleich)
- Clemens gleich
I would like to write here an ode to the smallest car, because I like to sing the quiet song of the sufficiently large car. Unfortunately, also the last european designed smart shows the dysfunctionality of the daimler concept "small car, not so small price".
Where to start? best with an apology to the few remaining smart-fans: this car is not bad per se. There will be applications where a smart EQ fortwo is the best vehicle possible. I can’t think of any sitting here in front of the car, but I invite you to send your application spectra by mail or to discuss them in the forum. The problem is not that the car absolutely bad would be. the problem is that the car relatively bad looks, because the competition outside has improved a lot, while the drive of the smart stood still. "Alas", every time I see a new LED, I think to myself "if only you had invested these resources in a fundamental update of the drive".
The drive
Anyone who drove the previous generations of electrically powered smarties knows this drive system. A distance-dependent recuperator was added, which is not much help. If you want to use the electric brake via the accelerator pedal when driving alone without anyone in front, you can only do so by setting it to "eco" for each journey again presses, because the car switches off the mode at every start again. initiating recuperation via brake pedal works very roughly. it feels like the car uses nothing more than the brake light switch to activate brake energy regeneration. no comparison even to the first generation renault zoe. In short: the powertrain is as it was back then, and back then it was already not the most efficient.
Smart EQ fortwo (5 pictures)
The result: astonishingly high fuel consumption for a vehicle of this size. At autumnal 6° C the car hardly gets below 20 kwh / 100 km even internally net in leisurely country road operation. gross the driver has to pay according to my measurements from autumn 18,9 to 25 kwh per 100 km. Losses with charging brick are up to 20 percent depending on temperature. Other manufacturers make it with half the power loss on the brick. For smart drivers, therefore, a wallbox is probably worthwhile, especially with the subsidy starting in november. Around 6° C there is also a steep inefficiency ramp. Driving from 9° C (start) to 4° C (end) at a constant speed of around 100 km/h at around 6° C, consumption jumped from a good 17 kwh to over 20.
This morning I drove just under 20 km at 1° C. I measured 28.2 kwh gross consumption. The dashboard still gave me an "eco-score" for it of 90 percent. Probably not entirely unjustifiably, because I actually drove round and economically, in a way where I ran the zoe (test) at an optimal 17° C to under 11 kwh net. The smart has simply never been efficient, by the way, not even with the burners. Consumption and charging losses rise steeply in cold weather. For the electric, at least in the winter months, this means: you often don’t get 100 km and still drive more expensively than with a four-seater small car. In milder temperatures, the smart runs on around 15 kwh / 100 km internal display, which nevertheless becomes almost 19 kwh at the charging brick.
The cabin
Since most journeys are made alone and lightly packed, the original idea of the smart was to make the cabin small and compact. Good idea. But only daimler understands why a cabin optimized for people without large luggage has hardly any well thought-out storage compartments. Under the radio you can choose whether there is the smartphone or the drink holder. The USB plug is located behind the handbrake lever, where there is no storage possibility. There are a few networks in the doors and footwells. The glove compartment is so small and occupied by a carsharing card reader that practically nothing fits in it. for that there is a nice ring-LED around the drink holder. Who makes such decisions?