
Ah, the moment so many greenies have been waiting for: The EV version of the Smart two-seater is starting series production. Soon, you’ll be able to buy a city car fitted with a highly efficient lithium-ion battery and a 30 kW electric motor is fitted at the rear axle. As with all electric motors, it’s got lots of torque and all of it is available form essentially zero RPM. In the case of the electric Smart, that means 120 Newton meters of torque that are immediately available.
The smart fortwo electric drive is aimed at ease of use. It can be plugged into any normal household socket and charged the way you’d get juice into your iPod. And it’s cheap too. In Germany, for example at current exchange rates, a full charge costs around two Euros, or about three bucks. Once charged, you can get 115 kilometers of range (about 65 miles), which, as Smart puts it is “more than enough for city traffic.”






