Name: Smart EQ forfour
Item: Smart EQ forfour
Rating: 3.5
Author: David Lewis

The Smart EQ forfour is a stylish, compact city car

Introduction to the Smart EQ forfour

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 Smart forfour electric range of about 70 miles.

How does that stack up against the competition? It’s about the same range as most of the other 4-seaters such as the VW e-up, Citroen C-Zero and Peugeot iOn.

The 4-seat BMW i3 has a range of about 100 miles more, but it does cost over £13,000 more than the Smart forfour.

Smart EQ forfour – Price

It costs from £18,190, including the PiCG grant. It’s one of the cheapest EVs around.

That really puts it in serious competition with the Volkswagen e-up, another small 4-seater, that costs £19,615.

Only the Citroen C-Zero and Peugeot iOn are cheaper at around £17,000.

However, the EQ forfour is not offering much value for money in today’s increasingly competitive EV market. The price you pay per mile of range is towards the lower end of the table.

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. Small, nippy, not too expensive – perfect. 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.

Its closest rivals are probably the Citroen C-Zero and Peugeot iOn, which allow for faster motorway charging at 40 kW, and the VW e-up.