> I really like the car ... That's pretty clear from what you've posted up to now. And I think it's always important to drive what you like.
Choosing your vehicle is kind of like choosing your mate. The person you settle down with is NEVER perfect, can be expensive to maintain, and for sure there's no service manual! But you tie the knot (at some level) anyway, for good reasons. You work at keeping the relationship going because it's worth the effort. (The difference is that if you stop liking your car, you can split with it without legal fees, alimony, or child support.) I say, if you want a Smart ED, for goodness sake get one. Enjoy driving it. Figure out what to do about the service and battery replacement problems if and when a problem comes up. Who knows, maybe it will run for 10-12 years and never so much as sneeze. Or maybe by the time you need to work on it, there'll be an internet forum with lots of folks "crowdsourcing" a reverse-engineering of the car. And if not, you can always do what one EVDL member did with his US Electricar conversion pickup back in the late 1990s. At the time no one had yet REed the Dolphin AC drive in those trucks. His quit working, so he ripped it out and re-converted the truck with plain old DC parts. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
