They come in pink!!

I was getting a ride to work from a co-worker and pointed out Smart Car exclaiming how much I wanted one, he responded with a rant about how the Smart Car is worse for the environment than a Hummer. His basic reasoning was that a brand new factory had to be built in order to make the Smart Car.

To be completely honest I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but it seems fairly logical that a new factory would be off set rather quickly by people driving the cars, and taking their other cars off the road (which would have been replaced eventually anyway). I’ve looked all over for some numbers so I could do a full 25 year break down of it, but I can’t find them. The car only costs $12 000, not being expensive is more incentive to get one and it gets up to 68 mpg. It is most definitely helping the atmospheric environment.

You could argue that the factory is hypocritical because one had to be built for the Smart Car however, they are the most energy efficient factories ever built (by the standards of the EPA). The fact is that an international standard called the ISO 14001 aims to ensure that everything has a little impact on the environment as possible. The company was awarded the Environmental Certificate ISO 14001 for all of the measures they implemented with the factory. It was built on 30 hectares of industrial waste land. The land now contains the factory, accompanied by nature reserves with some of the most rare species of plant and animals. All of the materials used were checked against a list of potentially harmful materials and thus none contain formaldehyde or CFCs.

All of the facades are made out of a material that comes from a specific European tree that recovers quickly. The building is designed to catch rain water that can be used in the factory, any that isn’t caught by the actual building is drained into oil separation plants, treated and used. The water is treated to the point that it is up to European Drinking standards and is used for the gardens and coolant.

To save energy there are heat recovery systems located all over the building. The heat generated by the actual machines is recycled and “recovered” all through the building. All of the machines burn natural gas rather than the conventional fuels, the heat recovery system also helps to make the machines more energy efficent.

The car its self is painted using powder coating which is completely solvent free. The coat is actually thinner than the conventional ways of painting a car but it is also a higher quality of finish. The lack of solvent eliminates the fear of hazardous waste.

So yeah, they had to make a new factory. But they made one hell of a factory that produces cars that have such a low impact on the environment. The Hummer factories don’t take these environmental precautions, and the Hummer spews out disgusting amounts of emissions, and there is more material used to make them. The environmental degradation that happened because of the construction of an incredibly environmentally friendly factory isn’t even close to the degradation that would be caused by us a) never having fuel efficient cars and b) all driving Hummers. Therefore - I want a Smart Car.

And for those of you who say “it’s so small you wouldn’t be able to do anything, or fit anything in it…. watch this.