► Well-made interior; lots of space
► Smart #1 tech can be annoying
► Month 1 requires lots of explanation
Remember that string of daft B-movie alien films with silly or contrived titles in the ’50s? ‘THOSE!’ ‘The Thing From Mars!’ ‘Aliens Stole My Baby!’ That sort of thing. If we were to create one now, Smart’s quirky #1 could make an appearance in the role of a mobility solution from another world.
It really does look different, doesn’t it? And that’s enhanced – for better or worse – by this Lumen Yellow paint (which, de- pending on the light, can look green). Everything’s very rounded and sculpted, soft and sleek – though, to my eye, it doesn’t quite manage to pull it all off. But at least it doesn’t look blandly anonymous. It stands out in the city, which has traditionally been Smart’s home turf, and doubly so when it strays into a leafy villages or a grim industrial estate.
And no, it’s not a Smart. Well, not a Smart in that way, if your idea of Smart is still shaped by the car that came to be known as the ForTwo. The #1 is much bigger than a ForTwo, which in its later years sold poorly and didn’t make much money, so you can see why the current management wants to do things differently. And ‘differently’ here includes an insistence that the name should be pronounced Hashtag One. Cringe. I quickly switched to calling it the One – the thing is already silly enough to look at without being saddled with a daft name.
The #1 is currently available in a choice of four specifications: Pro, Pro+, Premium and Brabus. Pro is your entry model with a baby battery, while Pro+ and my Premium have a bigger battery and more kit. Crucially for my Premium, a heat pump is included to get better efficiency out of the battery pack. The Brabus is a sporty flagship that’s far too quick for its own good.
Climb into the #1 and it’s surprisingly roomy, front and rear. Premium spec has adaptive cruise, panoramic glass roof, adaptive LED headlights, a Beats audio system, head-up display and automatic parking assist. And it feels great in here – the seats are thickly padded and soft, and so many of the materials feel solid. The back, although roomy, is rather lacking in surprise-and-delight features.
The big central screen is glossy and quick to respond, and Smart has been clever by adding in a driver’s display (un- like its Volvo EX30 cousin, which throws EVERYTHING on the central screen, thereby removing the baby with the bathwater).
The first few journeys, though, quickly flagged some tech grumbles. That screen is quick, but boy is it busy – it’s taking a lot of time to get used to, with all of its mad graphics and seemingly pointless fox mascot. And the driver monitoring system seems to need some recalibration – being screamed at by a shrill alarm telling me I’m tired after only five minutes behind the wheel in the middle of the day is not something I’m going to want to happen regularly.
Most of my charging is at the office, which has good connections available, topped up by public chargers when I’m out on the road for work. The office charger is free for us, but I shall be logging my energy consumption using a representative figure of 24p per kWh – the average unit cost of electricity at the time of writing.
That was a lot of explaining, wasn’t it? And although it’s early days, I’ve already found that plenty of people have questions to ask about this strange-looking car that’s wearing a badge they’re surprised to see.
Read month 2 here
Logbook: Smart #1 (month 1)
Price £38,950 (£38,950 as tested)
Performance 66kWh battery, e-motor, 268bhp, 6.7sec 0-62mph, 112mph
Efficiency 3.7 miles per kWh (official), 3.22 miles per kWh (tested)
Range 273 miles (official), 204 miles (tested)
Energy cost 14.0p per mile
Miles this month 1148
Total miles 4093