Currently reading: Electric Smart to cost £15k
Driven by a 74bhp electric motor and a 17.6kWh battery, the car will hit 37mph in just 4.8 seconds and hit a 77mph top speed

Mercedes’ Smart brand has launched the production version of the long-promised electric variant of its two-seater city car. Order books opened today for both the coupe and cabrio versions of the Smart fortwo electric drive.

Driven by a 74bhp electric motor and a 17.6kWh battery, the car will hit 37mph in just 4.8 seconds and hit a 77mph top speed. Smart claims that the car has a range of 90 miles.

Sales start in Germany this summer. There’s no news on UK sales, but they are expected to begin before the end of the year.

There will be two ways of buying the new car. One sees the buyer renting the battery for 65 Euros per month and the other sees the buyer purchasing the battery outright.

In Germany (with 19 per cent VAT), the Coupe with the ‘sale and care’ pack costs 18,900 euros (£15,152) and 65 euros (£52) per month battery rental. The cabrio costs 22,000 euros (£17,637). Buying the battery outright raises the purchase price to 23,680 euros (£18,984) and 26,770 euros (£21,461).

The introduction of the electric Smart is part of a £160m investment in the Hambach factory in south-west France. £40m has been spent on a new, more environmentally sound, paint shop. Since the factory was opened in 1997, some 1.3 million Smarts have been built.

 

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Orangewheels 13 June 2012

Flametrench

To be entirely stereotypical you'd buy this over the Renault because of 2 words that dont mix when it comes to reliability: "French" and "Electrics"

artill 13 June 2012

Orangewheels wrote: To be

Orangewheels wrote:

To be entirely stereotypical you'd buy this over the Renault because of 2 words that dont mix when it comes to reliability: "French" and "Electrics"

Remind me, where do they make Smarts?

Flametrench 13 June 2012

why buy this…

…over a ZOE? 

Suzuki QT 13 June 2012

Good idea ... BUT ...

Once again, we have an "alternative" to the age-old "internal combustion engined vehicle" that makes absolutely no economic sense in owning ...

The quoted price of £15,152 (plus £52 per month for the battery lease) - which is what us Brits WONT be paying once the "extras", such as converting the vehicle to RHD are factored in - is a joke considering that you can buy a diesel Smart that returns 86 mpg and emits 86g/km CO2 from only £10,300 ...

And let us NOT forget that whilst electric vehicles emit no CO2 from the "tailpipe", the power stations that provide the electricity to recharge the battery DO .. and LOTS OF IT!!!

xxxx 13 June 2012

co2

Suzuki QT wrote:

And let us NOT forget that whilst electric vehicles emit no CO2 from the "tailpipe", the power stations that provide the electricity to recharge the battery DO .. and LOTS OF IT!!!

Depends on where the power was produced, Nuclear and Wind power (being used more and more every year and Denmark will be a 50 % by 2020) produce very little CO2. 

You mentioned the financial benefit of diesel, well today the WHO issued the following:

"Exhaust fumes from diesel engines do cause cancer, a panel of experts working for the World Health Organization says. It concluded that the exhausts were definitely a cause of lung cancer and may also cause tumours in the bladder."

The progress made in plug-in Hybrid/ battery powered cars by pretty much all the car makers has pretty much put the doubters in corner and they're fast disappearing