Category: City Cars 
Price Range: £8,518 to £16,026
Refined, free road tax, safest in electric class.
Limited range, occasional driveline shunt, poor steering feel, potential list price.
Smart ED comprehensively outclasses its quadricycle alternatives, but is still hobbled by a poor range and lengthy recharge time.
It's rare we test a car that you can't buy, but in the case of the new electric Smart Fortwo, we're willing to make an exception.
That's because the Smart could very well be the first 'proper' electric car.
Designed, developed and engineered using a Smart city car, the Fortwo gains a significant advantage over its frail electric quadricycle alternatives.
The Fortwo ED benefits from car-like dynamics, a build quality its electric carmaking competitors can only aspire to and a ventilation system that actually works.
Better yet, the Smart has ESP and two airbags as standard, and has already scored four stars in the Euro NCAP crash tests, making it far safer than any of the electric competition.
On a full charge the Smart theoretically has a 70-mile range, reach a top speed of around 72mph flat-out and hit 37mph (60km/h) in 5.7 seconds - all of which are far superior figures when compared to the competition.
The Smart has been created in the UK with Staffordshire-based electric car specialist Zytek, using sodium nickel chloride batteries. Unfortunately, these batteries do not come cheap and if the ED was on sale today, its sticker price would nudge alarmingly close to £20,000 - which is why it is only available to a select number of businesses on lease-only deals.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Smart fortwo
wrote on 11 08 2006