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

Posted in: Electric