Smart plans to halt sales of its thermic models in 2020
- Smart has announced that it plans to stop sales of its Fortwo and Forfour thermal engine models by 2020. Only the electric versions will remain in the catalog of the Daimler group's subsidiary. This strategy returns to the original concept for the brand, devised by Nicolas Hayek, at the origin of the Smart For two project. Until today, several manufacturers have announced the end of sales of their diesel cars (none having taken the risk of announcing the cessation of sales of their diesel commercial vehicles) but none of them had gone so far as to announce the stop of sales of their gasoline models.
- The bet for Smart is risky because the electric versions are only 5% of the production volume of the brand in 2017 (6,700 units sold out of a total of 135,000 units) and according to the first figures for the first quarter of 2018, the proportion of Smart models in electric versions would not exceed 15% this year.
- At this rate, this proportion could represent 25% of sales in 2019 and 35% in 2020, which is already a good result, but not 100%. It is therefore necessary to apprehend Smart's announcement as a sales target that will be difficult to achieve because stopping Smart's thermal models will not necessarily lead to a transfer of customers to the brand's electric models. In this case, a decline in Smart production would seem inevitable.
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