What makes a car enthusiast? Is it turning your own wrenches, proudly proclaiming “Built not Bought?” Is it stockpiling parts to preserve specimens for future generations to admire? Is it driving the piss out of it every chance you get? Is it the freedom you experience when you get behind the wheel? Or is it what the car says about you as a person? I think that it’s a little bit of all of these things, so I am stymied when I hear people say that enthusiast culture will die in the era of Electric Vehicles (EVs). As evidence that our culture will not die out but evolve, I present to you a love story of a man and his unique and obscure electric machine.
When it became apparent that VW would be buying back my grey-on-black 2014 6-speed TDI Beetle Convertible – a car that my husband and I dearly loved – I decided to atone for my years of diesel sin and go electric. I was taken by the power of my friend’s $10,000 used Nissan Leaf he got from CarMax, but my husband’s attitude was “over my dead body” would such a hideous thing live in the driveway. As we waited for VW to give me a turn in date for the TDI, I started looking at Leafs and he started looking at any other used EV he could find.
Ironically, he found a grey-on-black 2013 Smart ForTwo Electric Drive Cabriolet for $10,998 and texted me the Autotrader link. I was intrigued, so I test drove a gas convertible to see how I liked the car itself. I liked it, but I absolutely hated the gas drivetrain (that jerky manumatic transmission was unlivable). As fate would have it, a high end used car lot happened to have a hard top Smart Electric Drive on their showroom. They gladly let me take it out for over an hour – I wanted to drive it to the next city over and charge it for 20 minutes before driving back – and despite just 74 horsepower and 96 lb-ft of torque, I absolutely loved how that torquey electric motor moved the car. I pretty much fell in love on the spot: it’s small, quirky, quick, and best of all it costs $1.68 to fully recharge it!
I called the little used car dealer in Delaware where the 2013 Smart was located. I asked a single question: “Does it have two keys?” The answer was yes, so I put a $500 deposit on it using my credit card and then called my credit union’s after-hours call center to get approved for the loan. I was approved but would have to complete the application at a branch, so the next day I took an extended lunch and handled the paperwork at the branch by my work. The banker told me if I’d walked into the branch they’d have denied this loan because it’s an out of state sale, but since I was approved and he was intrigued by the vehicle, he was going to complete the application. As we faxed documents back and forth, VW called me to let me know that I could turn my car in on that Friday – April 1. Best April Fool’s day ever!
After we finished up the paperwork, the dealer told me the car would ship out Sunday morning and be in Durham, NC the following Monday by noon. What are the chances you’d turn in the grey-on-black “cheating diesel” on Friday and pick up your grey-on-black zero tailpipe emissions electric on Monday? Needless to say, sleeping was fraught all weekend. I remember how excited I was when I saw the big rig pull into the Home Depot parking lot. I also remember the look on the driver’s face as he quipped “ain’t this a little small for you, son?” to which I assured him I fit.

After putting my plate on the car, lowering the roof and removing the side rails, I headed to downtown Apex for lunch with a friend and to charge the car at the charging stations in the restaurant’s parking lot. After our lunch, the car was above 80% and I headed home. On the drive home, I decided I’d name this car Gopher after a character from the Victoria Laurie Ghost Hunter series of mystery novels.
Over the weekend, my husband installed a GFCI outlet in the lightpost by the driveway so I could charge the car. A few weeks later I had a gravel parking pad installed in the yard so that I didn’t have to move the Smart when we wanted to take one of the other vehicles. The factory charging cable never liked the GFCI, so I ordered a dual-voltage charging cable from AeroVironment (the TurboCord Dual) and borrowed the cable from my friend’s Leaf until it arrived. I charged at work a lot on our ChargePoint stations, so the overnight charge was only recovering the energy from my 6-mile drive home (about 2 hours of charging, unless I’d ran errands after work).

After replacing the GFCI twice due to ant infestation, I decided that I needed a better charging solution. I called the local solar installer and purchased 12 panels and a ChargePoint Home charging station in June. The work was completed in early July, and from that moment forward I was able to not only show exactly how much energy the car consumed and how much it cost, but I could also compare this to the energy the roof produced and come up with the actual out of pocket cost and environmental impact of my home charging. I wanted to squash the “longer tailpipe” myth, and it just felt good to screw over both big oil and the electric company. To date, roughly 80% of all home charging has been covered by the solar on my roof – I buy less than $155 in electricity to charge my (current fleet of 4) EVs annually.
Over the years Gopher has been through a lot. During one sudden summer storm that caused major flooding, he learned to swim in a parking lot with water up to the top of a school bus tire. He survived this unscathed, having no immediate issues – though the rheostat in the accelerator did give up the ghost about two weeks later. The dealer said for the 2013 model year this wasn’t uncommon – they are all drive-by-wire and use the same part, gas or electric. That was the only major issue I ever had with Gopher, the rest were petty annoyances like the cheap Bosh touch screen nav unit getting stuck in a boot loop (warranty covered).
In 2019, I wanted to take my EV advocacy to the next level, but this would require me to buy a new vehicle with CCS Fast Charging. I sold Gopher to a friend who was in need of an affordable to operate car and I used the money as a down payment on a new 2019 Hyundai Ioniq Electric Base. I cried when Gopher left the driveway, I cried hard. Not even two weeks after selling Gopher to my friend, a deer ran into him. Minor damage, but this was an omen of what was to come. You know you love something when you cry if you sell it, but I cried a little every time my friend drove him over to my house.
In September 2020, my friend hydroplaned into a retaining wall at 55-60mph on the highway. By some miracle, the airbags did not deploy even though it destroyed the passenger rear wheel and all the body panels plus the passenger tail light. My friend and his wife were so afraid to tell me about the accident that I didn’t find out until a week later.
When I found out, I told them that they were obligated to buy the car back from insurance and sell it to me. I’d put myself down as a lienholder on the title to ensure this would happen. $1600 and one new $500 alloy wheel later, Gopher was back in my driveway with a salvage title. I knew someone with a hardtop model where the charger had died, and during COVID he pulled the 12 volt and High Voltage (HV) disconnects, thinking this would slow down the parasitic drain on the HV traction battery.
Turns out, the Battery Management System (BMS) on these cars is powered by the 12v battery. If that dies, the HV battery cells start to self discharge and when one of them drops below 3.1 volts the pack will disable itself. That’s exactly what happened, but we didn’t know this until after he’d sold the car to a mutual friend who sourced a replacement on board charger for the car and had attempted to bring it back to life.



I paid the mutual friend what he had in the car and proceeded to dismember it as spares for Gopher and my husband’s 2014 Smart Electric Drive Cabrio (named Opus – his heater had failed to turn on a few weeks prior; the part was $1500 but luckily it sprang to life the next day). Gopher now has a silver rear end and a matte grey front end, and a spare set of matching alloy wheels with good rubber (though one of the front ones is slightly bent)
I stored the charging unit, heater, glass, and other interior bits in my basement (with a collection of Volvo parts for cars long gone, but we won’t get into that). I sold some of the parts to other Smart owners around the US, and donated the dead HV battery to a YouTuber in South Carolina who is using the revived cells in a battery project to help his elderly neighbors keep their CPAPs and Medicine mini Fridges running during power outages. He said they experienced 24 outages lasting over 48-hours in 2019. The rest of the drivetrain is sharing a tarp with the rear axle from a Volvo 700 or 900 series (you’d have to ask my husband for the specifics).
In late 2021, my EV advocacy resulted in a job opportunity supporting industrial-scale charging solutions for Class 4-8 vehicles (buses, box trucks, semis). I travel a lot for work now in Miss Albert, my 2019 Audi etron. Gopher still gets driven when I am home, and I lend him out to anyone who temporarily needs a car (like our renter who has a Fiat 500). Gopher saw a little over 4,000 miles driven in 2021. When I performed the annual range test in early fall, he pulled 73 miles out of the 68-mile rated battery pack. I did a health check using the open-source BMS interface kit at Thanksgiving, it revealed that the Feb 2013 built battery has 91% of its original capacity. Based on current driving habits, Gopher should cross 100,000 miles before he turns 20 years old and should have +/- 80% of his battery capacity (roughly 45 miles of range).


Gopher’s convertible top is peeling away from the frame at the front, and I’ve had the local top shop glue it down twice now. Mercedes wasted no time abandoning these cars in the US, and the parts are already End of Life. I went ahead and bought one of the last 8 top panels in the world, and one of the 3 remaining rear panel assemblies in the world. I pray that I can get two more seasons out of the original top before I install the new one.
I intend to keep driving Gopher until the wheels literally fall off, and I have enough spare parts to make that happen (and I’m always on the lookout for more). Only a true enthusiast would go this far to keep a car going, and I look forward to putting Antique tags on Gopher some day. I remain optimistic that I’ll be able to put a better battery into him in the future, as I see battery remanufacturing to be one of the DIY/aftermarket movements in the EV era (it’s already happening with NiMH packs for Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight and Civic hybrids).
Nice write up
Recently bought a 2015 smart electric drive for my 16 yr old daughter and she loves it!
Gopher has led a charmed life. Nice to see it still running.
I found this article plenty confusing. At the start it sounds like a woman owns the car but then it switches to what sounds like (and is pictured) a man. The technical details of the smart are correct, but it’s presented in a way to scare anyone off. Parts for the non-EV components should available for many years, Europe has 1000’s of these still on the road. Failure of the EV components is possible, but it’s by no means inevitable. These parts don’t “wear out” like mechanical parts.
The article does a good job of conveying the enthusiasm EV’s engender, and this quirky car in particular. I love mine!
Hey Charles, glad you enjoyed the article! Sorry you were confused about a gay man who loves cars and his Smart in particular.
Giggle
Hi Charles, I’m the author of this article and I truly appreciate your feedback. I am really glad that you love your Smart electric!
Scaring folks off wasn’t the intention, I’m presenting the reality of owning an orphaned low production electric vehicle (total US sales was just over 8,000 units –
5,561 451’s and 2,443 453’s). My experience with obtaining parts, via my husband who works for a large franchise that had a Smart Center, is that 451 parts are EOL. Mercedes is under no obligation beyond warranty replacement to maintain parts for a vehicle in the US, meaning that 2021 was the last year of required support for 451 model vehicles (last model year 2016, Electric Drive only – all other 451’s ended in 2015). I double-checked and am pleased to see that the HV Traction Battery shows again in the MB parts catalogue (PN 789 340 7201), a few months ago it had vanished from the catalogue entirely. The battery, thanks to California, is required to be supplied for 10 years — but that means come 2026 there won’t be a requirement to supply HV batteries for 451s (2029 for 453s).
The ceramic electric heater, AC compressor, and onboard charging unit are all $1500-$3600 parts if you can obtain them from MB. The parts car already had a failed charger and its AC compressor is leaking oil, Opus’ heater still acts up from time to time, and Smart Car of America forums has an unfortunate number of stories of Electric Drives that died due to COVID/dead 12v batteries. The BMS design of this car is, frankly, poorly thought out and not tending to the 12v can and will cause you to brick the HV battery. These EV parts that are going to become very hard to source in the very near future. Cabriolets (regardless of drivetrain) have even more model-specific components that are going to be near impossible to source in the future.
Hopefully this clears things up a bit for you and anyone else who stumbles across this. I hope your Electric Drive gives you many years of fuss-free service!
Chris,
Excellent article! I share your enthusiasm for Smart cars (I own three). Would enjoy swapping information and experiences. Can we establish channels of communication not so public nor cumbersome as texting? Thanks.
Richard
So I’m replying not that I expect you to see my reply but so people in general see my reply the problem here is that I personally had a radiator overflow cap come off while driving.
This cat was gone I mean gone could not find it on the highway anywhere it had been lost way back somewhere probably days before.
I only noticed it was gone when I pulled into AutoZone and wanted to do a radiator flush got some radiator flush and went ahead and attempted to put some in right there in the parking lot because why wait only to find there was no cap.
I called Mercedes-Benz here in North Carolina they gave me the number of two other places in North Carolina I called them one of them gave me the Mercedes-Benz of California California gave me the Mercedes-Benz in Germany because none of them here had any interest in giving me a part for that car what would have been a $8 radiator cap 5 years ago ultimately turned into buying a used cap and tank from a car in San Diego that was wrecked and having it shipped to me for $100 plus $20 to get them to ship it to me as soon as possible because I’m literally still paying $13,000 on the car and needed to drive it….
The Germany Mercedes-Benz says we only have three of these caps left and we can’t send them to you for about a month so they did not get the purchase that being said they are not producing these parts they’re not producing those caps they’re not producing anything for that car in order for you to get something from a place in Europe or Germany you would have to one be able to call their scrap yard to be able to convince the scrap yard to do it themselves and then three be able to communicate with them and their language so that they knew how to help you and then promptly for be able to pay them with an international currency for things of which I could not do.
Keep this list of problems in check the next time you’re buying a smart car my attempt to get into this has costed me $13,000 of debt for a car that may not have parts around when I’m done buying the car….
Enthusiast or not I will not be buying anything European or Mercedes-Benz from now on
Is Chris’s “bricked” HV battery still available? It is probably restorable. There are enthusiasts in the Smart Car of America Forum who would be interested in it.
https://www.smartcarofamerica.com/forums/smart-fortwo-electric-drive.170/
It is not available, it was donated to a Youtuber par the article. At least 5 (of 31) cells were still discharging below 2.5v at the time I gave it away.
Restorable… as a house battery, yes. Car battery, no. Anything riveted together isn’t going to reassemble without the rivets. In the link to the ED3 battery tear down, they clearly state you have to remove the screws, drill out the rivets. and remove the adhesive. There is no way that you’re be able to re-assemble the pack in the original shell, in my humble opinion.
Hi, Chris.
So happy to have your article pop up… I assume because I’m always looking for a SMART, especially a convertible electric.
I had a SMART some years ago but traded in for a VW EOS. A beautiful car but I’ve continued to pine for my pretty, little SMART.
I started looking to trade back about 2 years ago. Unfortunately offerings in Canada are very limited, especially soft-tops. I’ve been tempted to forego the electric version because of the limited range but realized this really isn’t an issue given how little I drive outside of our city.
I’m definitely a fan of this car, which just feels absolutely perfect for me, despite everyone else laughing at my choice!
I’m now trying to find out how to import a used SMART into Canada from the US. Fingers crossed. You’ve given me the encouragement I needed to keep chasing the dream.
Late reply, but people are successfully restoring their HV battery packs. Rivets can be replaced with nuts and bolts.
Just returned from Paris where they are on every corner. I had contemplated buying one this month, now maybe not
I enjoyed reading your post. My first Smart was a 2008 Cabriolet gas the front edge on the top is a weak point but all soft tops leak after a while. At 89000 miles I gave it to my granddaughter and two years ago bought a used 2015 Smart EV with 28000 miles on it. It’s a around town car. $6400 and the best car purchase I’ve ever made. Whomever purchased it originally put every option available init. Leather seats, front and back up cameras, ATOT system with everything. Love the car.
Interesting article. I also recommend those wanting to know more about the Smart car and have access to some very helpful members, join the Smart car forum mentioned above.
Bought a Smart 451 EV new in 2015. Loved it so much that we bought two more. Cheapest and easiest cars to service and maintain that I’ve ever owner. However, I now realize that there is no need for us to have three or them, so I’m offering the cabriolet for sale. Here is a link to it – https://www.smartcarofamerica.com/threads/2014-smart-ev-cabriolet-for-sale.161067/
Len