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Smart Cars Coming to Canada and U.S.
AgniTheSane writes "Most importantly the Smart Car looks cool. It also gets 60 mpg, is four feet
smaller than a Mini Cooper (you can park two in a standard parking spot), the
plastic panels are easily swappable and one color all the way through (so you
can't scratch the paint), the steel frame makes it safe in an accident, and you
can get it with in-dash Bluetooth (and in Europe can read and write email via
the car speakers and a microphone). The Smart car is coming to the US soon, and will cost as little as $12,000. You can read about it in
Wired or on
MSNBC, or you can go straight
to ZAP who will be
selling them in the US soon, or the smart car
website in the UK. "
They are already here. I have seen a few driving around here already
For all those screaming about security - this car has been specifically designed to be safe despite it's size; to achieve this, there are certain tricks involved, eg sliding the motor under the chassis in case of a crash.
It _has_ been rigourously tested.
You know, we here in Europe do make more out of less and don't need a 2 Ton SUV to have a save car.
Advantages:
Little parking space required
Coolness of especially the cabrio version
Price and costs of ownership
Disadvantages:
Speed limit of 140 km/h (although less speeding tickets is ok)
Little storage space
I live in Switzerland and had the possibility to test drive one of the two seats model.
Positive points:
- looks cool
- each passenger has a lot of room (really)
Negative points:
- automatic shift is very slow, it is dangerous and reduces confort (it brakes the car during the shift)
- the vertical construction implies rather hard suspensions, with reduced confort (you feel every bump in the road in your spine)
- noisy inside
- pricy
In Europe you can find lots of small cars that have a comparable MPG (or better km/l), have 4 seats and are cheaper.
To sum it up, coolness factor aside, I would not reccomend it.
I'm guessing page 3 was a little too far for people to read, so I'll copy it here:
A steel frame absorbs front-end impact - no cockpit crumple. Get hit head-on, and the car collapses behind the doors near the back wheels.So there is a crumple zone, it's just behind you
They've been in Europe for a few years now, I remember seeing one about 3 years ago.
Contrary to popular belief, the UK isn't a place with a few cars, empty country roads and stuff. It has tonnes of cars, tonnes of bad drivers (not as many as the US though, our driving test is a bit more advanced) and lots of accidents.
Oddly enough, there hasn't been a revolt or outcry over SMART car accident rates being higher than average.
Of course, they are more ideal for the UK which in-town is slow to drive due to road systems developed when horses and carriages were in vogue - often narrow streets, etc. They are a good solution if you do a lot of city driving in a place like this.
On the other hand, I wouldn't be seen dead driving one. Then again, I don't do a lot of city driving.
A colleague who is about your height, certainly over 6', has one and he loves it. No problems fitting in, so I'm not sure what you're basing this assessment on.
"There is nothing so simple that works so well that it can't be made to work better by making it more complicated" - ?
Here's the crash test results for MCC Smarts.
Go figure for yourself if that's safe(enough) for your. Generally -at least here in Germany- the cars are considered safe, but we don't have that many 5000lbs SUVs to crash against either...
euroncap.com
Shit driving standards is the answer. Plus having been to the states and hired a few Usian vehicles, the handling is absymal on them. It's a bloody difficult keeping them in the right lane on a straight interstate let alone taking a gentle corner.
The smart has been engineered to reduce g-forces, teh seats deform, the ridgid metal structure buckles at points, the drive-train slides under the car. Seat-belts are equipted with automatic tighteners than limit motion and release it slowly to reduce g-forces. It emparts g-forces on the passengers at the rate equal to a vehicle twice its size.
Also it can hit 80mph without too much of a problem, plus the electronic limiter can be removed by a hack.
As for the 19 sec 0-60mph that is due to the automatic transmission that is considered crap. It pauses for a second or two while changing gears. If you have the manuel version, (which the automatic can be turned into with the push of a button) the delay can be greatly reduced.
This is due to there being no clutch, it is computer controlled.
And spend the rest of that money fixing the things that fall off your bargain used-car, bringing the total up to about the same.
Doesn't have to be true, depends on what you buy and how touroughly you inspect it before. And even if it costs the same, you still get a lot more bang for the buck. And you don't have to be embarrassed in front of chicks.
Plus, the smart car doesn't devalue. Look at the second-hand ones. You can sell it for exactly the same price you bought it for, how's that for free car-hire?
Bullshit, it will lose just as much value as any other car. You must have pulled that "fact" out of your ass.
I used to own a Smart, I'm 5'11" and had about 8" of room above my head. Passanger and driver have heaps of room, it's only when you look over your shoulder to find the rear window that you relalise how small the car is :-)
I agree. A Firebird and a Viper look cooler. Especially when the driver is wearing a mullet, triple-pleat chinos and some Oakley sunglasses.
The VW Beetle is the top rated small car for crash safety by the IIHS.
Just my $0.02
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
not exactly correct - experts say:
In a nutshell, small vehicles account for more than twice as many occupant deaths as large vehicles, according to HDLI figures. Why are large vehicles safer? "The laws of physics dictate that, everything else being equal, the larger the vehicle the lower the crash forces reaching the occupant compartment," explains Hazelbaker. This is because the energy in an impact has a larger area over which to spread and therefore dissipates more readily.
But don't equate weight and size, cautions Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the nonprofit consumer advocacy group, Center for Auto Safety. Quoting the late Dr. William Haddon, former administrator both of NHTSA and IIHS, Ditlow points out that "size is beneficial, weight is hostile" when it comes to crash safety. A heavy vehicle, while it tends to push lighter vehicles out of the way in a crash, also delivers more impact and therefore can inflict more harm.
The Bottom Line
The safest vehicles are large and lightweight, designed especially to absorb crash impact without causing it. Large, heavy vehicles are safer than smaller vehicles for occupants but their weight usually contributes to overall damage in a crash. Small vehicles are the most dangerous for occupants but the safest for others and for property, especially if the vehicle is lightweight.
I actually owned one for about three years. Got rid of it when kids started happening, but up to that point, it was ideal to commute to work in. Your mention of "diesel rabbit" leads me to suspect that you live in the US. Given the stupendously low speed limit on the highways in the US, you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The car absolutely has enough acceleration to get up to over 75mph on the access ramp, allowing you to merge into normal European motorway traffic without problems. If that works in Europe, why should it not in the US?
The moms love the SUVs coz they feel safe - problem is, when they hit a Smart even slighly, they kill the occupant.
Not necessarily. Smart is designed with safety in mind and has pretty good crash test results. Don't forget that crash tests describe only the passive safety (can you survive when bad things happen?), while Smart excels in active safety (can you avoid the bad things to happen in the first place?). I was driving a rented one on a business trip and the thing is agile like a TIE-fighter. Unless you're asleep at the wheel, you will be able to make an evasive manoeuvre avoiding getting hitted by the SUV.
On the other hand, large SUVs are hopeless in active safety (a pick-up truck with a wagon-like interior will always remain a pick-up truck in terms of agility), they prone to rollover and the frame chassis does not add to passive safety, contrary to popular belief. Yes, the chassis will remain untouched by a minor collision, but it does not mean your spine will remain untouched as well. If someone drops you in a steel cage from a steep cliff, the cage might itself remain untouched on the bottom - but your spine probably won't. Modern cars wreck so horribly precisely because the chassis takes all the energy that would otherwise release - among other things - on your spine. It's no wonder that the safest 4x4 according to NHTSA is subaru forester. It's a car-based SUV that gets totally wrecked in a crash - but that's because the driver leaves from collision in perfectly good health. Someone has to explain this to all the SUV moms...
The thing is, SUV's are the most unsafe vehicles out there.
For starters, an SUV is far more likely to be involved in an accident, thanks to increased stopping distances and high center of gravity and weight mean that they are hard to perform emergency manouveurs in.
Once in the accident, it's not the sudden stop that will kill you. The crumple zone in the front isn't designed to slow you gradually. The cabin deforming and crushing you is what kills.
The reason the cabin crushes is because there is a lot of weight at the opposite end of the car which needs to be decelerated. In a smart, there isn't. The engine is the only really heavy thing, and that goes under you.
Having an accident in a smart is like bouncing around in a small padded box with airbags. An accident in an suv is like being front and rear ended at the same time.
Don't get feeling too smug and superior; the Europeans are following closely behind.
I was in the deep East End of London recently, and the residents of the council estates there were as fat as any trailer-park trash in Arkansas.
The chattering classes are of course nice and trim, but that is mostly the case over here too.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.