look slike very litmited numbers are slotted for the US, available only by lease to "premium" buyers. Incidentally, this is odd to me from a strategic standpoint because the US is a critical market to understand for a short range EV and also they have a very important ZEV requirement to meet from the CARB mandate. I would have assumed the majority of the Smart EDs would have been depoloyed in CA.
from Automotive News (sub req'd) so I cut and paste the text here (don't tell anyone)
Low volume launch for electric Smart in the US
Rick Kranz Automotive News Europe
February 2, 2009 06:01 CET
DETROIT -- Smart’s electric-powered ForTwo will be limited to several hundred vehicles for its US launch in 2010.
The car will be available in just a few US cities, said Anders-Sundt Jensen, vice president for Smart brand communications.
“We will launch it first in Berlin, then in Paris and Rome and we will continue to expand to other European cities,” Jensen said.
Among the cities under consideration for the first US sales are San Francisco and Austin, Texas. In 2012, the electric Smart will be offered in more cities.
Jensen said the electric Smart likely will be offered only with leases. Although it is too early to estimate the monthly lease payment, the car will have a premium price.
“The technology is quite expensive. Because the technology is an untraditional powertrain, you have a special customer requesting it. They are willing to pay a higher price,” Jensen said at the Detroit auto show.
The electric-powered ForTwo will go into production at the end of the year. Power will be supplied by lithium ion batteries that have a range of 100 kilometers to 110km.
Jensen said the electric-powered ForTwo eventually could account for 20 to 50 percent of Smart’s global production.
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