FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW: smart fourjoy

Under-loved city-car brand smart will preview its new four-seat future at next week’s Frankfurt motor show with the ‘fourjoy’ concept car.

The all-electric concept previews the next generation of smart city-cars and the Daimler small-car brand will show the concept car without doors or a roof to give a better view of its improved interior space and practicality.

The fourjoy shows the German car-maker has turned the smart fortwo into a grown-up car in every dimension, stepping away from the original smart brief by making it almost a metre longer and almost half a metre wider.

No longer will the clever park their smarts nose-in to the kerb, with the four-door smart’s chassis architecture shared with Nissan-Renault for electric, petrol and diesel work.

While smart has plans for a two-door, two-seater to replace the fortwo by 2015, it will also deliver a four-seater, with similar dimensions to the fourjoy concept, will use different core architecture but with family styling cues, including the Tridion ‘safety cell’.

It will be smart’s first four-seater since the ill-fated forfour, which ran from 2004 to 2006 and shared most of its components with Mitsubishi’s Colt, but not its higher pricetag.

The fourjoy follows a similar parts-sharing path, which has largely determined its 3494mm overall length. By comparison, the existing fortwo is only 2695mm long, while the long-dead forfour was 3752mm long.

Its show car width of 1978mm is a huge stretch outwards from the fortwo and is actually 111mm wider than the length of the existing car’s wheelbase. While the current smart is just 1559mm wide, the fourjoy show car is an enormous 419mm wider, which is almost wide enough for an extra passenger. Even so, it will turn a circle in just 9.1 metres.

“With the smart fourjoy we show the unique design and urban driving fun of the smart fortwo wonderfully in an extremely compact four-seater,” Dr Annette Winkler, Head of smart, insisted.

“The outer proportions of the fourjoy reveal much of what is available for the appearance of our four-seater series smart, which comes to market at the end of 2014 and it will also enable families to be together in a smart way. "

Sources insist that instead of drawing on Nissan’s extensive electric research from its LEAF development, Daimler has chosen to go its own way with smart’s zero-emission program.

Promising a full-electric version of the third-generation smart, Daimler sources insist the production version of the fourjoy will have far more power and performance than any previous electric smart.

The electric version, which will line up alongside turbo petrol and diesel engines in the range, will be the third electric generation of the smart range.

The fourjoy concept is powered by a 55kW electric motor and there is a 17.6kW/h lithium-ion battery pack beneath the floor to lower its centre of gravity and protect the batteries in a crash. While you could theoretically drain that battery in less than 20 minutes of full-throttle driving, Daimler says it delivers “agile and lively” performance.

Smart has trodden the electric path before, its first flirtation with zero local emissions being a 100-car pilot program in London in 2007. Its second generation of electric smarts was far broader, with 2000 cars being filtered (mostly via leasing) into 18 markets around the world.

Built in Hambach, France, with a 14kW/h battery pack from Tesla, the second-gen electric smarts found homes in places as far afield as Amsterdam and San Diego and were heavily publicised via Daimler’s own Car2Go car-sharing service in Europe and the United States.

While the new, larger battery unit in the fourjoy concept would take an estimated seven hours to charge on a standard European power socket, Dr Winkler says the car can be recharged in around an hour via its on-board 22kW charger and a wallbox unit or a fast-charging public station.

But the electrification doesn’t stop at the car, because smart has also fitted its concept car with a trick for the last part of the journey, providing storage for two electric longboard skateboards. A sap to the social media crowd, two helmets fit in the rear of the fourjoy, while two skateboards (complete with high-definition cameras ready for file sharing) fit on the roof.

“The smart fourjoy is the perfect icon for our smart design philosophy that may be transferred to a new era. For the first time, we are showing the sporty four-seat layout of the new smart family,” says Gorden Wagener, Head of Design at Daimler AG.

“The typical smart silhouette, clean lines and shapes, and also the development of the smart face make this study a modern design icon.

“Inside, the vehicle floor is perforated and has alternating smooth surfaces. Since the floor is kept dark, the seats seem to float. The seat and the instrument panel are carried by a central, continuous structure which includes touch-sensitive control functions,” Mr Wagener explained.

Two smartphones are mounted on the dashboard and the rear centre console to allow connectivity and customised entertainment for all four passengers.

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