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November 2007 - smart lpg is officially cool; it's Global Cool.

Cool Products: smartlpg

By Gavin Bower

For this week’s Cool Products feature, the good people of smartlpg let Global Cool web editor (and wannabe Jeremy Clarkson) Gavin Bower loose on the roads of Hammersmith and Fulham. After some nervous breaking and dodgy parking, here’s what he had to say.


A collaboration between Swatch and Mercedes-Benz, smart has been around for nearly a decade. In that time, the smart has established itself as de rigeur for the environmentally conscious city dweller, keen to be green but reluctant to shout about it.

But despite the fuel efficiency of the quintessential city run-around – due to its obvious size and weight advantage over other small cars – it still ran on petrol and diesel.

So back in 2005, smart created a car that could run on liquified petroleum gas (lpg), a clean burning mixture of propane and butane that’s both highly efficient as a fuel and environmentally friendly when it comes to emissions.

‘How friendly?’ you ask. Well, the smartlpg emits 20% less CO2 than its petrol equivalent, coming in at 93gCO2/km. As a result, it’s exempt from the London Congestion Charge – and more savings can be had in the form of reduced road tax price, a 50% fuel bill compared to petrol and free parking in the City of Westminster. How ‘smart’ is that?

The smartlpg is practical too, with lpg now available at around 10% of UK fuel stations – and you can always switch back to petrol in an emergency.

As for driving, well it’s not going to blow you away but what do you expect? It performs like a (very) small car should. Whereas my fellow car critics accused earlier smarts of coming up short in the performance departmenrt, the new fortwo handles well enough and accelerates in front of/around/away from those pesky London buses with downright insouciance. It even has all the mod-cons an urbane gent like me has come to expect in a car – unlike the electric powered but frankly plain ugly Reva G-Wiz, which, incidentally, outperforms the smartlpg by virtue of its zero emissions.

The verdict? Well, until hybrids catch up on emissions and price – the standard Toyota Prius emits 104gCO2/km and comes in at over double the smartlpg at £17,780 – clean burining hydrogen cars are shown to be economically viable and electric vehicles get a facelift, lpg is the best way to go if you want to reduce your carbon tyreprint, save money, and look pretty cool while doing it.

www.globalcool.org, November 23, 2007