The for-us is smart’s latest concept car, unveiled at Detroit Motor Show, and it’s a pickup truck. Well,  sort of.

Following the footsteps of smart forspeed and smart forvision concept, the for-us is very compact measuring at 3547/1506/1701 mm length/width/height. And it’s still a two-seater, but the small loading bay behind the seats is what sets it apart, gives it its own character.

smart says the for-us is the right car for the young and young-at-heart with active lives. That is probably why it has a sort of jacked-up body and big chunky wheels, to fake the look of a sport utility vehicle, while underneath it is still a smart, and an electric one of those no less.

That hardly gives you the confidence to have an active lifestyle, does it.

The car’s clever though, and comes with an electrically-driven tailboard at the back. When it opens first of all the cargo floor including tailboard retracts by 280 mm, then the tailgate slides down in a parallel position. The cargo on the 900 mm cargo area is then extremely easy to access.

The powertrain in this concept car is the same one found it the smart fortwo electric drive, which will be launched from the spring of 2012. It is a 55 kW magneto-electric motor with 130 Newton metres of torque, enough to get you to a top speed of 120 km/h.