Pitt Moos, Smart Car marketing guy.
Mr. Moos is wearing some hott leather pants. I missed the beginning of this talk coming back late for lunch.
He's giving us the history of Smart cars, what they've learned.
There are a lot of complications with electric cars. Difficulties in crossing borders. (Not much talk about how dirty electricity really can be. Batteries, new technology, etc. Battery technology is one of the hardest and most important keys to our future. That would be a great talk for this conference.)
Cars can be charged at any 220 V household plug. The infrastructure is, in fact, already there. You can charge it overnight at home. 8 hours is long enough.
Getting in to China is difficult because they don't like to let foreign technology in.
Car to Go started in Ulm. This is Smart's own car sharing service. Pay by the minute. 80% of the rides people make are when they discover a car and then think of an errand they can do. (For the moment this works with non-electric cars. Electric cars will be less flexible.)
Paris wants an electric car sharing system by 2012. Smart lost the bid, but the system will be coming.
Smart is also working on cars and mopeds for individual mobility in cities.
The appearance of the Smart car is dictated to a great deal by its size. They do plan to make a four-seater. The 1.2 million current customers are very happy with the current look.