• Smart needs to partner with another OEM to make new mini EV platform
  • Existing Geely platforms aren’t suitable for adapting
  • Third-gen ForTwo went out of production last month

Compact, light, and maneuverable, the Smart ForTwo makes far more sense as an EV than many bigger battery-powered cars. But the third-generation model has just finished production and Smart can’t greenlight the next one until it finds a partner.

Smart is now jointly owned by Mercedes and Geely, and its #1 and #3 electric crossovers are built in China on the same Geely SEA2 architecture used by the Zeekr X and Volvo EX30. But when Smart looked into cutting down an existing platform to build a car around 2.75 m (108 inches) long that would still perform well in safety tests, it struggled to find a way forward.

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“Two months ago, we began working on a new, dedicated platform to underpin a future Smart two-seat city car, but we need partners to make its business case feasible,” said Smart Europe CEO Dirk Adelmann, according to Auto News.

“We want to stick to four- or five-star crash test rating on the Euro NCAP, to ADAS functionalities like in our #1 and #3, to have a decent range,” Adelmann said. “Definitely we have to develop a platform, because unfortunately it does not exist yet.”

Smart Needs Help To Make New ForTwo EV

Though Smart held talks with multiple OEMs, including Mercedes, Renault, and Chinese brands, it decided to work on its own platform – dubbed Electric Compact Architecture (ECA) – in February. But because it still hasn’t found a partner for the project Smart is unable to put a definite timeframe on the launch of the new ForTwo, which will be rebranded #2 to bring it into line with Smart’s other cars – although rather confusingly both the #1 and #3 will be larger.

Smart launched the revolutionary first-generation ForTwo in 1998, introduced a second-gen model in 2006, and followed it up with a third in 2014. That car was built in France until March of this year at a factory now occupied by the Ineos Grenadier production line. Auto News notes that despite its age the ForTwo has remained Smart’s most popular model in Europe so far this year and that any new model would have a significant advantage over other two-seaters like the Citroen Ami that are homologated as quadricycles, and are neither as safe or powerful.