'' I think I would press my 2006 Smart Fortwo diesel into service as my daily driver. It gets 70 mpg all day long, is nearly bulletproof reliable, and it would hit the spot of being weird and different. I used to daily nothing but Smarts for eight years, so I know it can be done. ''

Hopefully the guy is okay! This appears to be the norm in the UK right now, not a country I ever plan on visiting based on what I'm seeing but then that goes for most of Europe right now...

https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1822656376964886920

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/smart-roadster-comeback-cards-brand-expands-line

2 mins read

Smart is considering an electric revival of the Roadster sports car, which it made from 2002 to 2005, once it has launched a range of more mainstream electric cars.

The brand now sells the #1 and #3 SUVs in Europe and will bring the larger #5 SUVto the market next year while it works to enhance the viability of an electric city car to replace the Fortwo - for which, the firm says, it would need to share a platform with another manufacturer. 

With that core line-up in place, the brand could start to shift focus to more enthusiast-minded, low-volume propositions and Smart Europe CEO Dirk Adelmann has told Autocar a resurrection of the diminutive Roadster sports car is one possibility.

Adelmann said that when he and his colleagues were planning the new Smart line-up in around 2020, when China's Geely acquired a 50% stake in the brand from parent company Mercedes-Benz, “there was one very wild colleague who had the first drawings of a new Roadster” – and the prospect of bringing it to reality hasn’t been written off.

“We have three great cars and none of them is a Roadster, but why not?” he said, when asked about the prospect of a comeback. 

Adelmann had a Roadster as his first company car so has a “very emotional relationship with that vehicle” and pledged that any EV successor would be true to the original’s spirit. “If we do a Roadster, rest assured it will be very compact – for sure a two-seater,” he said.

The brand's current line-up is SUV-focused, but launching an EV sports car with a comparable footprint to the original Roadster – which was just 3.4m long and 1.2m tall – would go some way to taking Smart back to its roots as a purveyor of characterful and ultra-compact cars for urban environments.

It would contrast markedly with the new #5 flagship, for example, which at 4.7m long and 1.7m tall is almost as big as a Land Rover Defender 110. 

But Adelmann told Autocar the brand's positioning is less related to the size of its cars and more about their unique design and positioning. "Smart is always unconventional, and I think this is what we again have shown with the #5. Nobody expected that from us. Nobody expected the #1 from us, which is also for Smart a rather big SUV. Nobody expected a coupé [the #3] from us...

"But also if you look 20 years back, nobody expected the Crossblade," he added, referring to the outlandish speedster version of the Fortwo that Smart launched in 2002. "How could we dare to bring such a concept to the road? 

"Smart is much more than the Fortwo," he said, hinting at the potential for a drastic expansion of the brand's line-up, which historically was largely centred around its core model. 
 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/smart-2-due-electric-fortwo-replacement-shared-platform

2 mins read

Smart could give the green light to an electric Fortwo successor in a matter of months, its European boss has revealed, but it must be proved profitable before getting approval.

The Fortwo – the firm's first model and one of the smallest cars sold in Europe – retired recently after 26 years of production, with no immediate successor lined-up, but Smart Europe CEO Dirk Adelmann has confirmed that plans are afoot for an electric replacement.

"We are working on that one," he told Autocar. "The run-out of the current Fortwo was two months ago, now. It would have been great to have a direct successor - we don't, but we're working on it."

He acknowledged the strong business case for a new-era compact city car – "not only in Europe but particularly for Europe, so it would make sense to bring it to sale".

Proposals already exist for the city car, dubbed 'Project 2' internally and expected to take the #2 name into production. Addressing the potential confusion that could arise from it being much smaller than the #1 crossover, Adelmann explained that the number 2 has been reserved "on purpose" as it is an "iconic number" for the brand and should be used for a Fortwo successor.

As the Smart line-up expands, he said, a pattern will emerge whereby odd numbers are used for SUV and SUV-coupés and even numbers are for "other products".

But more important than defining the EV's shape and styling is ensuring that it can be sold profitably, and for that Smart is looking to identify a partner firm with whom it can share development and production costs.

"The [city car] segment is not huge in Europe; the best year for Fortwo was around 100,000 units, and that's not enough to justify a platform," Adelmann said.

"If you share this platform with partners – we're still in evaluation – then you can also share the investment costs and the production site etcetera, and it starts making sense.

"The last thing we want to do is produce a vehicle where nobody is earning money, because that vehicle will not last for long.

"We want to have a positive business case for us, for our retailers and in the end for our customers."

Smart is 50% owned by China's Geely, which owns a range of car brands spanning a huge variety of sizes and segments. It remains unclear whether one of these could partner with Smart for a city car, but the closest match for the original Fortwo in size terms from across the Geely portfolio would seem to be the Geometry Panda - a three-metre urban electric car with four seats and a range of 124 miles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiTTPqJZS94

it’s got an unpainted dyed plastic body, aluminium frame and replaceable battery. It has a roof rack and a cloth interior which can be upgraded to a vegan leather leather interior. Supposedly has up to a 240km range on the highway. The company claims recyclability of the parts. The battery is designed to be easily replaced and recycled as a battery for home solar installations. 
 

Specs include:

Pricing starts at roughly €25,000, plus in Germany:

https://s04.silence.eco/?lang=en

It looks to me like it’s inspired by the 450 appearance.

Pricing starts at €7500 (about $11,00CDN).

It’s a two seater with a 149km range and top speed of 90km/hr plus a cargo capacity of 313L and weight of 450kg.
 

Interesting feature is that it can use up to two “trolley style removable batteries which feature wheels and a handle so they can be transported conveniently and safely.” So you can wheel away your battery to recharge it.

https://media.smart.com/eu/premiere-of-the-smart-concept-1-preview-of-the-first-series-production-model-of-the-new-smart-generation/

And an article with more pictures:

https://newatlas.com/automotive/smart-concept-1-compact-crossover/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=52d0840bc8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_09_07_08_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-52d0840bc8-90283070

Smart is now an equal partnership co-owned by Mercedes-Benz and China's Geely Automobile, and the next generation of these chipper little urban getabouts will be Mercedes-Benz exterior and interior designs built on a battery-electric chassis developed by Geely. The design of the Concept #1 looks progressive enough, although most of the really eye-catching features, like the rear suicide doors, the full-length panoramic glass roof, the 21-inch wheels, the gold cabin accents and the shiny iPhone 3G-style plastic seat backs will likely be toned way down or thrown out altogether by the time this reaches production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYh10JN_1BU

https://www.carscoops.com/2020/06/futuristic-2025-smart-roadster-study-makes-a-convincing-case-for-a/

Browse through the photo gallery for a better look at this.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/geely-and-mercedes-benz-show-smart-electric-suv-concept

Its built in China and is due out in 2022. Comparable in size to the Mini Countryman, the new five-seater is expected to be Smart’s largest model to date, at around four metres in length.

Reports out of China suggest it will be equipped with a rear-mounted electric motor with a maximum power of 268bhp, a lithium-ion battery with a capacity of less than 70kWh and a range on the Chinese NEDC test cycle of more than 500km (311 miles).

Here's another link that says largely the same.

https://www.motor1.com/news/492583/mercedes-geely-smart-suv-rumor/

MOST AMAZING TRANSFORMATION! MILD TO WILD! 9 SEC SMART CAR! WORLD'S FASTEST! RT66!

I Finally Sold My Forgotten SMART - YouTube