Smart EQ fortwo
Daimler sold more than 18,400 fully electric smarts in 2018.
(Photo: AP)
Valencia finally tried Daimler at his Small car subsidiary Smart with humor. With lines like “Before Otto is just a first name”, the brand advertised its last models with a petrol engine last year. But that didn’t bring much.
The sales of the tiny things dropped by more than nine percent – to less than 117,000 vehicles sold. Now the eternal loser dares to Daimler a restart. Smart is the first car brand in the world to switch completely from the combustion engine to electric drives,
At the start of the new era, the brand presented a completely revised design and infotainment system for its 2.70-meter short two-seater EQ fortwo and the four-seater EQ forfour in Valencia, Spain. Smart promises consistently emission-free mobility paired with a “new dimension in driving pleasure”.
But the switch to pure Stromer is not completely painless, Daimler sales director Britta Seeger admits: “It is clear that Smart as a purely electric brand will initially not sell as many units as in previous years when we also offered petrol variants have, ”the manager told the Handelsblatt. “But we are aiming for a significant increase in sales this year, based on the sales figures for our e-smarts in 2019.”
Last year Daimler sold just over 18,400 fully electric smarts. In relation to the total sales of the Mercedes manufacturer of almost 2.5 million cars a year, the share of e-smarts is less than one percent.
Nevertheless, the agile small cars can still be very helpful for Daimler. Because the Stuttgart have a PS problem, the Starfleet emits too much climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2). By 2021, Daimler will have to reduce its CO2 fleet emissions in the EU from 138 grams per kilometer to around 105 grams, otherwise there will be high fines from Brussels.
“Smart is a strong support here and a real asset that we have,” states Seeger. The brand’s contribution to achieving Daimler’s CO2 targets is already “interesting” today. And because the top manager is assuming a sustained increase in sales of the tiny things, “this impact will surely increase with the current smart generation in the next few years,” said Seeger.
“A drop in the bucket”
Industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, on the other hand, sees little reason for too much optimism: “It is good for Daimler to have the EQ Smart, but it is more of a drop in the bucket than a comprehensive solution to meet the CO2 requirements,” explains the head of the Center Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Due to the elimination of the comparatively large volume of smart models with petrol engines, Daimler would have to sell more than 30,000 e-smarts in 2020 in order to even keep the current CO2 emissions. In order to significantly lower it, at least a doubling of sales of e-smarts would be necessary.
The problem: With around 22,000 euros, the small green car is not a bargain. At 153 kilometers, the electrical range is only suitable for city trips; longer distances make moderate sense, not least because of the charging time of around 40 minutes to lift the battery from 10 to 80 percent. This limits the potential customers. “These vehicles will mainly be used by nursing or pharmacy delivery services,” believes Dudenhöffer.
The current generation of the Bonsai-Benz is just a bridge anyway. All future smart models will no longer roll off the assembly line in Hambach, France, but are developed and built in China, At the beginning of the year, Daimler transferred its small car brand to a joint venture Geely, Both partners hold 50 percent of the shares, but operational management will lie in the future to the Chinese automaker, whose founder is Li Shufu Daimler’s largest single shareholder,
The collaboration is set to catapult sales of smart to unprecedented heights, after all, Chinese megacities are predestined for tiny cars. Daimler CEO Seeger therefore continues to believe “strongly in the Smart brand”. At the same time, however, it is clear that after two decades of losses, the leap to the Far East is also the very last chance for the small car brand.