I've never been a fan of the Smart line of cars, if only because they are so damned expensive here in the US ($15k for the base model, 39mpg).
I'd toyed with the idea of buying one when they first became available. But the fuel efficiency wasn't as good as some other contemporary vehicle models. And I'd be giving up a whole back seat. And performance was certainly anemic, even by sub-compact car standards.
I'll probably just get a Prius next year. 50 mpg, as actually measured by outside firms like Consumer Reports. That's so impressive. I'd love to get an electric, but they're just too expensive still.
You know what's really impressive? Back in the early 2000s I bought a 1991 Honda CRX HF from a friend, and it got about 48 mpg even with 150k miles on the odometer. That wasn't a hybrid car, just a hyper-efficient gasoline engine in a lightweight body, and it still had enough pep to safely merge on the highway.
One would think a modern plug-in hybrid would get well over 70 mpg.
At steady highway speeds you gain nothing and need to haul extra weight.
The weight penalty isn't as bad as you might imagine. On the Toyotas, the hybrid design replaces the regular transmission, flywheel, and torque converter (if automatic) or clutch (if manual).
So the big weight penalty is mostly the battery pack.
Cars from the 80s and early 90s are not really comparable to modern vehicles. Modern safety regulations add a lot of weight.
A good example of this is the Mazda MX-5. The original model from 1989 weighed 940 kg (2,070 lb). In 2009 Mazda made a special lightweight MX-5 to celebrate the 20th anniversary. It was made of special materials and even removed the windshield to save weight. The resulting car weighed 130 lbs more than the 1989 model.
> That wasn't a hybrid car, just a hyper-efficient gasoline engine in a lightweight body. One would think a modern plug-in hybrid would get well over 70 mpg.
Including the electricity usage, or without it? Because my old 2013 Volt gets a real-world 150 mpg, if you don't count the electricity.
But if you run it on gas alone, it only gets ~40mpg. Largely because, adding 1,000+ pounds of battery means the car will always be way heavier than a "lightweight body" 1991 subcompact.
The fuel efficiency is inexcusable for a car that light and making that little power. The ford fiesta gets the same combined mileage while weighing nearly a thousand pounds more.
There are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make with regards to power output, size, weight, time to market, and cost for an engine for a given vehicle. Also, what sells in one market (in the case of the Smart, Europe) may not work so well in another market (USA). IIRC, a lot of the Smarts back then (this was 10 years ago approximately) were diesel, which wasn't going to work in the North American market either.
I'd toyed with the idea of buying one when they first became available. But the fuel efficiency wasn't as good as some other contemporary vehicle models. And I'd be giving up a whole back seat. And performance was certainly anemic, even by sub-compact car standards.
I'll probably just get a Prius next year. 50 mpg, as actually measured by outside firms like Consumer Reports. That's so impressive. I'd love to get an electric, but they're just too expensive still.