Hi Scotty:
What do you think of a 2014 Smart ForTwo electric drive with 22,000 miles for $5000? The owner says it gets about 75 miles on a charge. How can I get the battery inspected?
If the range on the instrument panel is 75mi, then the battery health is 88% of new (85mi).
Is this the only option? Also, the SmartForTwo has been discontinued after 2019 model year. It never really did sell well (for EVs) here in North America - more of a niche vehicle - and Smart dealers are very few and far between (although Daimler owns them). Being a niche car, parts may be hard to get over time and you’d have to take to a competent mechanic that knows these vehicles (electric vehicles in general). You might be better off with a Nissan Leaf, if you want a used EV. I still recommend a gasoline vehicle that many more mechanics know how to work on and parts are readily available (and cheap).
Thanks. Well I was looking for a smaller EV since I would only be using it for myself for commuting, not family use. I want something that will be easy to charge with regular household 110 voltage that can fully charge overnight (i,e., not a Tesla). My commute is well under the 75 mile range so I thought that for a spare car this might be a good entry point into EV. Scotty is always trashing Nissan, so I was not really looking at the Leaf. Scotty did a video on the EV Smart Car and said good things about it so I was going on his review here.