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[Introduction Music]
Hello everyone! This is the Smart ForTwo ED Prototype
It's not the model which is going to be released later this year...
...this is the earlier smart with the Zytek battery in it,
which is not the battery that the poduction model will have.
The production models are going to use the batteries that are made in conjunction with Tesla.
Yes! The people who made that famous electric sportscar.
This is just one of 200, Zytek-built Smart ED prototypes based on the 2006 Smart ForTwo
If you wanted to take part in their test scheme
You had to have a huge *** of cash and be willing to part with the test car after three years.
You hear nothing in the Smart ED. When you pull away, you're thrown back in your seat!
Like This! WOAAA!
This particular Smart was not designed to be a motorway car
However, I'm going to take it on the Motorway
because any car, in my opinion,
should be capable of motorway travel.
Okay, I'm doing 60 mph on the motorway but I do feel quite vunerable.
Very vunerable!
Okay, so the new Smart ForTwo ED will have a higher top speed of about 70 mph
but at slow acceleration it doesn't stop you feeling vunerable.
I've got someone bearing down on me in a Merceedees truck.
It's scary!
The new Smart is not going to win any prizes when it comes to speed.
However, all those batteries down low give the Smart ED an advantage over it's gas-burning counterparts
It feels much more stable in the wind
I think that's because of the weight of the batteries. Which is good, really!
The good news doesn't stop there.
There's one thing that you will never need in an electric car...
Petrol!
Bye-Bye petrol-station!
Hello Motorway!
How does an electric car work?
An electric car works by taking power from the batteries
and sending it through a motor - which converts that electrical power
into mechanical energy, pushing the car along. Simple!
No burning dead animals, which is what a regular car does!
Time to stop tooling around on the freeway and put the smart where it's happiest
...the urban jungle.
I've had about one hour off for lunch and in that time I recharged the car a little.
When I stopped the car had 20% charge left. It's now got a shade over 38%
So expect a full recharge to take about eight hours, which is what Daimler Smart are saying.
This Smart has a hill assist function
When you take your foot off the brake the car keeps the brakes on
for a little, tiny amount of time
enabling you to put your foot on the accelerator.
I actually feel more confident pulling away in this electric smart then I do in my Diesel powered smart.
because this smart has more torque and more power from standstill
There's just that little moment when you put your foot down when you think "What's going on?"
and then... It kicks back!
This is how a smart car should have been from the word "go".
The smart should never have been petrol. They should have been electric!
This is where the Smart ED is at home
In Town.
And for a city like Milton Keynes, I could drive this car all day quite happily.
It's quiet. It's economical to run.
And it's electric, which means I'm not burning any fossil fuels. If I recharge it from
renewable energy sources such as wind or solar then
it's a very very very very very very low carbon emission vehicle!
So, no good on the motorway, but what's the real verdict
of this little city runabout?
In conclusion,
The Smart ED is a great vehicle for around town.
It's clean, It's green. It's got awesome acceleration to 30 mph.
When it reaches 40 or 50 mph, acceleration is a little slow.
Anything above 60 mph is impossible.
It can go on the motorway, as I've illustrated
but I can't wait to try the newSmart ED
The one that everyone is going to get a chance to try later on this year.
They've changed the battery and the motor for that one,
I really hope I get to try it out.
Subtitles by Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield using www.overstream.net.