technology in detail

smart now also offers its own charging tariff. In cooperation with Digital Charging Solutions GmbH, smart customers can easily charge across Europe. Of course you already know how to use a charging card. But some people may be wondering how the money gets from your account to the charging station operator via the charging card. Most of the time you end up at "foreign" charging stations and, for example, smart's cooperation partner does not have its own charging stations at all.

In this article we dive into the world of charging station operators and see how the money goes from you to the operator. Because mostly it's about detours.

With the expected introduction of the smart #1, smart drivers will finally have the luxury of having a heat pump. Reason enough to take a closer look at this exciting technology and, above all, to answer one question: Where does a heat pump actually get the heating energy from, if not from the car's battery?

In this article I'm answering these questions. In addition, I have explained all relevant terms in more detail in my wiki and linked them here in the article.

I'm still being asked why you should buy an expensive wall box when the same thing is also available as a cheaper solution in the form of a charging brick. However, I strongly advise against this, not only from personal experience. Nowadays, mainly due to a variety of experiences from my readers and things that I have already seen over time.
Charging bricks are not called emergency charging cables for nothing and should therefore not be used as a permanent charging solution. They are not designed for this and sooner or later, in the best case, "just" something will break, in the worst case even burst into flames. This saves no money.

In this article I answer all the common questions and myths that I have come across on the subject over the past few years. At the end I will also give you a safe and inexpensive recommendation.

It is common knowledge that all modern electric cars can charge with Type 2 or Type 1. This is a standardized plug that works across manufacturers.

But what exactly is it that makes it so special? How does it work and why did Mennekes take the trouble to develop it instead of simply charging all cars with a household socket? I would like to outline that in this article and if you want to go deeper, you will find many links to the smart eMotion Wiki. With the documentation there, you can effectively build a wallbox yourself or use it to build a tester to check wallboxes and charging stations.

But don't worry, the article itself is very general and shows even beginners how it works.

It was the year 2012 and my parents didn't know any better: They had ordered our first smart ED and did not order the 22 kW charger. It's expensive and you don't need it in a city car anyway. That was their though

How often have we been bothered about our wrong decision in the meantime. But that is finally over. A few weeks ago I retrofitted the 22 kW charger in our smart and I would now like to tell you how you do that and what it costs.

The 4th generation smart electric drive is based heavily on the Renault Zoe and that's why we had to wait a year until the 22kW charger became available. What took them so long was optimizing it to German standards.