(Elbil24): The apple sometimes really falls far from the tree. For Smart – which was originally a small car brand – is now showing off its biggest car ever. Welcome to Smart #5.
This will be the third Smart model in today’s portfolio, a car that will be built at the Geely factory in Hangzchou, where Elbil24 recently visited. As you know, Daimler has a collaboration with Geely specifically on Smart, and #5 will thus be the third in the series – after #1 and #3.
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Shown at the Beijing Motor Show this week, the car is a cheeky affair that, by all accounts, won’t be shown in full production until next year. We still know quite a bit about it already, although there is very little information from Smart directly.
FULL WIDTH: The front light runs across the entire width of the car, as it does on newer cars.
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Known platform
What we do know is that the car will be built on the SEA platform from the Geely group, a platform that can strictly be adapted to almost any type of car, right from the A segment up to the larger D and E segments.
In Smart’s case, it is a medium-sized SUV, so we can assume that it falls right into the perfect area for what Ola and Kari Nordmann buy. With a length of around 4.7 metres, and a height of just over 1.8 metres, it is, among other things, not far from the car that everyone measures themselves against today – the Tesla Model Y.
The platform can also be used for cars with a combustion engine, but in Smart’s case we are naturally talking about a fully electric car.
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The car is expected to have a battery that will give it a range of around 550 kilometers, according to the WLTP standard, and it will naturally be set up with two electric motors and four-wheel drive. Some effects on the engines we have not yet been tricked out of the smart ones, but we should not expect anything less than the 408 horsepower that the Geely and Volvo relatives have in the smaller models. Rather more.
2+2: But it makes no sense that a car like this should only be a four-seater, when we know it can handle seven.
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Good charging speed
There is also talk that the car will get a battery with 800 volt charging from CATL, and possibly as high a C-rating as 4. In that case, it is impressive, all the while today’s charging champion, the new Porsche Taycan, has been set up with a battery of 3.1C.
However, we are waiting to confirm that this is true, but should not ignore the fact that it may be true, as CATL launched just such a battery at the same fair where the Smart #5 was shown.
A new battery is charged at one kilometer per second
The battery has a sky-high amount of energy per weight, which fits perfectly in cars with somewhat moderate space. This may also be why it is rumored that the car will have a battery of around 100 kWh. With such a high energy density as these batteries are said to have, the weight will therefore be within the acceptable range, but what about the price?
It is only natural that battery prices fall over time, and that the energy density increases. But if the car is to be on the market already next year, then it is questionable whether the price adjustment has had a good enough effect for #5 to become a particularly affordable car. We see no signs of that either on Smart #1 or #3, and then we dare not guess that it will be the case on #5 either.
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What will it cost?
What both Smart and other car brands have to come to terms with is the ongoing price war. Tesla and the Chinese brands are currently leading it, and if you want to share in the cake the market is after all, then you also have to pay the price, which in this case is to adapt to the market.
Will be over 50,000 cheaper than Model Y
What we really hope for is that Smart has taken seriously the signals the concept car gives, and that it will retain some of its distinctive features on the outside, at least in that Smart will offer some of the off-road equipment as accessories.
Inside, we can almost take it for granted that the car will have the three screens in the dashboard that it is shown with, because it is in line with what the Geely group intends to put into the other cars they will launch. The software will apparently also be the same as in these. Of course, that also means full OTA update from scratch, not just the map work and simpler stuff.
Some changes
What we expect will be lost between the concept and the production model are the rear seats. The car on display has two separate seats with a large armrest in the middle. Then it has a large trunk again. On the production version, we expect a five-seater, if not seven. That should be possible, as the tailgate is almost completely upright, compared to the horizontal position on many other cars in the segment.
We won’t go further than the Mercedes-Benz EQB before we get a car similar to this one, and it is a seven-seater after all.
Perhaps it is precisely the aforementioned off-road character that will separate EQB and Smart #5? In that case, it will tempt a completely different customer group, and that in itself is to be hoped for. Soon we will know more.
