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I imagine having actual orders, outside of their direct need, for other customers, etc., would drive the manufacturing costs down enough so that they could then turn a profit on their own cars.

It would also help iron out all the supply and engineering issues, spreading the R&D cost around more units. Initial costs for Tesla would then be lower, leading to a higher margin, etc.

At the very least they might make back some of the millions they've dropped on their own car already, even if it flops and they can't move any.

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Search "Smartuki" on youtube.

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I guess midgets can be fun, too, in some completely perverted way.

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*"need" defined here as: ability to park them nose-first in parallel spots, which is not allowed; or advantage when motoring in tight quarters, of which we have almost none

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We don't care much for them because they are simply far too expensive for what they offer, and their gas mileage really isn't all that impressively better than most econoboxes that are available for much cheaper.

Say you get a Yaris. It may lose about 8 mpg to the Smart, but the cost of entry is several grand less, and that several grand buys quite a bit of gas. Cost of ownership is also significantly cheaper on the Yaris, taking into account everything from parts, maintenance, insurance, and so on. Plus, the Yaris has a good deal more room for groceries, etc.

As cool as those little Smart cars may be, they are just completely impractical in every sense of the word, and not at all a good fit for the US market, where as Sloop_John_B points out, was made primarily for more modern vehicles and long-distance travel is much, much more common than Europe or Canada.

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That would explain it, if so. The smarts up here are little diesels that get damn good mileage, but I remember someone saying they couldn't offer those in the 'States, which is why we got them about 3 or 4 years earlier.

And... dude, I like you, I respect you, but...

long-distance travel is much, much more common than [...] Canada.

Man... you need a map.

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Apart from trucks, you have the VW Jetta and Mercedes E320cdi. That's all. BMW has the 330d coming out soon.

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No, we only get the petrol engine.

Allow me, however, to qualify my above statement regarding long-distance travel:

Canada exceeds the US in terms of physical size. There is no denying it. But the population in Canada is significantly smaller than the US, and it is all concentrated in a belt along the Southern half of the country that is approximately the distance between Seattle and Maine.

The US population, which is not only much larger, is also much more spread out as a result of having more reasonably populable (I think I just invented a word), or accessible to to population, than Canada has.

The combined effect is that the size the entire US, though smaller than Canada, is nothing to be sneezed at, and I would say that in terms of areas easily-accessible to population, the US matches or exceeds Canada's capacity. This in, turn, means that we have a larger population spread out over a greater area than Canada, and so my guess is that long-distance travel is more common in the US, if only by sheer number.

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Packing it with C4 is and blowing it up is just so cliche.

The least we could do is try to put it in geosynchronous orbit.

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@pauljones: Okay, a fair argument, but also flawed, to my mind. You have a lot more people, so long-distance travel is more common. True. But the average driver, definitely not, for exactly the reasons you give.

Where I lived before, the nearest major shopping center was a 9-hour drive away. And that's not even getting into some of the really rural parts of Canada. And what was between my town and that one? Pretty much nothing.

Even some of our cities. Vancouver is only, what, 3M people? It takes a solid 3 hours to go from one extreme side to the other. We build out, not up.

Factor in the fact that something like 90% of the money in this country is made way out in the rural areas, and the average car in Canada does a LOT of highway miles.

I did 50,000 kms in the last year and a half.

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A nine-hour drive? Gawddamn.

I had no idea that there was a lot rural areas in Canada. Being a SoCal wuss (and it is a balmy 78 degrees F right now), I figured than anywhere with a higher latitude than Calgary was pretty damn inhospitable. Out of curiosity, what is the northern most city in Canada?

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When my mom's great grandparents first came to north america from poland, they settled in central Canada, in Saskatchewan. I believe they left for the warmth of Minnesota shortly thereafter...to put it in perspective.

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I lived about 50 miles from Alaska, and it was mild, temperate, and overall quite pleasant weather... just too rainy. But a normal weekend trip would have been the same as doing a round trip from Orlando, FL to Philadelphia, PA... or, LA to Portland, OR. And that was just to hit up a Costco.

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would be considered the northernmost city.

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