When the Fiat 500 returned to active duty in the modern automotive world, it immediately established itself as a major player in the affordable hatchback market. In short order, the little Italian job was setting the pace for styling, fun and affordability.
As the make continues to evolve, the Fiat has gone fully electric with the 2014 500e. The car made its debut at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show, and the automotive press is now getting opportunities to test it out for longer periods. I had the 500e for a week and enjoyed every moment of driving it. However, would-be buyers have a lot to consider before they write a check for one.
The 500e has all of the classic and creative style flourishes of the gasoline model. Fiat really gets the concept of the little hatchback – which isn’t surprising when you consider they’ve been cranking them out off and on for decades. This Fiat is fun. The 500 and 500e are silly. Eye-catching. Playful. And, the 500 manages all of that while still serving as effective, reliable and surprisingly comfortable transportation.
The new version is fully electric. No hybrid hype here. If you mash all the comparative numbers together, the 500e manages a total driving range of about 116 miles. However, I could only get her out there for about 80 miles before she needed recharging. Car data told me it’d take about 12-14 hours to fully recharge the 500e from dead using a standard wall outlet.
The ride is as spritely and fun as the standard 500. It’s easy to park. Its payload offers just enough room to get a few bags of groceries or even a golf bag into the hatch. Most importantly, it’s a statement car. Its driver is telling the world: “I could’ve bought any cheap little car. I wanted one with a little flare.”
The limitations of the new 500e should be obvious to any would-be buyer. First of all, it’s small. Not Smart Car silly small, but still tiny. Yes, it’s a four-seater, but who are we kidding? With two full size adults in the front, you’d be hard pressed to get a watermelon in the back seats. What else would anyone suspect, though? It’s a Fiat 500. It’s meant for urban driving with a young couple out to save a few bucks while looking all European and sophisticated in the smallest car capable of tackling those concepts.
The cost is a stumbling block. The 500e retails for around $32,000 – double what the standard gas 500 goes for new. That means you’d have to drive the car long enough to save about $16,000 in gasoline to warrant paying the bigger price tag. Fiat isn’t trying to rip off tree huggers. So much engineering and extra hardware has to go into the 500e that the price escalates out of necessity.
The other problems the car has are shared by every other make and model of electric car. It offers a limited range, making it almost exclusively an urban commute option. It also takes a long time to charge, making the vehicle potentially useless at time when it’s been drained low.
Those issues are not Fiat’s missteps. They’re physics. Around the world, we haven’t cracked the scientific limitations of battery powered vehicles. They’ve rapidly and vastly improved over models of even a couple years ago – and the Fiat 500e can serve as Exhibit A there.
Still, gasoline and diesel-powered engines are more practical and more efficient. The science tells us that – at least for now – there’s significantly more energy potential in a cup of gasoline than in a cup of electricity, wind or sunshine. When batteries improve and can match gas vehicle travel distances with reasonable recharge times, fossil fuel cars will have reason to worry.
