Ideal L9 Owner Experience: Smart.

Basic Information

As a commuting car for my wife in the city, the car requirements for battery life and appearance were not high, and we bought it based on her preferences. The delivery experience was mediocre and far from new energy companies. It has been a week since we got the car and I want to share my driving experience with everyone. In terms of software, we have made a lot of comparisons with the L9.

Advantages

  • The ambient lights are very nice. Compared with L9’s, they are too masculine. Ideal car owners envy them.
  • Energy consumption display is very detailed, indicating how much electricity is consumed by the motor and how much by the air conditioner. Ideal car owners envy them.
  • The welcome lights with smart LOGO produce a strong sense of ceremony. Ideal car owners envy them.
  • When driving assist is enabled, the small instrument panel even has a visualized vehicle mode, although it is relatively rough.
  • When the navigation is turned on, the desktop shows the navigation in small card form, with comprehensive information displayed. Even the remaining battery power after reaching the destination can be displayed. Ideal car owners envy them.
  • The battery life is also quite surprising. We originally thought it could only run a little over 200 km in winter. But in actual use, it can run over 300 km even after the electric energy is fully used up. Also, the display for battery life can be adjusted to show dynamic battery life mileage. Ideal car owners envy them.
  • The air conditioning is very powerful. The remote start for air conditioning can actually last for 30 minutes. Ideal car owners envy them (ours only lasts for 15 minutes).
  • The car’s system can connect to WiFi and can also be used as a hotspot for mobile phones. This is really awesome as ideal car owners envy this feature.
  • On Christmas today, the desktop displayed some Christmas-related elements, which my wife really liked (it seems that girls like these things).
  • My wife thinks the sound of the door lock is very pleasant (chirp chirp).

Disadvantages

  • Comfort entry often fails, which is beyond words. We have turned off this feature.
  • The kinetic energy recovery lags for about 2 seconds after releasing the accelerator which is hard to get used to.
  • Every time we get in the car, the driving mode is always comfort, regardless of the previous setting. But this issue can probably be fixed in later OTA updates.* Tried to switch lanes with turn signal on 6 times, failed 4 times even with no car behind.
  • Slow startup of the car’s rear engine. The car had already driven quite a distance and there was just a Smart logo on the central control. Coupled with the discomfort of failed easy entry mentioned earlier, the experience was extremely poor.
  • The weak wireless charging function on the phone seems to be a common problem among many manufacturers. Hoping for an official wireless fast charging module replacement solution later.
  • Bluetooth key cannot be used. Discussing with fellow car owners, some can use it normally, and some, like me, cannot use it. It’s also quite troublesome to set up properly in the future. I’m too lazy to tinker with it.
  • In coordination with the previous point, smart only provides one key and doesn’t even give a mechanical key.
  • The music software is iQiyi, which has been tried by early adopters of the Ideal ONE. It’s not very user-friendly and it’s better to just give QQ Music.
  • The responsiveness of 8155 is like a neutered version.
  • Seat heating is not very warm, even at the third level it only feels warm. I wonder how well the seat ventilation feature will work when it’s subscribed and activated later.
  • HUD is relatively simple, especially after getting used to the big HUD on L9, but this should not be a disadvantage for my wife.

Conclusion

A delicate pure electric car for just over 200,000 yuan, only Smart comes to mind. Despite the extremely poor delivery experience, the car itself is still impressive. Many of the shortcomings are software-related problems, hoping for Smart’s software team to step up.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.