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Mercedes-Benz has ordered €20 billion ($31 billion) worth of lithium-ion battery cells, which will see the company through until 2030. The German automaker expects battery-electric vehicles to account for between 15 and 25 per cent of its annual sales by 2025...
The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and Daimler, parent of Mercedes-Benz and Smart, may expand the scope of their collaboration to include electric drivetrain and self-driving car technology development...
Smart will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the 2018 Paris motor show with the drop-top ForEase concept. Following in the footsteps of the crossblade and forspeed, the concept aims to offer passengers a "liberated and pure driving experience" by turfing the roof. There's no folding soft- or hard-top, it's just an old-fashioned speedster...
Citing "challenges presented by the transformation of the automotive industry”, Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz and Smart, has announced a succession plan for the roles of CEO, chairman, and head of research and development. In a statement overnight, Daimler confirmed Ola Källenius will replace Dieter Zetsche as the company’s CEO and the head of the Mercedes-Benz passenger car brand...
Brabus has revealed its latest take on the Smart ForTwo, in the form of the limited-edition 125R. Although power still comes from a three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, the boffins at Brabus have bumped outputs from 66kW and 135Nm to 93kW and 200Nm. The bump comes from a modified air intake, a new intercooler, and a recalibrated ECU...
Smart has officially been around for 20 years. The city-car maker burst onto the scene in July 1998, with a two-seater (the inventively named ForTwo) measuring just over 2.5m long. More than 2.2 million examples have been sold since then, across 46 markets around the world...
Mercedes-Benz will invest €500 million ($786 million) upgrading its Smart factory to produce a new "compact EQ model". Although the company hasn't officially announced it, it's likely this car will be the production version of the EQA Concept. Unveiled in September 2017, the EQA Concept has 200kW of combined power on tap from two electric motors — one for each axle...
Dieter Zetsche, boss of Mercedes-Benz, has confirmed the Smart micro car brand will go all-electric in European markets by the end of the decade. Speaking at the company's annual shareholder's meeting, as reported by Carscoops, Daimler's little city car brand will only offer its electric vehicles (EV) in the coming years, following a similar move made in the North American market this year...
There are plenty of cars well suited to carting around the makings of a disco. Vans, for example, have plenty of space for the speakers, lights, smoke machines and equipment necessary for a big party. In a marketing tie-up with a product designer Konstantin Grcic, Smart took what was arguably the least-suited car for carting equipment around – the ForTwo – and turned it into the Mobile Disco...
Mercedes-Benz’s Smart subsidiary has released the first series production cars in the group’s electrified EQ sub-brand. The Smart EQ fortwo and forfour models premiered this week the night before the Geneva motor show, headlined by special ‘nightsky’ edition models, in black and blue...
Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz and Smart, has confirmed Li Shufu, founder and chairman of Geely, has aquired a 9.69 per cent stake in the German van, truck and luxury car maker. According to The Detroit News and other outlets, Li's stake in the German company cost around €7.3 billion ($11.5 billion)...
BMW, Daimler (parent of Mercedes-Benz and Smart), Ford and Volkswagen have joined forces to roll out a fast charging network for electric cars across Europe. Ionity, a new joint venture company equally owned by the four automakers, plans to have approximately 400 high-power charging stations open "across European major thoroughfares" by 2020...
The Mercedes-AMG Project One hypercar might have stolen all the limelight at the Mercedes-Benz unveiling before the official opening of the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show, but the diminutive Smart Vision EQ ForTwo is just as important to the future DNA of Daimler globally according to the man who should know...
Just days after being teased on social media, the Smart Vision EQ Fortwo concept has been revealed ahead of the Frankfurt motor show. Launching under parent Mercedes-Benz's new 'EQ' electric sub-brand, the Smart Vision EQ Fortwo show car measures a diminutive 2699mm long, 1720mm wide and 1535mm tall, and potentially previews the next-generation of the urban carmaker's smallest model, the Fortwo...
Smart has taken to social media to tease its upcoming concept bound for the Frankfurt motor show next month - an autonomous electric vehicle. Pitched as "the smart vision of urban mobility for tomorrow", not much is given away by the Mercedes-Benz micro car subsidiary other than the image of the vehicle's face posted on Instagram, which replaces the traditional front grille with a screen saying "on my way"...
Smart is no longer available in Australia, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still like the little guys. For 2017, Smart are offering greater personalisation choices and a full-electric drivetrain to help make the little city car more of a lifestyle accessory than urban runabout. Check out the Milka-chocolate wrapped one - hmmm.
The Fortwo Brabus will likely feature an engine with just over 75kW (100hp) of power to its credit and will have an official fuel consumption rating of 5.2L/100km. Aside from that, the blog doesn’t spill any other beans about the hotted up version of the ForTwo. At present, the most powerful version of the third-generation, rear-engine Smart Fortwo is the turbocharged 0...
Smart’s tiny Fortwo is back in the spotlight with the unveiling of its new Cabrio sibling today, ahead of a Frankfurt motor show premiere. In its new 2016 form, the Fortwo Cabrio features a unique ‘tritop’ folding roof that can be simply pushed backwards for use as a sunroof, or folded right down to the tailgate - with the roof rails then detached for stowage in the boot - for a proper convertible experience...
Daimler UK, together with rail consulting firm Interfleet, took one ForFour city hatch and converted it into the Smart ForRail, a small four-person train. According to Smart, although James Bond was able to drive a Mercedes-Benz 250SE on train tracks in Octopussy by simply having the tyres shredded by spikes, in the real world converting a road car into a train is much more involved process...
Daimler Smart has no plans to make the world’s smallest crossover SUV for the time being, contrary to recent reports out of Europe. CEO Annette Winkler told Automotive News this week that rumours of a high-riding Smart appeared greatly exaggerated. “We are not planning an SUV,” she said, though she did add the old standard line of “never say never”...
