In attempts to revive and diversify its Smart city car brand, Mercedes Benz has announced it will develop a two-wheeled vehicle which will likely take the form of an electric scooter.
It’s the first step in a new diversification plan that will see Smart enter other segments than the city car niche.
A two-wheeled environmentally-friendly vehicle is seen as fitting in perfectly with Smart’s urban mobility philosophy.
It will be produced in collaboration with component supplier partners of Smart, and will possibly even see production in other parts of the world, including China, India and Thailand.
Mercedes-Benz has already initiated the first steps, with a new project with German energy supplier ENBW which sees 500 electric scooters appearing on the streets of Stuttgart in the next months.
The new Smart scooter will then take advantage of the new charging stations being developed, with field tests in the city being planned with the new infrastructure in the next 12 months.
While Autocar has revealed that the Smart electric scooter is seen as a response to BMW’s C1 revival efforts, the new vehicle will have other competitors in the market, too.
Among its scooter range, Peugeot has the e-Vivacity electric which was developed as a concept with production plans set for a 2011 debut.
Piaggio also has its own USB hybrid concept model, and as a production scooter, there is the Piaggio MP3 Hybrid.
The hope for us is that with something like the Smart electric scooter, we will see more production and less concept models.
It also has the advantage of addressing the very real problem of electric recharge infrastructure.
Ecological urban vehicles are becoming more mainstream and this can only be a good thing.