Smart Electric Vehicle Headed for Mass Production At Last

(MoneyWatch)  Parent company Daimler has taken its sweet time rolling out an all-electric version of the Smart car, even though the company pats itself on the back in a press release for taking the Smart EV from a concept car to production for customers in "just five years."

The conservative strategy is probably inevitable, since the parent has had its hands full with bigger issues, like disentangling Daimler from the ill-fated DaimlerChrysler merger. Daimler also overhauled Smart a few years ago, killing a plan to expand the niche brand into a more complete lineup of bigger vehicles like the Smart forfour.

Nevertheless, by the time the Smart EV goes into production in 2012, it looks as if at least a couple of Japanese rivals, and certainly Nissan, will beat Smart to the punch, including some bigger and seemingly more capable EVs, like the upcoming Nissan Leaf.

That's too bad, because ever since the Smart was launched a decade ago, people have taken for granted that the Smart should be battery powered, given its futuristic styling, its small size and its target market of young, upscale, and green-minded "early adopters."

I drove a Smart car around the suburbs and shopping malls of Northern New Jersey for a week several years ago, and just about everyone I encountered assumed it was battery powered. Even when I told them it wasn't, many people insisted it was. To this day, my dry cleaner asks me when I'm going to get "another one of those electric cars."

In the meantime, Smart has sold more than 1 million cars built at its plant in Hambach, France -- none of them battery powered, except for a handful of test cars and some unauthorized aftermarket conversions that were produced by a third party in California.

To be sure, Smart has been edging closer and closer to mass-producing its electric vehicle, starting with a test fleet of 100 vehicles in London in 2007.

This week, the company said that next month it will start producing a much bigger test fleet of 1,000, with a new generation of more highly efficient lithium-ion batteries, to be tested in U.S. and European cities. The plan calls for mass production to start in 2012.

"The Smart fortwo electric drive proves that emission-free driving in an urban environment is already feasible today," said Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche.

Photo: Daimler