The Smart EQ forfour is a stylish, compact city car
Smart EQ forfour Review
The Smart EQ forfour is a 4-seat, 4-door electric car.
It’s a fun, well-built EV, ideal for town or city driving. It’s larger than its tiny brother the EQ fortwo, but is still a small, easy to manoeuvre electric vehicle which you can get into a tight space.
The old name for these Smart electric cars was “Smart ED”, with ED standing for Electric Drive. But you can ignore that. Smart EQ is the new official name.
Positives
- Beautifully crafted
- Small and nippy
- 4 seats
Negatives
- Low range
- Not brilliant value for money
Smart EQ forfour Range
It has a 17.6 kWh battery, giving it a real world range of about 73 miles.
How does that stack up against the low-cost, 4-seat, city car competition? Here’s the league table:
- Skoda CITIGOe iV: 146 miles
- Seat Mii electric: 144 miles
- Volkswagen e-up!: 143 miles
- Smart EQ forfour: 73 miles
So, not a great result! The three cars above it – all based on the same electric platform – trounce the Smart in terms of range.
Smart EQ forfour Price
There are three trims to choose from. Here’s the pricing:
- Passion Advanced: from £17,430
- Pulse Premium: from £18,580
- Prime Exclusive: from £19,730
The prices include the PiCG grant.
The Smart is (just) the cheapest of the four cars we looked at above:
- Smart EQ forfour: from £17,430
- Skoda CITIGOe iV: from £17,455
- Seat Mii electric: from £19,800
- Volkswagen e-up!: from £20,555
However, despite its very narrow win on price, the Smart EQ forfour really struggles against its modern competitors. The Skoda especially is basically the same price, but with double the range.
Who is the Smart EQ forfour for?
The EQ forfour is a rear-wheel drive, 4-seat, super compact hatchback.
It’s an ideal electric vehicle for the town or city, where you don’t require tons of range. Small, nippy, not too expensive. In addition, with 4 seats, it’s more practical than the 2-seat version of the Smart EQ.
The build quality is also very good, which is not surprising when you consider Smart is owned by German manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz.
It has a 60 kW motor, and accelerates from 0 to 62 mph in 12.7 seconds. Its top speed is 81 mph.
The Smart EQ forfour is a very compact electric car, at 3.495m long. Having said that, space inside in the back row is not bad at all, and you can fold all the seats down to create a fairly large luggage area.
A note about fast charging: the basic version can only be charged at 7 kW. That’s fine for home charging, but very limiting if you are going on a longer trip and need to charge at a motorway service station, for example. If you are likely to go beyond 70 miles a day on a regular basis, better to opt for the 22 kW on-board charging interface instead.
- If you would like more information about EVs in general, please see our main Electric Cars page.
- For specific details, see the main Smart EQ forfour UK website.
- Otherwise, please scroll down to the Reviews section below for independent analyses.
Smart EQ forfour – Reviews
We have trudged round the web and brought two video and text reviews to you here.
Click on the links below for independent reviews of the Smart EQ forfour from respected car reviewers:
VIDEO REVIEW
Smart EQ forfour (2015 model)
> Car & Driving
- Reviewer: Jonathan Crouch
- Organisation: Car & Driving
- Date published: 21 February 2017
- Length: 41 minutes 49 seconds
WRITTEN REVIEW
Smart EQ forfour
> What Car?
