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InsideEVs
InsideEVs
Technology
Andrei Nedelea

Second New Smart EV Spied In China... With Brabus Seats

Smart doesn’t just want to go all-in on electric vehicles, but it also wants to diversify and expand the range of vehicle it sells, which means it will start selling larger vehicles too. The first model from its new EV line has already been revealed, it’s called the #1 and its a tall looking crossover, and now it looks like it will get an equivalent hatchback model too.

Spied in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, by PCAuto, this is clearly a heavily camouflaged Smart prototype. We can see that it has a very similar headlight design to the #1, the same mirror design and the same curvaceous styling language. It is much lower and sportier looking, though, and this particular example may even be a performance variant.

We speculate this based not only on the big red callipers and sporty looking five-spoke rims, but also the Brabus logo on the two front seats’ headrests. The seats themselves do look fairly sporty, with sizeable side supports, but it’s not an extreme design, suggesting this will just be a quick, not extreme performance variant (Brabus badges and all).

Regarding its exterior design, it actually looks quite good, even under all that camouflage. The rear end features a fastback design and with those wheels, the red brakes, it all looks really sporty.

We don’t know a whole lot about this model right now, not even its name - the crossover is called #1, so under that logic, this would be #2. However, calling a car Number 2 may not go down so well in English-speaking markets, so we’re not sure this is what Smart will go for.

What we do know is that just like #1, this hatchback will be built on the Geely SEA platform, it will reportedly be rear-wheel drive and pack over 320 horsepower, 343 Nm (252 pound-feet) of torque in the most potent variant and sprint to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 6.7 seconds. 

This most powerful version will probably bear a Brabus badge, although nothing is confirmed yet. Power will come from a 66 kWh battery pack that should give the vehicle a WLTP range of just over 400 km (250 miles) on one charge.

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