The driver was sitting a red light when flames started emerging from the hood. The driver exited the car before the entire front of the car was engulfed in flames and ultimately destroyed. It is unclear what caused the fire but it might have been a wiring harness (or at least there was a wiring harness in the front drivers area under the hood). The car is available for inspection upon request. The safety of the drivers was at risk; he was lucky to be at a red light although he was forced to exit in the middle of a busy street. There is no problem to be reproduced but the incident was reported to mercedes. The vehicle has not been inspected but the police and fire departments were on scene. There was no prior warning via lamps or other symptoms.
The cable that connects the driver's seatbelt to the seatbelt tensioner (smart/mercedes part number 4518600084) frayed. The car has less than 49,000 miles on it. Six of the seven strands of the cable frayed and broke, leaving just one strand connecting the driver's seatbelt to the car. I've attached photos of the tensioner as mounted in the car and removed from the car. The frayed cable is part of the tensioner (smart/mercedes part number 4518600084). Mercedes of portland said that the seatbelts are not covered under the warranty. I paid $252. 23 to have the tensioner assembly replaced. I shudder to think what would have happened if i had been in an accident with this defective seatbelt.
While driving, brakes failed, brake pedal became impossible to depress with no brake response, and a warning light indicating a brake fault came on. Fortunately, driver was on a slow moving city street and was able to pull over and stop using hand brake for an emergency stop. Other electrical related glitches in this car can be 'reset' by turning off car and restarting. Driver tried that, error cleared, driver proceeded carefully, turning onto a quiet residential street. Brakes worked for two blocks, but on 3rd block same thing occurred approaching a stop sign - brake pedal became un-usably stiff with no apparent brake response, indicator light came back on, brakes did not work, hand brake was again used to slow and stop vehicle. Two more attempts to reset, no change, used hand-brake while moving vehicle out of street and into a legal parking spot. Vehicle towed to dealer. Dealer indicates there is a service bulletin about this issue, fixes problem, but deflects all questions about whether this is a serious defect that should be part of a product-wide recall. Dealer notes on repair form are equally evasive, claiming that they were unable to recreate the problem but did find fault codes in the computer. I am deeply concerned that smart/mercedes is trying to hide a known brake failure defect that could easily result in a catastrophic and fatal crash - had the driver been on the freeway or a very fast moving busy street, this might not have ended with a simple hand-brake panic stop. This issue, a rubbing wire harness that then causes a short, is well known enough that they have an internal service bulletin about it - if it is that common, they need to recall all impacted vehicles and fix/replace/immobilize/reinsulate the defective wire harness where it rubs on the frame, and they need to do it before someone is gravely injured or dies due to a known defect.
Twice, so far this year, while driving on a major roadway, the vehicle lost power. I had to pull over to the shoulder, put it in park, shut it off, and restart the system. I consider that to be an exceptionally dangerous situation. Later, when the vehicle was serviced, i was told that smart usa was aware of this problem, and that a software upgrade was needed. There was no recall!