The successor to the Smart ForTwo could be given the green light in a few months, the company’s European boss Dirk Adelman has revealed, but it must be shown to be profitable before it gets the final go-ahead.
Smart states that they are working on a small electric city car, but also that the company needs a partner to be profitable.
Adelman confirmed to Autocar that plans are underway for an electric replacement. “It would be great if we had a direct successor – we don’t, but we’re working on it.”
He acknowledged the strong business case for a new-era city car – “not just in Europe, but specifically for Europe, so it would make sense to put it on sale.”
There are already proposals for a city car, internally named ‘Project 2’ and the production model is expected to carry the #2 designation.
Addressing the potential confusion that could arise from it being much smaller than the #1 crossover, Adelman explained that the number 2 was reserved “on purpose” because it’s an “iconic number” for the brand and should be used for the successor to the Fortwo.
As the Smart line expands, he said, a pattern will emerge where odd numbers are used for SUVs and SUV-coupes models, and even numbers for “other products”.
But more important than defining the shape and styling of the EV is to ensure that it will be profitable, and for that Smart is looking for a partner company with which it can share development and production costs.
“The city car segment is not huge in Europe; the best year for the Fortwo was around 100,000 units, and that’s not enough to justify the platform,” Adelman said.
“But if you share this platform with partners, then you can share the investment costs and the production location, then it makes sense. “The last thing we want to do is produce a vehicle that nobody makes money on, because that vehicle won’t last long. “We want to make a positive business case for us, for our vendors and ultimately for our customers.”
Smart is 50% owned by the Chinese company Geely, which owns a number of car brands spanning a huge range of sizes and segments. It remains unclear whether one of these could partner with Smart for a city car, but it looks like the closest match to the original Fortwo in size from across the Geely portfolio would be the Geometry Panda – a three-metre four-seater electric city car with a range of 200 km.
Prepared by: Ivan Mitić – Autoblog.rs
Source: autoblog.rs
