£15,300+£52 pack-rent r:90 mi ts:78mph 0-62mph:11.5s 'if you were daft enough to drive the thing on a motorway'
http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/motoring/car-reviews/the-richard-hammond-test-drive-cute-1567203 [image] The Richard Hammond test drive: Cute Smart ForTwo EV brings shock and aww By Richard Hammond 4 Feb 2013 [image http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1566670.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/The+smart+fortwo+electric+drive.jpg Sparky: ForTwo EV ] After five years of testing, Smart's electric version of the ForTwo is going on general sale Smart has built around 2,000 electric versions of its iconic ForTwo city car and not one has been sold to the public. All of them have been running (silently) around in real-world environments being operated by various groups and organisations so that Smart can assess its performance. But now it’s our turn, because Smart is putting its ForTwo EV on general sale. We drove it a few years ago and while it was nippy and quiet, its range was pretty limited. This latest version is, on paper, a big improvement. The first one crept from 0-62mph in 26.7sec, but the latest car does it in 11.5sec. So, how come? Well, the new car uses a new electric motor that produces 74bhp instead of the first car’s 40bhp. Top speed has also been raised from 62mph to 78mph so you could, if you were daft enough, drive the thing on a motorway. You know my views on electric cars by now, but while I think they’re a white elephant, I do quite like the way they drive, and the ForTwo could almost have been born for electric power. Instead of the jerky semi-automatic gearbox, the EV version has only one gear, just slip the lever from Park into Drive. The result is smooth and quiet acceleration. It’s all very relaxing, until you hit a bump, as the extreme shortness means it doesn’t ride well. Smart claims a maximum range of 90 miles. I’d be very surprised if it could manage that, but it probably doesn’t matter because I’d guess the average daily drive for a Smart is nowhere near 90 miles. Recharging takes seven hours from a domestic socket. Smart is talking about a price of around £15,300, not including the Government’s electric car grant. Unfortunately, you have to rent the batteries, which Smart says will cost about £52 a month. After five years of testing, the Smart EV should be well sorted. And for an electric car, it’s quite appealing. [© mirror.co.uk ] For all EVLN posts use: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=search_page&node=413529&query=evln&sort=date Here are today's archive-only EV posts: EVLN: Denver’s ‘brown pollution cloud’ foci VTIF to promote EV use EVLN: Leaf EV taxi clocks up 55,000km, saving €6,500 in 18 Months EVLN: EV charging down to minutes like a cell phone EVLN: Tesla's Elon Musk and New York Times in a spat over test + EVLN: Nissan Sold 43,829 EVs in 2012 {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-BBC-TG-Richard-Hammond-Smart-ForTwo-EV-brings-Shock-Awe-tp4661237.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
