SINO THE TIMES

Forget everything you know about Smart.
Tiny city cars? Well, the #1 (pronounced Hashtag One, I kid you not) is a chunky hatchback-roughly Volkswagen Golf-sized but a bit taller - and bigger Smarts still are on the way. Made in France? Wrong again, because the Hambach factory that was specially built to make Smarts now produces that ultra-British off-roader, the Ineos Grenadier.
Owned by Mercedes? Well, sort of. The Germans realised that making tiny but expensive cars in Europe wasn't very profitable, so Mercedes set up a joint venture with Geely (which also owns Volvo and Lotus) to build Smarts on Geely's SEA platform and assemble them in Xi'an, China.
The #1 is a very different car from the Smarts that came before, but it feels like the right product for this moment. The electric medium SUV class (VW ID 4 and friends) has filled up rapidly, so now it's time for the smaller ID 3 to get some more competition too.
But if your German EV hatchback is going to be built in China, why not skip the middle man and go for one from a Chinese manufacturer? Those are arriving in Europe thick and fast now, and the latest hopeful is BYD, short for Build Your Dreams. The Atto 3 is the first passenger car BYD is marketing in Europe, but the company is far from new to selling vehicles here, having had quite a bit of success selling electric buses to public transport companies all over.
BYD is an interesting company because it's very vertically integrated, which is a fancy business term to say that BYD makes almost every part of the car itself, rather than using external suppliers. In particular, it makes its own battery, a lithium-iron-phosphate item that uses far less cobalt than most EV batteries.
Denne historien er fra June 14, 2023-utgaven av Autocar UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9500+ magasiner og aviser.
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Denne historien er fra June 14, 2023-utgaven av Autocar UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9500+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på

NISSAN LEAF
Original mainstream EV transforms into a family crossover for third era

Steve Cropley
Can there be a car more beguiling for value and versatility than the Dacia Jogger? I say no.

Outside influence
General Motors is all but absent from the European car market, yet it recently opened a new car design studio in the UK.

CUPRA TERRAMAR
Cupra injects some Latin flair into the bloated family SUV class

Loch and load
These epic new Aston and Ferrari V12s have brought a famous old rivalry back to the boil. RICHARD LANE goes all guns blazing north of the border

NISSAN MICRA
Can the magic of the Renault 5 also help spark a renaissance at Nissan?

THE ANTI-AGEING FAMILY SUV
Mk2 XC60 arrived in 2017 but only one thing betrays its age: its used price

BYD DOLPHIN SURF
Cheap yet fully equipped Dacia Spring rival arrives with 154bhp, 193 miles

Matt Prior
You might have heard that Caterham has found a new engine supplier in Horse (decent name, I think), a joint venture between Renault and Geely.

YOUR VIEWS
I finalised my purchase of a new Suzuki Swift Motion this week and had an interesting chat with the car salesman.