Smart Electric car. My New ride (WARNING- hella gangster content)

Well nothing could compare with *your* personality

I'm gonna put wings on the side of my car

Just an update, I love this car.

It's so good in traffic, so good for commuting. Way less stressful than my Fiesta. I can now use the carpool lane since I got my sticker. Between insurance (64), car payment (300), bridge tolls (55), and gas (120 vs 40 for electricty) I'm saving almost $500/month, plus I get to work about 5-10 minutes faster and get home about 8-12 minutes faster... And I never have to stop at gas stations, which also sucked, because there were none on my commute and I had to get out of my normal route and take side streets during rush hour. The best part is the micro size though. It fits in the tiniest parking spots and traffic pockets, and it's so easy to maneuver around other parked cars etc. We use it for all our errands and shopping, and almost all of our in town of out-of-town trips. It fits a surprising amount of luggage!

Parked in my driveway - it's the only car you can buy in the USA that actually fits in this spot. Critical because our streets are full of random parked cars:







Headlights are great. Build quality and materials are awesome, too.

Those are all amazing and brilliant reasons to own an electric car. However I'm still hating the Smart. :-/

Nope. Those are the side effects of the shitty gas engine needing to shift the shitty transmission. There's no shifting the electric. It's just smooth as butter like a golf cart. Have you been in any pure EV yet? It's like any of those.

I thought about k20 swap on mine but felt it would ruin the car a bit. The beauty of the Insight is the super simple and lightweight engine. If it was front heavy and complex and barely fit in the hood, got 30 mpg (maybe 40?) instead of 60+ it just wouldn't be the same to me. Plus I replaced my battery for $1100 or so.. A k20 is much more than that and you'd have a lot of labor, plus custom work that would inevitably turn out worse than you'd want IMO.

Haters gonna hate! Try living with it here for a week and it would win you over

I might've posted this already but here's the app on my phone. It also notifies me at different charge thresholds and when it's unplugged etc:


The car has a two piece tailgate which you can sit on and tie your shoes or taking a break, plus it makes loading the thing super easy to put stuff in the hatch. I put 12 of our exhaust systems in it from my fabricator yesterday:


I didn't even stack very high and if you need to you can fold the passenger seat completely flat forward which gives tons more room. I think you could put a 55 gallon aquarium in there.

It's just clever in its design from front to back and makes amazing use of its tiny size, and has excellent visibility. The high ceiling helps with all this.

Think this car's any more dangerous than a pre 2000s car w/ 2 or less 20 year old airbags and seat belts? Or a classic muscle car with lap belts and no crumple zones? 80s / 90s Honda or Toyota that you see all over the place (30 year old belts, no air bags)? Or a Motorcycle? It's small but it's very well designed for safety, and has a giant solid chunk of battery under the driver for side impacts. Mercedes spent a lot of time making an airbag system and the steel cage, plus high driver seating etc. to make it super safe. I'd trust it over my old Insight that's for sure.

http://insideevs.com/smart-fortwo-e...4-stars-overall-in-nhtsa-crash-tests-wvideos/

Check some modern SUVs or older trucks & cars versus this thing. It's like a tank in comparison.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPvGJEKHFo


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yHi6NsNXBI

No. At least not explode like a grenade. For some chemistries (not sure about the one in my car) they may flare up and burn super quickly if you puncture through the cells with a conductive rod. So if you were t boned by a few 2 foot+ long steel spikes at 100 mph that happened to be 5" from the ground it could happen. There's still steel under you so I'd think you wouldn't burn instantly but regardless if you're t boned like that in any vehicle you're probably going to die. If there's some defect in the battery that could happen randomly I suppose but I doubt it'll happen on a car that's already had 1000 charge cycles - if it does I hope I can get away fast enough.

Sure your fuel tank is behind you (where you're most likely to be hit by another car) - but there are at least two pressurized fuel lines under you in a gas car and in front of you there's all kinds of fuel plumbing and storage, not to mention the caloric content of that liquid high-pressure gasoline is about 20x of an electric battery.

I'd be much much more concerned about a car fire if I was driving a gas car but I rarely even think about that when driving one.

I know, I'm just excited about the safety mumbo jumbo and like to share it. And lol no fatties here!

Hey Matt, how you liking the Fiesta?

Just an update on my little Smart. I've put almost 20000 miles on it already. I still charge on a regular 110 outlet and it gets me to work and back with minimal stress, usually using 40% of its range for my round trip (about 42 miles most days). It hasn't had any errors or problems except some little leak from the rear differential which Mercedes fixed under warranty.

Any time I take my MR2 or van to work, my girlfriend borrows the Smart. She likes driving it a lot.