PARIS MOTOR SHOW: Smart goes electric

Smart is about to become the first car-maker to offer both electric- and petrol-powered versions of every car in its range.

Daimler’s city-car brand will start selling battery-electric versions of its full range from later this year in the US and from early next year elsewhere in the world.

In a move that won’t be enough make the unwanted smart family wanted again in Australia, where the micro-car brand was axed in March 2015, there will be battery-electric versions of the two-seat coupe and roadster, and the four-seat, four-door forfour.

The fourth-generation electric smart will launch in America first because, as smart admits, 25 per cent of smarts sold there in the last year have been the current electric version.

With near-identical powertrain layouts between all three of its models, smart has swapped out its tiny three-cylinder petrol engines and replaced them with a lithium-ion battery pack and a 60kW electric motor.

Smart is claiming an NEDC-rated driving range of 160km from the fortwo and 155km for the fortwo cabrio and the forfour, all of which deliver standard and eco driving modes, and smart claims they can be recharged in two-and-a-half hours on US and UK power systems.

“The smart is the perfect city car and with electric drive it becomes a little bit more perfect,” colourful smart head Annette Winkler said.

“This is why we will soon be offering our entire range as all-electric versions. And at very attractive prices, especially in countries where there is a buyer’s premium (for zero-emission cars),” she said.

The basic smart fortwo electric drive will sell for €21,940 ($A32,270) in Germany, though that drops to less than €18,000 ($A26,475) after the country’s new green rebate is taken off. Smart owns 40 per cent of Germany’s admittedly tiny electric-car market.

Besides morphing smart into its fourth generation, the move means smart becomes the only car-maker in the world offering an electric convertible, though the sliding cloth roof section of the fortwo isn’t exactly an MX-5 or Boxster in looks or purpose.

Fitting the 17.6kW/h battery and 160Nm electric motor doesn’t affect the fortwo’s 6.95-metre turning circle, either, and though it does add weight, smart hasn’t quoted a weight figure for the cars yet.

Ditching the gearbox and all its cogs offsets some of the smart’s weight gains from the battery. Instead, the cars get a single direct drive system, built in Cleon, in northern France, by Renault, and it engages reverse via the simple expedient of running the electric motor in reverse.

Unlike more expensive battery-electric cars, the smart doesn’t use a continuously excited synchronous electric motor, but rather a separately excited three-phase synchronous motor.

Smart has admitted the fortwo electric drive will get to 100km/h in 11.5 seconds, the fortwo cabrio 0.3 seconds later and the heavier forfour takes 12.7 seconds, though sprinting to 100km/h is a long way from the point of the smart brand. A sprint to 60km/h is often not even necessary in heavy urban traffic, and it has all of its 160Nm of torque available immediately to get away from stop signs or traffic lights.

Smart has limited all three cars to 130km/h to maximise their ranges, but it has other tricks up its sleeve, too. All of them use radar systems to pre-emptively use the electric motor instead of light braking, enabling them to recuperate energy into the battery pack.

They all share an Eco mode, which lowers the top speed even further, softens off the throttle response and sets the electric motor to its most aggressive energy recuperation mode whenever the driver lifts off the accelerator pedal or pushes the brake pedal

Inside, the cars all receive the same additional dash display to show drivers how much battery charge they have and how much power they’re using.

It also comes with options like a heated steering wheel for cold climates (Norway and The Netherlands are big consumers of electric cars), while the electric smarts can even be fitted with Brabus individualisation packs.

There’s also an upgrade of the existing smartphone app, which lets people tell the car to cool or heat the car on mains power before setting off to preserve the battery’s on-road range.

The cars also have a more powerful on-board charger than before, which smart claims charges the car 40 per cent faster when it’s connected to household power sockets. Next year will also see the start of smart rolling out its new 22kW fast-charging system, which it claims will charge the car from flat to full in 45 minutes on three-phase power.

Smart is not a newcomer to electric cars. Its first 100-strong fleet of electric fortwos roamed London from 2007 as a data-gathering exercise, which spread to more than 2000 versions in 2009, spread across 18 countries.

The 1400 electric fortwos it supplied to Daimler’s car2go car-sharing operation have covered more than 35 million kilometres since then and in 2013 it became the first all-electric car to be imported into China.

While all the electric smarts will use similar sized lithium-ion batteries from Daimler’s subsidiary supplier, Deutsche Accumotive, the two-door versions will be built in smart’s German plant at Hambach, while the forfour electric drive actually comes from Nova Mesto in Slovenia.