Electric 2024 Fiat 500e is long on style, short on range
MIAMI – Like a Galapagos tortoise, the 2024 Fiat 500e electric city car is perfectly evolved for its native environment, an endearing candidate for extinction elsewhere.
I hope both the tortoise and the 500e will flourish, but I don’t expect to see either in my neighborhood.
That said, I just spent a delightful day driving a bright red 500e from a crowded neighborhood in the approach path to Miami International Airport, past the deco delights of Miami Beach, up A1A and back.
Sign me up. Convenient, efficient, stylish: In the right neighborhood, the 500e is all that and a bag of conch fritters.
Prices start at $32,500, not including a $1,595 destination charge, and the Italian import doesn’t qualify for federal tax credits available to encourage North American battery production. Fiat builds the 500e in its hometown of Turin.
The 500e should be on sale in U.S. dealers this month.
Best features:
- Adorable and Italian
- Electric power
- Easy to park and squeeze through tight spots
Biggest hurdles:
- You don’t know what Fiat is
- You know what Fiat is, and don’t trust it
- Ineligible for federal battery-sourcing tax credits up to $7,500
Small, not cheap
At 143 inches long, the 500e is, 9.8 inches shorter than a Mini Cooper hardtop. Weighing 2,952 pounds, it’s the lightest EV sold in the United States. The two-door 500e technically seats four, but rear legroom is a rumor more than a feature. Its 7.5 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seats is fine for grocery bags and carryout containers.
The new 500e is 2 inches wider and 1 inch taller than the previous 500, which left the market after the 2019 model year.
The front seat is accommodating, with good legroom and plenty of head and shoulder space. Two average size adults should not feel cramped.
A 10.25-inch touch screen provides navigation and displays for features including wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
True to the stylish, “dolce vita” looks of the original 1957 500, or “Cinquecento” — pronounced “ching-quah-chenn-toe” — that signaled Italy’s recovery from the ruins of World War II, the 500e makes no pretense to being an economy car.
Fiat describes it as a premium small car. Features like adaptive cruise control support that, but liberal use of hard black plastic interior trim says otherwise.
The 500e does, however, have a theme song, a brief orchestral ditty the car plays for the outside world to hear when it reaches 20 mph after startup.
Hearing it described, I figured Fiat had pioneered the next category in “Things my home owners associations forbids,” but the 500e’s walkup music was far less annoying in real life than I imagined. The fact that it only plays the first time you reach 20 in each drive helps, too.
Fiat 500e drive modes
- Normal – Resembles driving an internal combustion engine
- Range – Activates one-pedal driving for maximum energy recuperation
- Sherpa – Prioritizes range by capping speed at 50 mph and reducing motor output from 87 to 57 kW. Full power available by on request.
Who needs a Fiat 500e?
If you live in a crowded metro area where parking is a nightmare and traffic is worse, if you have a 240-volt level 2 home charger and 149 miles of range doesn’t cramp your style, if all-caps STYLE is important, the 500e is for you.
Fiat understands the 500e isn’t for everybody. The brand will concentrate on crowded cities and college towns, environments where the funky little EV may flourish.
The 500e should be on sale now.
Markets where Stellantis expects the 500e to do well include:
- Boston
- Chicago
- Dallas
- Houston
- Los Angeles
- Miami
- New York
- Pittsburgh
- San Francisco
Fiat has 345 dealers in the United States. Nearly all also sell Alfa Romeo, another of Stellantis’s 14 brands. Stellantis also includes Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, but Fiat is its biggest brand, scoring 1.35 million sales around the world in 2023.
Safety and driver assistance features
- Adaptive cruise control
- Lane keeping assist
- Automatic emergency braking
- Pedestrian detection
Battery, charging time, range
The 500e was engineered expressly to be an electric vehicle. Unlike earlier generations of Fiat’s retro city car, there is no model with an internal combustion engine. It’s based on the STLA City architecture, which will form the basis for a number of other Stellantis models.
Fiat has a dodgy reputation for quality in the United States, but brand boss Olivier Francois points out the 500e has been on sale in Europe since 2020, time to work out the bugs.
Time will tell. Quality ratings for Alfa Romeo have been on an upswing, so there’s hope.
The front-wheel-drive 500e has a 117-hp electric motor under its hood. A 42 kWh battery lies under the floor.
The battery delivers 149 miles of driving range in EPA tests. That’s at the low end of new EVs, but the 500e is what Europeans call a city car, meaning it’s for running around town its environs, not family vacations.
A 240v charger — like most EV owners have at home, work or both — will charge the battery from zero to 100% in six hours. Home charging s one of the benefits EV owners enjoy most: starting every day with a full charge and topping up overnight. Do that, and 149 miles should be plenty, even for people with relatively long commutes.
For longer trips, the 500e can charge from zero to 80% in 35 minutes at a DC fast charger. It can accept DC charging up to 85 kW, a slower rate than other new EVs. That’s a competitive disadvantage, but Fiat says five minutes will add 31 miles to a near-empty battery.
Fiat 500e driving impressions, interior
The 500e is a breeze in congested city traffic. The steering is light and direct.
Parking is almost embarrassingly easy, thanks to the little car’s short length and comparatively long wheelbase. The 500e’s turning radius is a mere 31.5 feet, nearly 4 feet less than the Mini hardtop.
The ride is smooth and quiet, even over rough surfaces.
Acceleration is more than adequate for slicing through traffic. I spent most of my drive in “Range” driving mode, which provides one-pedal driving for energy recuperation. I found it easy to modulate and effective. The range indicator tracked closely with distance traveled, air conditioning and accelerating to catch gaps in traffic notwithstanding
The front seats are accommodating, the controls largely intuitive. Climate control uses simple switches below the touch screen. Volume, audio mode and tuning are controlled by rocker switches on the rear of the steering wheel cross bars. There’s an auxiliary roller for volume on the center console.
Pleasantly for such a small car, the front seat has a pair of cupholders and. Another pair separate the two rear seats. Wireless charging is standard.
The air conditioning was more than capable on a sunny April day that brushed 90 degrees.
The big, clear touch screen includes navigation, audio and five EV pages for charging schedule, efficiency and so on.
The 500e has a top speed of 94 mph. Fiat says it accelerates from 0-30 mph — a useful metric in city driving — in 31 seconds. It reaches 60 in 8.5, a figure nobody’s bragging about.
Fiat is considering also selling the 500e convertible in the U.S.
2024 Fiat 500e at a glance
Four-passenger, two-door electric mini-compact/city car
Front-wheel drive
Base price: $32,500 (Excluding $1,595 destination charge)
Power: Single electric motor
Output: 117 horsepower, 162 pound-feet of torque
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Maximum speed: 94 mph
0-60 mph: 8.5 seconds
Fuel economy: 116 mpge (manufacturer’s estimate)
Range: 149 miles (manufacturer’s estimate)
Charging time: 240v – six hours 0%-100%; 85 kW DCFC 5 35 minutes 0%-80%, 31 miles range in five minutes
Wheelbase: 91.4 inches
Length: 143 inches
Width: 74.2 inches (with mirrors)
Height: 66.3 inches
Ground clearance: 4.5 inches
Interior volume: 101.2 cubic feet
Cargo room: 7.5 cubic feet
Curb weight: 2,952 pounds
Weight distribution: 58.9%/41.1%
Assembled in Turin, Italy
Contact Mark Phelan: 313-222-6731 or mmphelan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan. Read more on autos and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
