smart ed

Report by Charis Whitcombe

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This is the second electric car we've tested in the last few weeks. The first, the Citroën C1 ev'ie, was a revelation - but it disappointed when it came to trying to go more than 35mph uphill, with two of us aboard. It stubbornly refused. So I was hoping against hope that the smart ed (note: no capital letters - it's mandatory that electric cars have silly names with small letters and/or plenty of random apostrophes) would be quicker. And it is.

The ed (which is pronounced "ee-dee" and stands for electric drive - no relation to Smart Ed, the New Car Net cameraman) boasts the same zero tail-pipe emissions as the little electric Citroën, and the same zero road tax and zero London Congestion Charge. But whereas the ev'ie claims a 0-30mph time of 8.5 seconds, the ed manages it in 6.5. That's still not earth-shattering. We're talking 0-30, remember, not 0-60, but it does feel a whole lot livelier.

Pulling off in the smart ed is a similar experience to the C1 ev'ie as far as the simple gearstick-forward, throttle-down process goes, and the driver is greeted with the same whirry sounds - and the same sense of initial perkiness as the little car whizzes up to 20mph. But it's beyond that speed that the smart feels quicker. It even accelerates fairly speedily to 40mph, and then creeps slowly up to its top speed of 60mph. Definitely livelier than its Citroën-based counterpart, the electric smart seems quite capable of trundling around on the A-roads. It also has all the standard road-car impact protection and safety features which made the ev'ie much more practical than electric quadricycles, such as the G-Wiz. Avoid them, if safety matters to you. So, in many ways, the smart ed seems like a better bet for electrophiles than the ev'ie...

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