Smart undercuts all others in electric car pricing

The Smart Fortwo Electric Drive works well as a city car, providing adequate range and very economical operation.

(Credit: Wayne Cunningham/CNET)

Tooling around San Francisco in a convertible, taking in sights such as the Golden Gate Bridge, is a real treat. Doing it in an electric convertible car fits the city’s compact dimensions and progressive, high-tech culture even better.

And the only car for this mission is the 2013 Smart Fortwo Electric Drive, mostly because it is the only electrically driven convertible on the market.

Smart brought a selection of its Fortwo Electric Drive vehicles to San Francisco for a press event, and I grabbed the Cabrio, in Rally Red. The Fortwo Cabrio is sort of a half-convertible. The cloth roof rolls back, bunching up at the rear of the car, but leaving the rear pillars and roof rails up. You can also remove the roof rails and toss them in back, which I did, to open up the cabin a little more.

And like the standard Smart Fortwo, the Fortwo Electric Drive is only a two-seater, with a tiny bit of cargo room in back. Smart points out that over 100 million people commute to work by themselves every day. In addition, 80 percent of these commuters drive less than 40 miles round-trip to work.

That means a huge potential market for the Fortwo Electric Drive, if we Americans can ever get over the idea that we need a commute vehicle with room for f… [Read more]