Smart Cars

[Namaste Jesus]

Anybody ever driven one of these?

It's a Smart Car, powered by a rear mounted 3 cylinder, Mitsubishi engine. Although they were sold and serviced through Mercedes Benz.

Anyway, one of my neighbors just bought one secondhand for his kid. I went over to rag him about it and he throws me the keys. It's actually a pretty horrible car, at least by US standards. Painfully slow and gets blown all over the place on the highway. That said, driving the thing isn't all that bad. For one thing, it's deceptively roomy inside. You kind of forget how small it really is. Rides well too. Until that is, you encounter the slightest bump. Reminded me of coasting downhill as a kid in a wooden go-cart with shopping cart wheels! These were supposed to get 60+ mpg, but as you have to put you foot to the floor just to get it to move, I doubt that's real world achievable. Fun little first car though, AC and everything! I understand they made electric versions as well. Bet those are a lot more powerful.

 

[badger]

There are lots of Smart cars in South East UK, and they are available as Electric cars now.
Compared to the Reva G-Wiz a Smart car is a luxury limousine!
I want a Reva G-Wiz to play about with, the Lead-Acid Battery, Brushed motor, 30 mile range, 35mph type...because they are so simple to maintain and we don't go far these days. A first entrance in to E-cars.
Sadly my wife researched G-wiz crashes and after showing me photos of flattened G-Wizs she decided that she doesn't want to get in one.

 

[Namaste Jesus]

Yea, the last Smarts sold here were electric. To little to late I suppose as they've stopped importing them altogether now. The problem with the gas version in our market was, they never did achieve the projected mileage, they're way under powered for our road systems, expensive to repair and way overpriced! I mean, you can buy a new Toyota Corolla for less here.

 

[badger]

Yea, the last Smarts sold here were electric. To little to late I suppose as they've stopped importing them altogether now. The problem with the gas version in our market was, they never did achieve the projected mileage, they're way under powered for our road systems, expensive to repair and way overpriced! I mean, you can buy a new Toyota Corolla for less here.

They aren't really distance vehicles, but in big cities they are very popular.
Where I live the roads are very very poor, and high speed motorway cars keep grounding on these roads and so most of us have ATVs, but smart cars and all other short wheel base vehicles manage easily because they can lift over bumps etc without grounding. The G-Wiz has better clearance than the Smart car in the thread's picture but I see lots of smart cars with better clearance than that.

Liquid Propane Gas IC cars are very rare now because there are so few filling points. A good friend has a Range Rover V8 with LPG tank and she has to drive 20 miles to a refuelling station, a round journey of 40 miles, so just filling up is an expensive business! I thought that LPG cars would catch on, but...........

Electric cars are going to upset a lot of would-be greenies! Discharging Lithium batteries is a very bad idea and 25-30% of charge should always be left, or lifespan is going to be affected. 5 watt charging is gentle on lithium batteries and home charging points of 5 watts are not so bad because a night-long recharge is possible, but these 50watt charging points at garages and shopping centres will hurt batteries over time and they cost much much more to fully recharge that trickle charging at home on lower rates.

And so distance runs are going to reduce battery life if the batteries will be discharged very low, and fast recharges are expensive (as expensive as buying petrol), plus the problem of driving out of range of easy refuelling points.

It's time for an electric car with a recharging IC motor installed....... not the Hybrids of today, but fully electric cars with a recharging motor for remote charging at, say, 10w input.

 

[Thomas]

My son-in-law's brother, in Toronto, bought a Tesla.

It's range in winter is about 30 yards.

It has a flat undertray which acts as a sled in the snow; handling is a nightmare.

He sold it ... for more than he paid for it, thanks to chip and other shortages.

 

[Thomas]

We really might buy an electric car: Our regular trips are to the supermarket, swimming pool, close family ... all within a couple of miles. Electric makes so much sense, but I haven't got off-street parking, and there's a scarcity of charging points, and what's my legal liability for domestic charging cables across the pavement to the car, assuming I can get one long enough to reach where it's parked?

Here in the UK we lack anywhere near the necessary infrastructure.

When we all go electric, the loss of fuel income from petrol/diesel will be a hammerblow to the treasury – how is that going to be replaced, I wonder?

We have a caravan. Just a 800kilo payload (it's really small) ... Only top-of-the-range electrics can tow it (our diesel estate does the job nicely), but I can't afford an electric car with the tow capacity...

... we bought diesel because we believed the govt, when it said diesels were better – they aren't, and they knew they weren't, it's just that at the time the Japanese had cut massive chunks out of the petrol car market, and European manufacturers were bleating, so lobbied govts. to back diesels, which they did – so the Japanese started building diesels! Who'd have thought that would happen?

And now China is potentially leading with cheap electric cars ...

 

[Namaste Jesus]

My neighbor says, when the novelty of the Smarty wears off for his kid, he plans to mount a mower deck under it and cut his grass with the AC cranked!

 

[badger]

We really might buy an electric car: Our regular trips are to the supermarket, swimming pool, close family ... all within a couple of miles. Electric makes so much sense, but I haven't got off-street parking, and there's a scarcity of charging points, and what's my legal liability for domestic charging cables across the pavement to the car, assuming I can get one long enough to reach where it's parked?

Here in the UK we lack anywhere near the necessary infrastructure.

When we all go electric, the loss of fuel income from petrol/diesel will be a hammerblow to the treasury – how is that going to be replaced, I wonder?

We have a caravan. Just a 800kilo payload (it's really small) ... Only top-of-the-range electrics can tow it (our diesel estate does the job nicely), but I can't afford an electric car with the tow capacity...

... we bought diesel because we believed the govt, when it said diesels were better – they aren't, and they knew they weren't, it's just that at the time the Japanese had cut massive chunks out of the petrol car market, and European manufacturers were bleating, so lobbied govts. to back diesels, which they did – so the Japanese started building diesels! Who'd have thought that would happen?

And now China is potentially leading with cheap electric cars ...

Across pavement charging is a real risk, imo.
Maybe a big battery hybrid could be the answer?

 

[Thomas]

Maybe a big battery hybrid could be the answer?

jaguar iPace?

... can you lend (read: give) me some money?

 

[badger]

jaguar iPace?

... can you lend (read: give) me some money?

Ah...! I'm in the 2nd hand G-Wiz league!

 

[wil]

I want a self driving elec rv...

Luv the open road..

I have a friend who just bought his third.tesla...the one he drives is the one that is not being rented out on his app that is paying his car.payments... the world is hard to keep up.with.

 

[Namaste Jesus]

jaguar iPace?

... can you lend (read: give) me some money?

A year or so ago I was looking at secondhand Nissan Leafs. There were 5 in my area, all just over $5,000. Today similar secondhand Leafs are selling for $12,000+ ...Dang I wish I had bought all 5 a year ago!