Smart Must Ensure A New Fortwo To Be Profitable Before Giving It The Green Light

Smart is inching closer to giving the green light to a Fortwo successor, but before it does that, it needs to prove that the new model can return a profit.

Production of the old electric ForTwo ended a few months ago, and Smart chief executive Dirk Adelmann recently confirmed that work is underway on its replacement. He believes there’s a strong business case for a Fortwo replacement, particularly in Europe.

Read: Smart Needs Help To Make New ForTwo EV

“We are working on that one,” Adelmann recently told Autocar. “The run-out of the current Fortwo was two months ago, now. It would have been great to have a direct successor – we don’t, but we’re working on it.”

The vehicle is known internally as ‘Project 2’ and if given the go-ahead, is expected to be called the #2. That may sound a little confusing, given Smart already builds an electric crossover known as the #1, which is much bigger than any ForTwo successor will be. Nevertheless, Adelmann said the #2 name has been reserved for a new compact model, describing it as an “iconic number” for the brand.

The main hurdle in getting the Fortwo successor approved for production is ensuring it can make money. As the car will not sell in large numbers, Adelmann confirmed the brand can’t justify developing a new platform on its own, and is on the hunt for partners it can share an architecture with.

As we revealed in April, this new platform is known as the Electric Compact Architecture (ECA). Smart wants the new ForTwo to have a four- or five-star Euro NCAP crash test rating and to be equipped with similar ADAS functionalities to the existing #1 and #3 models.

“If you share this platform with partners – we’re still in evaluation – then you can also share the investment costs and the production site etcetera, and it starts making sense,” Adelmann said. “The last thing we want to do is produce a vehicle where nobody is earning money, because that vehicle will not last for long. We want to have a positive business case for us, for our retailers and in the end for our customers.”

Perhaps the most logical partner for Smart on the project would be Geely. The Chinese conglomerate owns 50% of the Smart brand and owns an array of brands, many of which are operating exclusively in China.