Driven: Smart ForTwo Electric

'Electric”. “Smart”. Could any combination be more anti-magnetic?

On their own, each of those two words can cause grown adults to act like vile children. I have seen a roomful of middle-aged men descend into a near uproar over the alleged benefits and drawbacks of electric cars. Similarly, there are motoring aficionados in whose company uttering a word of praise for any kind of Smart car is tantamount to telling Brian Sewell that you can see some merit in the art of Tracey Emin.

Thus we inch unenthusiastically towards the new Fortwo Electric Smart Cabriolet burdened down under bushels of prejudice.

And what happens? The car blows away those preconceptions in breezes of pleasure.

This is the third electric Smart to appear since 1997 but the first that Mercedes (owners of the Smart brand) regard as the finished article and available to the public rather than to corporate or local authority fleets.

The new hardtop and convertible electric-powered Smart has a theoretical range of 90+ miles on an overnight charge from domestic supply; but on the basis of a brief drive on suburban streets around the Brooklands cathedral that is Mercedes world, I can say that this is not only the best Smart yet produced: it is the only one in which I could bear to drive more than a mile.

Petrol-powered Smarts are abominable. Their jerky semi-automatic transmission systems deliver gearchanges with all the fluency of Ed Miliband gearing himself up towards a punchline. Their light, high bodies ride on their little wheels with all the smoothness and sophistication of an orange box on a skateboard. Every lump and pothole they hit delivers a jarring shock through the spine of the driver who is condemned to hang on for grim death to the steering wheel.

The electric Smart smooths away these horrors with a single turn of its power key (no ignition here). Its gearless drive system (simply choose forward, reverse or neutral) delivers instantaneous, creamy power. Step on the accelerator pedal and you can nip silently and cleanly away at a pace to match all but the maddest dispatch riders. Previous electric Smarts ran out of power at about 60mph but the new car’s top speed might get you into no-laughing-matter trouble with the police on the motorway.

The combined weight of the 17.5kw lithium-ion battery and the 75bhp magneto-electric synchronous motor anchor this Smart to the road – meaning that you’ve got a chance of staying in the lane you choose on the motorway or of speeding accurately around a corner on minor roads without bouncing unintentionally from kerb to apex and back again. A sophisticated suspension combination of Macpherson struts at the front and a DeDion axle at the back supplies a ride that is merely grim rather than the normal Smart’s unbearable. The steering is delightfully positive and firm.

My electric Smart had been decked out in ice-cream colours – vanilla for the bodywork and pistachio for the trim and that colour scheme was followed in the cabin where lurid green tips decorated the stalks, the pods on the fascia that contained the battery meters and the insets on the upholstery.

Colour combinations less like Mr Whippy vans are on offer.

The fabric roof powers back in stages, first opening like a sunroof and then folding over the tail like a Citroën 2CV. It adds to the breathtaking cost of the car that is, even so, the cheapest electric car on the roads of Britain – but, then, everything adds to the cost on this car. You may legitimately wonder how many hundreds of miles you would have to drive at the 10p cost per mile of the electricity just to earn back the cost of the extra £30 they charge merely for the cupholder in this car? And that’s just for a start.

Smart ForTwo Electric

Price as tested: £17,705

Telegraph rating: Three out of five stars