The smart #3 has a fast-charging feature that every Electric Car should have!

In a world where there are almost more new brands in the Car Market than existing ones there’s also plenty of surprises and I’d put the smart #3 in that category.

smart (they don’t capitalise the name, don’t blame me!) originally was a partnership between Swatch and Mercedes with “art” on the side – these cute little city cars are all over Europe.

Geely is an automotive giant, producing over 3.3 million cars a year, and this new focus on smart as a fully electric brand really comes from the Geely strength in that space.

I’m not entirely sure that a ten minute dealership test drive is enough to really wrap your head around this car, took me a few days – and let me tell you in those first days I was cursing the smart #3

For this review I’m driving the top of the line model – don’t blame me, that’s what they handed over! – the Brabus. Brabus is like the HSV badge but for German cars like Mercedes and also now their smart brand. It basically means tuned, and sporty!

Driveaway price on this one is $76,188.62 for me in NSW, and that’s a decent cheque to write. There sure are plenty of EV’s at and under that price point, so I think a smart #3 buyer is looking for something unique, a little special perhaps.

The smart #3 Key

Unique for sure, this is the weirdest key I’ve seen on a car. It’s a little disc, and while I think it’s nifty, my old-man eyes struggle to see which is unlock and lock.

With a keyring attached it might get easier – with “unlock” on the left with the keychain hanging from the top. But seriously, put Lock in the middle like most cars and put and make the bump on the key a bit easier to feel.

First world problem, but by gosh it’s been frustrating as someone who gets up and out to the car in the dark at 3 and 4am.

Charging the smart #3

This may be the perfect car when it comes to charging. The 415km range on the Brabus (455km on the Premium, 435km on the base model Pro+) isn’t really much by today’s standards, but is perfectly adequate for 99% of drivers.

You should get a charge from 0-80% on fast-chargers in 25minutes on a 150kW charger, and about an hour on a 50kW charger.

At home, a 0-100 battery charge will take about 30 hours on a trickle charger, but hold the phones folks, the Brabus and Premium editions are capable of actually fully harnessing a 3-phase home wall charger installation.

My home charger is wired to three-phase power, but charges almost all EVs at 11kW (A single phase charge is 7.4kW). However, the Brabus smart #3 will charge at 22kW.

That’s a huge difference, basically double the speeds, so it’s possible to get 0-100% charge in just three hours.

Why more car companies aren’t wiring for this is beyond me, but for me, this is almost the number one selling point of this car – if you have three-phase power at home.

I was getting around consumption in the high 17 kWh per 100 in a mix of suburban and highway driving.

ADAS Annoyance like most new cars

My gripes with this car come mainly from the safety compliant systems that are common across most cars. Things like speed alert beeps, attention alert chimes and so on.

This one chirps and bings at you, a lot.

Four days in, ready to drive it off the road, I discovered a hidden menu. On the main centre screen swipe down from the top right of the screen (kinda like accessing Control Centre on an iPhone) and there’s a button there for personal preferences which you do need to enable every single drive, but you get quite used to it.

This setting allows you to choose do you want the speed alerts on, and another frustrating one is the automatic speed adjustment.

Driving along in cruise control I found the car decelerating down to 40km an hour in a school zone – on a Sunday. It can see the speed, but can’t read the sign you see.

So that’s gotta go. And it can be done with the tap of the screen.

That Brabus Ride and handling!

All is forgiven when you find an open road. The premium feel steering wheel helps – I’m sure that’s a Brabus feature, but it’s a really nice grip.

In Brabus drive mode the 0-100 is 3.7 seconds and boy it feels like it, off the line it’s a rocket. So much so there’s a strangely located “Rocket Launch” mode deep in the settings which is basically launch control. Unnecessary because just planting the foot does a great job.

I felt the steering was tight and direct, like a little hot hatch if not better. And by direct I mean go-kart like handling through the twists and turns.

There are four drive modes, but personally, I kept it in Brabus mode almost all the time.

One thing that frustrated me was the accelerator pedal – it felt really short in around the town driving. Now that’s not an issue normally, but when you add in regenerative braking it becomes really sensitive to every movement of your right foot.

You should be able to moderate the braking effect with a slight reduction on the right foot – but it felt like a mm movement was far more harsh braking effect than you would want quite frankly, and in a week of driving I never really managed to master it.

When driving an EV I like to have regenerative braking on, for the Brabus smart #3 I didn’t find easy access to any setting to do with regeneration anyway.

The infotainment system is full of fancy graphics made to make the car look funky, not essentially built to be practical.

Space in the smart #3

This is a small SUV in modern terms, and while it’s spacious for four adults, the boot space is a bit lacking, though there is some additional under floor boot space, but nothing like your Tesla boot by any means.

Who should buy the smart #3

I reckon if you’re reading this, you’re curious and looking for something unique. smart #3 ticks that box. I think if you are keen, I’d be spending an excessive amount of time with a sales rep who really KNOWS the car inside and out who can talk you through ALL the settings to really make this right for you.

It feels like an all rounder that’s ready to be customised for the drive you like, but those settings aren’t obvious at the get-go.

However, it is a stunning little drive, far better than frankly any other new Chinese brand in Australia – I’d say that’s thank to some Mercedes involvement in the tuning of the ride and handling – the very feature that sets this apart from the rest.

Pricey though.