The small Smart ED (electric drive) vehicle somehow got lost in the recent L.A. Auto Show’s shuffle of high-profile electric car announcements from Honda, Toyota and others. Meanwhile, the Smart ED will begin rolling out its first units—okay, probably a trickle of its first 250 cars—in December. We dropped by the Smart booth in L.A. and spoke with Rick Bourgoise, director of communications at Smart USA, to get a few details. See video below.

The limited release of the first few vehicles spread out over five markets—essentially a test run—is also getting drowned out by news about the first Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF units rolling off production lines. The first Smart ED markets are Portland, Ore.; San Jose, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Indianapolis, Ind.; and the I-95 corridor around Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.

I placed a call to Smart dealers in San Jose and Portland, and sales folks confirmed that electric Smart cars were on the way, but didn’t know exactly when. The Smart USA website still says, “A fleet of 250 electric drive vehicles will begin arriving in the U.S. in October 2010.”

The electric Smart will available around the country in 2011. “We will have a national footprint across the United States with electric vehicle technology,” Bourgoise said.

This could make the Smart ED the only all-electric car available in many parts of the country—an advantage the company will need because a four-year lease of the car is currently set at $599 per month. That’s a big jump up from the Volt and LEAF leases at $350 a month, especially considering the Smart ED’s top speed of 63 miles per hour and its promised range of 85 miles.

Hopefully, the cost will come down as Daimler ramps up production. Bourgoise said the conversion of the gas-powered Smart ForTwo to the Smart ED is relatively easy. “When Daimler engineers first developed and designed the Smart concept more than 20 years ago, they envisioned a day that it would be capable of producing alternative powertrains,” Bourgoise said. In other words, simply swap out the gas engine for an electric motor, and the gas tank for the battery pack, and it’s ready to roll.

In what might be the quietest introduction of an EV to the U.S. market, you can visit the Smart USA website now to begin signing up for a lease. According to Bourgoise, that means—if you live in one of the five test markets—you could be driving the Smart ED in a matter of weeks.