TECHNOLOGY
Going electric a smart move — but SA will wait
The Smart always looked as though it should be electric and now it will be, but not in SA as yet, writes Michael Taylor
While the rest of the product planning departments at the world’s car makers scramble to find ways to extract the higher build costs of battery-electric for their small cars, Daimler is already there. Two decades of losing money on the expensive Smart city car brand look like they might finally pay off. Development path Like the Mercedes A and B-classes, all Smarts were conceived with electric power in mind and the new one, which made its debut at the Paris Motor Show in 2016, will be the fourth generation of zero-emission Smart Fortwo. Smart is the only car brand in the world to offer electric versions of every model it makes. Sharing much technology with Renault’s Twingo has not hurt the electric Smart’s development path, not least because it gave the brand access to a five-door hatch. At the core of the three-model range (Fortwo, Fortwo cabrio and Forfour) is a three-phase synchronous motor, delivering 60kW power and 160Nm torque. Another tweak for keeping the BEV Smarts moving i...
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