The cars themselves are still easily recognizable on the outside, although there’s no doubt that they’re designed for electric powerplants with fronts that are designed to cool electric motors. You’ll notice more changes underneath. Neither the Fortwo nor the Forfour is a beast with a 41kW continuous output motor, an 81MPH top speed and a modest 0-62MPH time of 11.6 seconds (12.7 for the four-door). The range is healthy relative to the size of the cars, though. You’ll get a peak 99 miles of range (95 for the Forfour). While that’s based on the generous NEDC testing cycle, it’s still a sizeable jump over the 57 miles you saw from the Fortwo Electric Drive. It’s enough for the urban environments Smart calls home, and a charge from 10 percent to 80 percent takes 40 minutes without requiring a DC charger.

The interior may represent the most conspicuous change. The new models’ infotainment systems revolve around your mobile devices — the eight-inch touchscreen is really a host for whatever your phone is doing (the press shots clearly illustrate Apple CarPlay support). Given the fairly rudimentary in-car tech of Smarts past, that’s likely a good thing. Smart’s companion mobile app continues to offer services ranging from remote management to car sharing and parking, but there’s now a streamlined interface and an Apple Watch app to put basic battery and climate control features on your wrist.

It’ll be simpler to buy a Smart as well. You’ll still have the usual base, Passion, Pulse and Prime models, but you now have just three equipment packages to choose from. The default Advanced package includes the phone tie-ins, while Premium throws in a rear-facing camera as well as a panoramic roof (or a draught stop on the Fortwo cabrio). Go with a Premium package and you’ll get illumination upgrades that include full LED lighting as well as rain and light sensors.

Pricing isn’t available at this stage. However, you can safely assume these cars won’t be available in the US. Daimler conspicuously pulled the Smart brand from North America, in part because it wasn’t a great fit. Microcars make more sense in dense European cities than sprawling North American highways, and the Forfour has never been available in the region. Even so, this shows that Daimler is serious about electrifying its vehicles, and hinting that it’s really just a matter of time before its cars ditch combustion power.

The Sián is also noteworthy in how it stores and recharges power. Rather than rely on lithium-ion batteries like most other hybrids and EVs, this car uses supercapacitors that are three times more powerful than batteries of similar weight and three times lighter than batteries with similar power. The approach not only helps keep the overall weight down, but allows the storage to fully charge every time you brake. You shouldn’t have to worry about losing that hybrid boost when you’re completing a lap on the track.

The design has some roots in the Terzo Millennio concept from 2017, including both a handful of design cues (such as the Y-shaped headlights) and the supercapacitor storage, although it’s not a pure EV and omits particularly exotic elements like the self-healing carbon fiber.

There’s just one problem with the Sián, apart from its likely astronomical (but unspecified) price tag: it’s already spoken for. Lamborghini is making just 63 units, and all of them have been sold. While this is an honest-to-goodness production hybrid, it’s more a peek at Lamborghini’s long-term strategy than anything. It doesn’t have much choice. With Europe and other regions pushing for stricter emissions and fuel economy targets, the brand will have trouble relying solely on monster gas engines going forward — and it can’t rely on VW’s electric cars to compensate.

It’s not fair to accuse Hyundai of stealing influences here; the EV concept is called 45 for a reason. At the 1974 Turin Motor Show, Hyundai Motor presented what would become its first mass-produced car and its first export, the Pony. Designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Itadesign, the conservatively styled five-door hatchback is the rock Hyundai’s automotive empire is built on. That same 1974 Turin Motor Show hosted another Giugiaro-designed Hyundai, the Pony Coupe concept, created to draw buzz to the South Korean brand. No one talks about the Pony Coupe now, but have a look at the production car or the concept and you can see Hyundai mining its own history for the present 45 concept. But wait, there’s more: Italdesign, by its own admission, resurrected the Pony Coupe design seven years later as “the greatest source of inspiration” for a much bigger hit, the DeLorean DMC-12. Who knew.

The 45 concept will serve as the center of Hyundai’s EV campaign called Style Set Free. As the automaker prepares new electric vehicles due in 2021 on a dedicated EV platform called E-GMP, Style Set Free imagines how we will one day interact with those offerings. The marketing goes beyond automobiles, encompassing new ways to interact with objects in general, including vehicles. The car-centric idea is another way of proposing EVs and autonomous cars as customizable open cabins where customers will enjoy “individualized living spaces” on wheels. As well, Hyundai says 45 “accentuates the forward-driven design direction while exploring evolution of Hyundai’s ‘Sensuous Sportiness’ design language.” We’ll find out what it all means at the reveal in Frankfurt on September 10.

This article originally appeared on Autoblog, the complete authority for news, reviews and car-buying research.