SMART Fortwo Electric Drive Review

Don’t be scared, this is just like your regular fortwo, but here, behind the seats, instead of an internal combustion engine, it uses a refined electric motor. I need your undivided attention, as this vehicle is still in the testing phase - every reaction matters! First of all, this car makes sense. It was conceived as an urban escort in the first, so nobody will use it to travel cross-country and then complain about the poor driving range.

Not much distinguishes it from the combustion-engined relative from the visual point of view. There are a few stickers here and there, as well as some green bits and that’s it. The song remains the same (sorry, for many years I’ve been powering electric guitars- hence the pun) in the interior, where the two cute gauges on top of the dashboard, which used to play with revs and seconds, now show the battery’s charge status and the amount of energy being used or recovered.

However, the big change has taken place in what used to be the engine compartment – the area situated bellow the luggage space. Here, we find the entire electric side of this moon: an electric motor which sends the power to the rear wheels via a single-speed transmission, as well as a battery pack coming from Tesla.

Wait, wait, don’t get too excited – this is no sports car. The little electric mill offers a continuous power of 27, which can be boosted to 40 hp for limited amounts of time and a torque of 88.5 lb-ft.

Since I love numbers, I’ll mention that the 16.5 KWh battery should offer a driving range of 84 miles (135 km), which should be more than enough for what you people call daily travel –ha, ha! It’s so funny that you get stuck in traffic, why don’t you just jump inside a wire like I do? Anyway, speaking of jumping, I shall convert myself to static electricity right now, in order to get on the collar of the autoevolution test driver who is sitting behind the wheel, so you can read about how the car feels.