Smart won’t be sold in the U.S. and Canada after the 2019 model year, Daimler AG confirmed after two sources familiar with the decision shared the information with TechCrunch.
“After much careful consideration, smart will discontinue its battery-electric smart EQ fortwo model in the U.S. and Canadian markets at the conclusion of MY2019,” a Daimler AG spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “A number of factors, including a declining micro-car market in the U.S. and Canada, combined with high homologation costs for a low volume model are central to this decision.”
MBUSA and Mercedes-Benz Canada will continue to provide owners of gasoline-powered and electric smart fortwo models with access to service and replacement parts via smart and authorized Mercedes-Benz dealers, the company told TechCrunch.
Model years begin and end mid-year, suggesting that June will be the final month of production. Sales of the vehicles will continue through end the of the year.
Daimler isn’t killing off the smart vehicle altogether. Daimler announced in March it was forming a joint venture with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group to transform smart into an all-electric brand based in China.
!snip!
Good. There are too many Chinese in the world.
I am so sick of people saying that the Smart Car does well in crash tests. It doesn’t.
When it comes to safety, we can find more cases of this careful omission practice. Smart, as well as a few holdout environmentalists, will tell you, for example, that the ForTwo got top marks for passenger safety in an IIHS crash test.
Thus begging the question, to anyone paying attention, what about the driver? Well, it wasn’t good, but even crash tests don’t tell the whole story of what can happen in a crash. What it comes down to is crumple zones. These exist for a reason, and the ForTwo has very little to crumple. The idea here is not to prevent cabin intrusion, but rather to absorb the energy of the crash. In the absence of such energy-absorbing measures, that energy is transmitted through your body. In that IIHS test mentioned earlier, the Smart collided with a Mercedes-Benz C-Class. The smart was flung through the air, rotating 450 degrees in the process.
It was here that the driver rating suffered, as the dummy was thrown around the cabin, smacking its head against the steering wheel. The energy of the crash just had nowhere else to go. The senior vice president of vehicle research at the IIHS, David Zuby, said it best: “A really, really poorly designed or insufficiently designed large- or medium-sized car may be more or less protective than the best-designed small car, but that’s something that you’re not going to be able to tell just by looking at crash-test ratings. So all things being equal, if you’re concerned about safety, you want a bigger, heavier car.”
The simple fact of the matter is that minicars like the Smart have an occupant death rate in accidents that is twice that of bigger cars which have gotten the same ratings in crash tests. So the Smart might be exceedingly well-designed and strong for a minicar, but to paraphrase the great Doug Stanhope, that’s like being the prettiest Denny’s waitress.
~~~~~`
Let’s see the stats on serious injuries.
ht/ the big owe
So what are guys with big dicks gonna drive around now as status symbols?
They are fun with hayabusa engines
You don’t need to be Richard Feynman to tell just by looking, these things are unsafe “at any speed”.
My truck weighs 6000lbs + alone, add anywhere from 3000-9500lbs if I have a trailer. It would cut through a Dumb Car like a hot knife through butter.
I live in one of the biggest “cities” of the county, roughly 18k people, only 110k people in the entire county. I liken the area to Lower Wisconsin, but it’s Illinois. I’m always surprised at the number of Smart, Leaf, Yaris, etc. mini-cars around here, especially since it seems everyone drives a truck. The only reason I can think is because, why not, it makes sense around here. It’s kind of vacation-like, there’s not really too far to go and it’s a waste to get 12MPG to simply go out to eat or run 20 miles round trip to the store.
I wouldn’t buy one, but it does appear people around here use them simply as a step up from their side-by-side, golf cart, horse, 4-wheeler, etc.
Uncle Joe Biden will miss having access to a new Smot Ca every year.
I thought they stopped making them years ago. I thought all my laughing washed them away. LOL. I’m trying the same with Tesla but man do they have hard headed owners who part with cash like it’s water, but I bet never gave a dime to charity.
High school physics students can do the math on the accelerations experienced by low-mass cars even in seemingly harmless accidents.
Smart CarsDeath Cansi usually cut them off anyway, but really, what took so long?
‘Smart Cars Got No Reason’
they’re more like a ‘Smart Coffin’
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Nf9E7CLBYzs/U1ySiXhhgpI/AAAAAAAC6kA/-AAs5J1JW3s/s1600/smart3.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7d/60/8f/7d608f15451105fae6355ba615fd1ffc.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8657/15232644333_cc2ba32f47_b.jpg
This is the car that hit the first one..
I miss my 1968 Chrysler New Yorker two-door. 22 feet long, 2¼ tons curb weight, the doors were six feet front to back. The engine compartment was so large that even with the 440 V8 in there I could just about climb in with it to change the plugs and set the timing. The trunk could have comfortably housed an extended family of Vietnamese boat people.
If there were ever a collision between that car and a Smart, there wouldn’t be enough left of the little death trap to take a photo of. You’d have what the NTSB calls in large aircraft crashes a “debris field” covering X football fields, though very sparsely strewn.
I have read in the past that ratings are compared by class — so the Dumb car may do great when it is up against another Dumb car.
At work once I talked to someone who was in an accident in a Dumb car. I got the impression that she would never get in one again.
“Smart” car?
Nope.
Coffin for two!
Just sayin’.
MB should just add handles to the outside of the Smart Car so when you’re transformed into “Spam in a can”, the pall-bearers can just lower everything in the ground.
Coffins are expensive!
Or buy 2 and use them as rollerskates.
Honda FIT got about the same mileage but is a Honda, and much roomier. And cost about 2/3. So why in the world would anyone buy a ‘Smart’ car? I can think of two mediocre reasons: Bragging; and the ability to park head-in, which if you are in a congested city might be a reasonable consideration.
Was driving on the parkway today and one of these little bugers got on, came up buzzing along side of me, it had a ‘town seal’ on the side of it and I thought to myself:
“Imagine having the job and being FORCED to drive that firetrap”…as we used to called them.
Screw that!
Ghost and mrs. survivors of a head on…30 years ago…
I first saw Smart cars in the Netherlads 14 or so years ago. Seemed kind of silly-cute, and I thought maybe they make sense driving around in medieval cities like Amsterdam, Utrecht , Den Bosh, Maastricht, Leyden, etc. With their narrow winding streets. ( there was another model or two just as small or smaller, don’t recall their name, seemed older models without the snazzy paint job, so more forgettable, and also they weren’t parked in kiosk inside Schipol airport. )
Surprised the heck out me when I started seeing them on roads here in America. It’s amazing they’ve stayed this long.
But then again — they may have been more attractive during the 8 long years of the Obama economy with it’s connected predictions of it lasting for ever, it’s never coming back.
Then Trump happened. He must have that magic wand. The manufacturing jobs Obama never wanted to see again, did come back, and brought some buddies with them. Driving round in matchbox cars no longer seemed like a good idea. Certainly no longer was necessary when you can afford to drive something better.
That being said I ride motorcycles on public roads. Nothing, or not much, to crumple to absorb energy but me. And I want very much to not test just how that would work out.
Motorcyclist make one of two cloches to survive: Ride with complete confidence that no one else driving on the road can see you so ride in a position where you can’t be hit if they really don’t see you. Or ride with complete confidence that everyone else on the road can see you, they don’t like you and want to hit you if possible, so ride in a position where they can’t hit you. Well, can’t hit you and be believeable it wasn’t done on purpose.
Smart car drivers should follow the same philosophy, choose one or both tactics to survive.
Jethro: I almost died laughing…you made my day/night. Thanks
I remember 2005 and the hard sell on those cars. Solar was huge too.
PS: Guy I know installed panels all over his roof in that exact time frame. He’s still paying off the costs and maintainance, but in a few more years or maybe longer, he might start to break even.
I thought the Honda FIT was an exercise program.
A car AND a coffin!
Uncle Al, my father in law had a 68 Chrysler New Yorker, he called it his tuna boat. We drove it to Seattle one time back in the late 70’s along with my mother in law and some of my wife’s younger brothers who were little kids back then when they had that damned 55 mph speed limit, talk about a long trip. Chrysler New Yorker’s were always huge, a friend of mine inherited his grandfather’s 48 Chrysler, that thing was humungous.
I think I have one or two of these stuck in my fender-well… Sorry about that. 8000lb. ’00 Excursion diesel…
where was Ralph Nader?
My bro in law campaigned using one of them this yr. He won. LOL. Hes a republican/libertarian. He wrapped it with his name. Steele. LOL again.
Live or die by physics.
P = m x v (momentum equals mass times velocity)
This is why the slow moving train ALWAYS wins against a stalled big rig or an aircraft carrier versus the sailboat with the right-of-way. Enjoy the great gas mileage now, but not in the hereafter.
They could still keep making them.
Just rebrand them as go-karts for the rich. drop in another 100hp.
Say goodbye to that gutless Libmobile. Hope the Prius also goes kerplunkt.
Dodge Challenger Hellcat – 700 HP – now there’s a car worth calling a car.