Smart Ed Review

Typical price:

£

We like:

The speed; the relatively long range by electric standards; the safety cage and airbags; zero emissions if run off a green electricity tariff

We don't like:

The fact you still can't buy one; the lack of boot space; the way the charging connector's not on the car's street side; parent company Daimler's lame CO2 record

SmartPlanet judgement:

This is one small step for 'smart', but one hell of a giant leap for electric cars in the UK. What makes the 'ed' so special is that, unlike its rivals the G-Wiz and Mega City, there are no compromises on performance or quality. Its speed matches and beats many petrol cars this size, plus the interior and fittings are of the same great quality in the standard, non-electric smart fortwo. Sure, the boot's tiny, but the only real black cloud here is the parent company's track record on cutting CO2 emissions across its range.

Score:

Contact:

Nice Car Company at http://www.smart.com/uk
Telephone: +44 (0)808 000 8080

Let's cut to the chase -- this is one of the most exciting green cars of 2008. Superficially, it's identical to the standard 'smart fortwo coupe' which is already on sale, but the revolutionary stuff happens under the boot. The 'ed', see, has ditched the fortwo's petrol-powered engine for a clean, green electric battery and drive-train that's neatly tucked under the boot space.

The result is a city runabout with performance that leaves the UK's other two electric cars for dust. Where the similar-sized NICE Mega City and Goingreen's G-Wiz splutter out at less than 50 miles on range, the ed keeps going for 72 miles before needing a recharge. That's good, but obviously means this is no intercity car. In an electric Wacky Racers-style contest, however, the Mega City would slip behind with its max speed of 40mph, leaving the G-Wiz to come in second on a miserly 50mph with the 'ed' roaring off into the distance at 60mph. During our test, we got to 50mph -- and would've hit 60mph if we hadn't run the battery down so much we couldn't make it to the motorway.

And what of that battery? Made in Switzerland -- good ethics points there -- it's a sodium-nickel chloride job which charges to full in eight hours. That's two hours more than the G-Wiz and Mega City but then you are getting extra range and realistically you'll mostly be charging the car overnight.

If you like the fortwo's interior and exterior, you'll like this car. We love the design, which feels at just the right pitch between hip yet functional -- one example being the dashboard's useful but cute frog-like 'eyes' displaying a clock and the remaining battery life. The fittings inside are of a high standard generally and -- a key one-up over the G-Wiz -- you get really good headspace. We had a roomy 10cm above our 5 foot 9 inch height.

It seems odd to mention the inclusion of electric windows and a normal-sized steering wheel, but they're worth noting as the G-Wiz lacks them and has manual sliding windows and a tiny computer game-style wheel. The only bad bit about the interior is the tiny G-Wiz-sized boot space, which at four-feet wide and one foot deep is good for just one modest-sized suitcase -- unlike the roomy Mega City, which has a boot big enough for some serious shopping.

This car's a lot of fun to drive. For starters, it's an automatic, and you simply use the gear stick next to the handbrake to flick painlessly between drive, neutral and reverse. Moving off, the official 0-30mph acceleration of 6.5 seconds won't have Tesla Motors' execs trembling, but it does feel fast behind the wheel -- quick enough to jump out of junctions and not too disimilar to one of our regular drives, a modern VW Golf.

The south London hill that left the Mega City struggling to get beyond 20mph (Denmark Hill) proved no match for the smart ed, which whizzed up at 30mph. If it wasn't for the milk float electric whine, we could deceive ourselves we were driving a petrol car. As you'd expect, just like the G-Wiz and Mega City, the ed is virtually silent compared to a noisy, bog standard combustion engine car.

There are only two real downers for the driving experience. One is visibility in the rear mirror, where the seats' head-rests obscure about a quarter of the view -- the result is not very bad by any means, but you should be aware of it. Second up is the positioning of the electric charging connector, which is on the car's right-hand-side rather than the left. That's a pain when you're plugging into free street-side charging stations like the ones in Westminster.

Eco credentials are impeccable, provided you charge the car using a green electricity tariff. Theoretically, it then uses zero carbon to run on a daily basis; in practice, a lot of the electricity will still be coming from dirty coal power stations until government sorts out the capacity of renewables in the UK. We also like the smart brand's informative environment-focussed pages online and detailed sustainability pages on parent company Daimler's site. Smart makes its cars in Böblingen, Germany, and it meets the respected ISO 14001 series of standards for environmental management, as well as making small detail efforts such as making the wheel housing covers from recycled materials.

We have some misgivings over parent company Daimler's ethics, though. For one, it comes in at the bottom of the Euro league table for CO2 emissions, with its cars clocking average emissions of 188g of CO2 per km in 2006. To put that into context, Toyota came top with 153g and the EU has said new cars must emit 120g or under by 2012. The company was also winner of the Worst EU Lobbying and Greenwash Awards 2007 for lobbying against those 2012 EU CO2 car cuts.

Then there's the military connection -- Daimler's Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks Division supplies trucks and vans for military purposes. While we don't mark too harshly against that, it may be a deciding ethical issue for you.

Before you reach for your phone to book a test drive, we've got some bad news to deliver -- the ed's still not on sale to the general public. Since December 2006, the car's only been available to executives, two lucky councils and a few jammy company fleets. As such we've given it a 7.0 for value on the grounds that, although we don't know the sale price, it would be cheap to run -- smart estimates it as being the financial equivalent of a 300mpg petrol car. Read our G-Wiz review to see the other bunch of cash savings that electric cars enjoy.

The availability's a real shame, as this car has the kudos, eco creds and performance to persuade some serious swathes of people that electric cars are a serious proposition. Please please email smart and tell it to get this green machine on sale tomorrow.

Score breakdown:

 

Read more reviews of green and ethical products at www.smartplanet.com