2018 Smart Electric Drive 70mph Highway Range Test (Not Very Good) 

had an 09 gas Smart, drove it from Canada to OK City OK to attend a wedding. It was a rare car in the US at that time and I had several good folks follow me off the hwy to ask questions. Funny that they all thought it was electric then. I used to kid them that I needed to find a store that sold double A batteries so that I could continue. Fun trip, but sadly I no longer have it.

Great video, really enjoyed it! I just bought my second smart EV a month ago (I live in the EU) and for those who pooh-pooh the range I can say - the car is not for you. My place of work is 3 miles away (all city driving) and I recharge the smart once a week. In the city I get about 80 miles of range without straining the battery. Need to go further? All you need is to have other cars in the garage and you're fine. So it's not for everyone, but it sure is for me!

That was such a fun, informative review! And Rocky Mount is lucky to have you as a spokesperson. Thank you!

Nice tour, love the area. Kyle you were making me sweat with that hoodie on an 80+ degree day!

Love the vanity tag on your Smart car

Hey...thanks for the tour of the town and your hospitality has enticed me to subscribe.

The 2020 models (not available in US) has a 90 mile range & charges at 22KW instead of 7KW goes from 10%-80% in 40 minutes. Wish US would make these available again.

My heart was in my mouth watching this video, I wish they went further, I'd love to own one

SMART all over in town love it

Glad to see this. We have a 2016 Smart For Two ED and love it for around town! I love driving it with the back window open in our coupe in the summer. We have a little device that just opens it about 1 inch and it is locked there when the car is locked. It is not for everyone but it was our first EV. It was purchased used. It had been leased to a head shop in Colorado Springs area. We found a roach clip in the seats after delivery to us in TN. (We had is shipped!). We love it and have since got a Tesla Model Y and have a Cybertruck on order!

Wow. I think my 2019 Chevy Volt can come really close to that EV range.

Wow, what a beautiful area. I live in Charlotte, NC. I've never been to Rocky Mount before.

I'd say you hit EPA range for sure. That's good on the Smart to do that city/highway EPA. i love Rocky Mount Mills, such a cool place and close to the track!

I have this same car (the glass roof passion). I leased mine and my lease is almost over. Using the AC makes a huge reduction in range. You probably could have squeezed out another 10-20 miles if the AC was not running.

Hello I just picked up that same year make and model and I love it actually it’s a fantastic car.

Love the tiny homes

But will my i3 go farther?

Wow, nice surroundings.

Great video, looks a great place to live.

Love this so cool thanks!

I actually bought a 2018 Smart Fortwo electric drive through driveway and I love it so much

It’s okay to range test with AirCondition/Heating on... after all we want to be comfortable! 😀 However, for those of us who live in 75*F ambient temperatures it would be of interest to know your estimated range without cooling/heating on. I would think on this particular test your range would have been at least ~10 more miles !? We all know that EVs consume about 20 to 30 % of battery capacity for heating/cooling. At ~75*F ambient temperatures I still get a range of ~80 miles in my 2014 Electric⚡️SMART. That is 95% inner city driving, where I get some regen helping to feed the battery. But I’m quite happy to get this much range from an almost 7 years old battery 😁.

I love that tiny house hotel!

Just bought one and i do mostly freeway between cities. my mpge is 120. after 42 miles of mostly 73mph driving the battery is at 42%. best part is it cost me $15k with only 6800 miles on the clock.

Not as bad :)) I'm living in London and I really started thinking about getting one. 2019 version with a bit bigger battery. Good job !

I'd like one and also looking at some others. Mini SE, Fiat 500e, Leaf and ID4 if I go new. For a cheap used clean car, It's between Smart and 500e. I heard the 500e ride better. Love your posts and enjoying much!

I own this car since 2018. It is my Citi car only. This car is not meant to go on highways. It’s meant to go in the city. Haven’t put major gas in six years. Gas is now almost 2 dollars a litre in Canada.

Hi Kyle I have been watching you for about 6 months following your journey I was wondering what ev’s would be best for budgets. -thanks Logan

51 Miles only is little bit too short, but getting around in side a city is awesome, so easy to find a parking spot.

i have one and i think the elevation of what looks like level roads matters a lot, it took us 50% battery to get to Disneyland chargers but only 15% of battery to get back home!

Ha ha ha! Loved it! The license plate literally says DUMB, ha ha! 💛

I bought a 2017 Smart a couple of weeks ago and it had a similar whistling sound on the highway. Turned out to be a leak at the top of the windshield on the passenger side. Mercedes is going to replace the glass under warranty since they usually break when they try to remove them.

I'm looking into trading my gas 453 on the electric 453 but my commute is 46 Mike's round trip (although nothing over 50) my big concern is winter ❄️ we get down to -22°F here and at 60% usable range that's just 32 miles. Definitely not enough. Do you think it's manageable or should I steer clear? No chargers at work unfortunately.

Rocky Mount...great city! I have been through there many times. I'm originally from Elizabeth City. Anyhow I have a 2013 Smart. I'm not sure what kind of range you were expecting but what you got out of yours if fairly typical. I can drive a distance of about 47 miles and have about 10% battery remaining. The only difference is that I am not driving 70mph. I take other roads where the speed limit ranges from 30 mph to 55 mph. Taking some other highway other than US 64/Future I-87, you could probably stretch your range a bit. Smarts...good cars but are definitely not made to go hundreds of miles on a single charge.

Very trusting of you t leave your adapter plug on the destination charger. Those things aren't cheap.

What a beautiful place to live! We seem to get better range on ours. Did you have the air on the whole drive? Cheers from Cali!

I’m curious if you’ve ever driven an e golf. I test drove one a few months ago and was very impressed. I’d be curious to get your opinion. They are an incredible deal on the used market.

Those tiny homes would make some great affordable domiciles.

Hi , did you try it with the AC switched off? They say it makes a massive difference to the range?

Beautiful car. Had 2 but the petrol version. If you do need to do long journeys on the highway then I just hire a car for the day or weekend

You lost 1 BAR after promoting the BREWERIES, you are good. 😊 One thing you didn't mention in reference to taking the Smart on the highway; the drag coefficient rating.it has a smaller footprint than the model 3 but a lot higher drag.

My Smart diesel , fortwo does that far plus another 20 on less than a uk gallon 4.5 litres it hold 6 uk gallons so that is a big range without filling , on the road charging on the uk roads are expensive and rare to find.

Kyle, where are the destination chargers down at the mill? Trying to plan a trip the the tiny houses sometime in the nearish future and they arent showing up in google or teslas nav map.

I’m also guessing you meant to say you had 155mm tires. 255mm is larger than what’s on the Model 3 and is the same size as the Model Y’s tires. That would be insanely huge on a Smart.

I'm digging all the breweries around there. I'd enjoy making the rounds trying a bunch of them for sure! The tiny homes sound neat and all until you fall down the ladder at 3am going to pee after drinking all those beers though...

I have the exact same car. My average consumption is 133 watts per km which is about 78 miles on a full charge. I’m gonna try to do a range test on highway and see how many kilometers I can extend the range up to. Will post the results here if anyone is interested.

You are now living on the west side of the USA. Do you still have the 2018 Smart EV?

I have a 44 2021 It does between 90 and 120 between charges. You don't buy a Smart to do 70 mph.

I like how the name of the car is "smart" but the reg plate says "DUMB"

How are you using Tesla wall connector?

Get yer motors runnin head out on the highway!

No one bought them because none of the dealers offered them! The only dealer within 150 miles of me that had exactly ONE was in manhattan. Same with the Ford focus.

How does it plug into a Tesla charger? Thx for the video!

That's odd. We get better range on our 2014 and 2016 then this here in LA. In the summer, 65+ is still common.

I have a 2018 smart ev. Would anyone know how to keep the cab air hot while charging in cold weather 🥶

Mercedes: pay more get less

How to do firmware update in the car?

how much did you drive completely? And at what average / maximum speed?

I almost bought the previous gen Smart ED, but no DCFC ruined it for me with that short range. The Spark EV wound up being the car I bought instead. Didn’t even look at the version you have since the range was even lower, though I had no idea they threw so much rubber on that one.

You said you charged it on a Tesla charger at the end, erm aren't those for Tesla cars only?

Got some guts taking that thing up to that speed

70 mph is probably a land speed record for a "Smart" car--how long did it take to accelerate to 70? I know when Jeremy drove the ICE Smart car on Top Gear, he gave up on 0-60 time since it was over 10 seconds.

I'm glad Kyle loves a car that's built in France🇫🇷 - not for long though as the production shifts to China. The Hambach site will get the Mercedes AQC electric. By the way nice range test!! Can you test a model 3 standard range plus please?

The problem about this car is only 57 miles range is kind a hassle .is just for small city's

My 2012 leaf only goes 30 so the smart is ahead of me

Ive owned 2 gas engine Smart car cabrios They were Awesome!!!! Too bad they left the USA

Such a lovely car. Let down by poor range. Come on Mercedes... put some 2023 spec higher density batteries into it!

Where the iOS app?

I'm surprised they even sell it in the US. US only has 3 or 4 *real* cities. The other "cities" are just a collection of roads going to places with some buildings in between. Why have a city car when you need to take a highway to buy some milk?

I think you meant to say 155 and 165 in the tyres size you said 255 and 265 I think you are so used to see tyre with more then 200 mm tread with that 155 doesn’t compute.

I had one of the last Smart CDis. Wow, incredible economy. 85-90mpg on a run to Scotland and back. EVs are a good idea but not practical enough for most people yet. Rich folk with driveways to wait all day and night to charge them and don't have any interest in driving very far, it suits them. The rest of us live in reality. I like EVs but I like the future version of what we have today. 1000 mile range no matter what the weather conditions or usage of lights, heater etc and the ability to pull into a service station, plug into one of the many plug points in place of the fuel pumps, charge to full in 5 minutes. Thats when I would like to get an EV. Until then, I shall stick two fingers up to everyone with a nice boxer engined Subaru. At least I feel alive in that.

"Any stop time is wasted energy"..what??..I think your getting an ICE car confused with this...when your stopped there is no energy consumption...However, getting the car moving takes more than when your moving...

But i think if its traffic you can't really reach the range that it should be

Is this guy also the everyday astronaut?

It's not really a big con of the smart car, because it's meant for the city

51 miles with A/C on?. Now do it without A/C. Do one video with fiat electric

51 miles? jesus

I would rather get an old leaf and replace the battery with a bigger newer version

crazy to think that the four door lucid supercar is dramatically more efficient than this POS. and I say that as someone who would love to own one. but in terms of engineering, a POS

Bro I think you mean u have 155 square versus 145 & 165 staggered stock not 255 square. It's a smart car not an AMG.

That is truly horrible range. Love petrol smart cars but ev is a crazy purchase.

If they cut the top speed in half it'd make a fantastic quadricycle then you wouldn't need a licence to drive one because technically it wouldn't be classed as a car

Switching to an entirely electric lineup has been the biggest mistake by Smart

Oh yea 255s on a smart car. You sure about that ? Lmao

Horrible junk...

The venomous leaf neurochemically skip because quiver contemporaneously bolt vice a cute ankle. tacky, powerful scarf

So you're saying you did a range test with the AC on.... Are you not aware that heating and cooling in a electric car can significantly skew your results? I question your credibility as a EV range tester now

The 2020 models (not available in US) has a 90 mile range & charges at 22KW instead of 7KW goes from 10%-80% in 40 minutes. Wish US would make these available again.