► We speak to head of product for Smart Europe
► What’s next for the brand
► And why the electric city car is dead – for now
Revealed earlier this year, the #5 is the third model from the new-look Smart, and the furthest yet from the original city car that the brand was built on. Measuring 4695mm to the ForTwo’s 2695mm, for example, it’s a D-segment bruiser that packs in power as well as tech.
Executives say the #5’s efficient use of space means it’s a Smart through-and-through – and the market numbers also make a compelling case for it. But will Smart ever return to the segment it both supercharged and disrupted all those years ago?
‘I think the challenge for every OEM in the smaller segments is trying to understand feasibility, both in terms of technical feasibility and also the business case side of it as well.’ Xuan-Zheng Goh, head of product management at Smart Europe explains to us at the #5 launch.
Behind him are the bold, robust lines of the new #5 SUV. Smart says there are fewer consumers in the larger D-segment, but they’re willing to pay more – and therefore generate more profit. This is the first problem for city cars in 2025.
‘Smaller cars are harder to make money on,’ Goh tells me. ‘This is why we’ve seen a number of competitors or other mainstream players have slowly exited that segment.’
He’s right. The supermini market has essentially collapsed, with the end of the Fiesta in 2023 leaving a huge hole.
‘It’s no secret those things have added cost to any OEM who’s looking to develop any car,’ he continues. ‘Those type of costs are more easily absorbed in larger vehicles than they are smaller ones, because customers of smaller cars generally have less money to buy those vehicles.’
The other problem comes with the technology needed to power an all-electric city car – something unavoidable for Smart given its net-zero ethos: ‘The other side of it, which is always the case with any EV, is trying to find that optimum balance between battery size and range, because we know that the battery is one of the more expensive parts of the vehicle.’
That doesn’t mean we’re never going to see an electric city car – but it does make things significantly harder in the short-term. ‘We’ve been fairly open to say that we are exploring that area,’ Goh tells me. ‘But at the moment, we’ve got nothing official to say.
‘The market is there, and whoever can go in there, there’s a very good opportunity, definitely.’
I’d argue the just-released Hyundai Inster is making a good fist of being a city EV, though perhaps the margins and tech constraints aren’t quite right for Smart to dip in just yet.
An EV-only brand could be seen as a gift or a curse – just look at the difference in fortunes between new-energy spin-offs Polestar and Cupra – but it’s no surprise Goh views Smart’s current BEV strategy as a plus: ‘The fact that we’ve said we’re 100% electric makes our brand and product proposition very clear that we that we have one strategy going forward for Europe,’ he reminds us.
‘We don’t have to manage some of the complexities that some of our competitors have to look at.’ And there are many, which are changing all the time.
So what next?
With smaller EVs on ice due to a mixture of market conditions, regulations and tech barriers (even with the might of Geely behind it) Smart is focusing on where the money is – and on a case-by-case basis at that.
‘We don’t see ourselves going any bigger than the current #5, because we know that the larger size markets certainly in Europe, are less popular,’ Goh explains. ‘I think we will look to fill in the gaps [in the model range] where we can, but we’ll assess it from a segment-by-segment perspective.’