Europes "Smart" Cars Coming to US in two sizes The tiny car that won over Europeans with its cute looks and very high mileage is finally coming to America, just not in the way you might expect it to. The 60-mpg, two-seat coupes are made by a European company called smart, but the DaimlerChrysler division is not the one selling them here anytime soon. True, they will be sold in Canada starting in September, but not so in the United States. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5217861/
they are very cute, but i would not want to meet a ford excursion in one on the highway... the prius is as small as i care to go. it's different outside the u.s. where most folks drive small cars.
So they've taken something that's highly efficient and told the American people that we don't want it? Again! Reminds me of a Rage Against the Machine song that I actually absolutely love. The main line is WAKE UP!!!
Smart Cars are stupid. They are insulting the Hybrid industry. Not as bad as GM is.. but Smart cars are still pretty lame. First off, any company can build a two seater. If a company does.. it should be able to get better than 60mpg. Plus.. how does the emissions compare to the prius. The crash test rating also give hybrids a bad name. They say on the side impact that hitting the back axle will help absorb impact. It will also make the car 1) Spin faster 2) not crumble and send the car flying more.... it's kind of like the idea that if a Hummer and a Prius crash into a wall.. the Prius will crumble but live.. the Hummer will just slam into the wall like a brick and send you flying. IF you want to see something that is actually efficient when it comes to being small.. take a look at this http://www.priusonline.com/viewtopic.php?t...ight=mini+prius I use this reference every time i see another stupid two seater hybrid. Only Difference with smart is their cars look cooler with there convertible tops and so on. :mrgreen:
Er, the smart car isn't a hybrid, it has a conventional petrol engine. And it's 60 Imperial MPG - that's 72MPG in American money. The point isn't efficiency, anyway, the point is that it's small and easy to manoeuvre and park in cities.
I remember looking at Smart cars a while back. Thought they were kind of cute. Something to drive around town in and go to the store or gym and that kind of thing. Of course, since short trips are the worse for emissions, perhaps that's a bad idea after all. Anyway, they seem to be true Internal Combustion Engines. From the website: "Three lively petrol engines. The new, solid aluminium petrol engines, with their four-valve technology, two overhead camshafts and so-called variable valve timing, represent the very latest technology and boast a lively nature with high torque. You can choose the 55 kW, 3-cylinder engine or one of two 4-cylinder engines (70 kW or 80 kW) [1]." Find more if you care by clicking HERE
definitely not a hybrid!! to me its not competition for the Prius. its more in the mini cooper category its small and easy to manuver in traffic, but the first time someone tells me i have to park the car at the bike rack, i will be pissed!!
I saw a lot of these in Germany; appeared to be very popular with apartment dwellers in urban areas (Frankfurt, etc.) where parking space was at a minimum. Looked to me like a lot of them didn't get used during the week, but were used on the weekends or during vacations to drive out of the city. (The rail system is SO good in Germany that cars are considerably less essential).
Here in the Netherlands they are not that common. Most are used by SME companies as a kind of advertisement. On the highway it must be pretty scary in those things. And crash tests have proven that although the car is sturdy, it tends to be thrown away by the things that hit them. So if a Range Rover was to hit a Smart, the little car would be shoved aside pretty hard and hit something else... And doing shopping with this car? No way, you can put one small bag behind the seats, not a week of groceries. And they're pretty uncomfortable as well. Oh, and waaay too expensive... a basic smart with some option to bring it up to par with the Prius (without nav, bluetooth and SS/SE) would cost me EUR 18512 (~US$22000).
So what kind of MPG would you see if you took the super-efficient Smart ICE and put it in the Prius? I mean, if the Smart get 60MPG purely on ICE, what would be the outcome if it shut off at regular hybrid times?
It would likely be worse in fuel mileage, and performance. Those little smart cars are lighter than my Goldwing.
I saw quite a few of them in Amsterdam last month; I definitely had more Smart Car sightings per day, there, than I have of Priuses in the Los Angeles area. My daughter, almost twelve, is dying to get a lime green one when the time comes.
Amsterdam does not equal the rest of the Netherlands... It's a small country, but we're not a city state (yet).
