Smart has not made the leap from curiosity to serious eco-city runabout in the United States. Now the brand is giving up the North American market.
The Daimler small car subsidiary Smart is withdrawing from North America. At the end of the current model year, the sale of the city car in the USA and Canada will be discontinued due to insufficient demand. The local customers prefer big cars.
In March, Smart had only sold 90 vehicles in the U.S.A., despite its launch, which was well received by the public and the media, many customers never found the car, which was unusually small for North America. The record of almost 25.000 new registrations in the start year 2008 could not be reached later, already in the following year only 15.000 Americans were interested in the two-seater, most recently the numbers were only four digits. The change initiated in 2017 to a pure electric brand - the combustion variants were withdrawn from the market - apparently could not save the brand.
The reasons for the failure include the persistently low fuel prices in the USA, which continue to give buyers large and heavy SUVs and pick-ups with conventional engines. More spacious models are also in demand in the electrical niche than the 2,70-meter Mini. Apart from that, the Smart was never able to position itself strongly as an eco-model in the USA anyway - the official US consumption values were sometimes higher than those of hybrid models or larger mini-car models.
For Smart, the future is somewhere else - in China. Daimler recently announced that it would build the upcoming generation, which from the start was only available as an electric car, together with the Chinese manufacturer Geely and market it locally and on the world market from 2022. The USA will probably remain exempt from this. Instead, group sister Mercedes wants to compete there with electric SUVs like the EQC.