Electric Smart Rolling Down the Line

Drum roll please! The electric Smart ForTwo is officially underway at Daimler’s factory in Hambach, France.

From an urban mobility standpoint, there’s been a lot to love about the Smart from the get go. Although small, it’s built like a tank, it offers the comfort and convenience you’d expect and and it gets great mileage. But if you’re of a green bent and you want to get even better “mileage,” so to speak, the car for you arrives soon.

We’ve been following the Smart for awhile, from the new car-sharing program in Austin, Texas, to those crazy Dutch treating them like cows and taking Daimler to task for not offering the diesel Smart or hybrid version on this side of the Atlantic. Yeah, you can say we’re fans.

Like a lot of you, we’ve wanted to see the EV version of the fortwo as well. It makes total sense – because, let’s face it, the fortwo isn’t exactly a road trip kind of car. Around the city though, it makes total sense. So here comes the EV version — Tesla Motors helped with the drivetrain — off the assembly lines.

The first 1,000 customers to receive their Smart EVs, or Smart electric drive as they are officially called, will be participants in a variety of mobility projects in major cities in both Europe and the United States. Daimler is taking a page from BMW, which is doing the same thing with the Mini E. After Daimler gets feedback on electric driving under everyday conditions for the fortwo electric drive, it will be available to the general public in 2012.

“With the start of the series production of the smart fortwo electric drive, the Hambach plant enters a new era – at the same time, the smart fortwo emphasizes its pioneering role on the way to individual mobility with local zero-emissions in cities and urban areas,” said Marc Langenbrinck, managing director of Smart. “Its innovative battery-electric drive makes the smart fortwo electric drive the ideal vehicle for the city: it combines responsibility to the environment with driving fun and joie de vivre in a virtually perfect manner.”

This is the second-gen fortwo EV, but the first that isn’t strictly an R&D project. By the time 2012 rolls around and Daimler’s gotten feedback on how the little car performs in the real world, the Smart EV will be offered alongside other models in showrooms. Getting a practical, sorted city EV will be as hard as checking an option box on a sales form.

Photo: Daimler

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Ford Unveils Its Electric Delivery Van

Ford has said as many as one in four cars its sells by 2020 will be electrified. It took a big step toward that goal today when it unveiled an electric delivery van that will be available by the end of this year.

The Transit Connect Electric is the first vehicle built under what Ford calls its “accelerated electrified vehicle plan” that includes the electric Ford Focus we’ll see next year and a plug-in hybrid slated for 2012.

The e-van swaps the engine and fuel tank in the 2010 North American Truck of the Year in favor of a 28 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack and an electric motor. Beyond that, it’s identical to the gasoline model and has similar acceleration and top speed (75 mph). It has a claimed range of 80 miles and “optimal recharging” in six to eight hours. We suspect that’s what it takes plugged into a 220-volt outlet, though you can also use a 110.

“Not only is this an ideal vehicle for ec0-conscious fleet operators, it is an important part of Ford’s future,” said Derrick Kuzak, vp of global product development.

That’s because hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles will play an increasingly important role at Ford. The company expects 20 to 25 percent of its cars to have an electric drivetrain of some kind by 2020. It’s pushing the Transit Connect Electric as ideal fleet use by, say, the U.S. Postal Service because such vehicles typically follow short, predictable routes and are housed in centralized locations that make charging a snap. What’s more, Ford says, electric vehicles are cost-effective in the long run because they require little maintenance and they’re dirt cheap to operate.

“We’re excited about the potential for our electrified vehicles,” said Praveen Cherian, program manager for the electric Transit Connect. He likens the vehicle to a hybrid and says, “People were a little hesitant about hybrid technology at first, but now they embrace and accept it. We expect the same to be true of electric vehicles.”

Ford also unveiled a Transit Connect tailored for use as a taxi, though it seems to us an electric van would make a perfect cab. After all, they’re trying it in London.

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