I am not sure if it's true or not but I have anecdotally heard from a local car dealer that exported large volumes of compliance EVs to EU telling me that Merce

I am not sure if it's true or not but I have anecdotally heard from a local car dealer that exported large volumes of compliance EVs to EU telling me that Mercedes actually owns the lithium battery in the Smart fortwo eletric drive as a purchaser you are "leasing" the lithium ion battery. So the actually cost of the vehicle is more like upper bound of 30k, close to 40k range, far exceeding the MSRP.