Fiat New 500 Electric Review

Exterior Design

Fiat made a big effort when it relaunched the Fiat 500 in 2007 to maintain the spirit of the original 1957 version, although obviously it was much bigger. It would be virtually impossible to make a car as small as the 50s original and pass current crash safety regulations. The New 500 Electric further hones the look, with particular attention to the front lights.

The original car had a bit of a frown due to its lights being beneath the bonnet line, and the 2007 version had the lights overlap the bonnet but via cut-outs to mimic the look. The New 500 also has this overlap, but now puts a semicircle of LEDs on the bonnet itself, so the light cluster is now divided by the bonnet line. This is a small but sophisticated enhancement.

Overall, though, the New 500 is not a huge change in design from the 2007 version. It is generally tidier in appearance, and the cabrio is sophisticated. This costs so much extra because the mechanism is motorised in a slick way. Otherwise, the New 500 is the same two-door hatch as ever, with a small exterior and not a huge amount of interior space, which is what we will turn to next.

Interior Comfort

Like quite a few manufacturers who have turned their hand to EVs, Fiat wants to stress the environmental credentials of its seats. In the New 500’s case, these use a material called Seaqual Yarn, which uses 100% recycled plastic, with 10% from the sea (hence the name). They are perfectly comfortable, with a decent level of headroom for front seat passengers. The seats are only available with mechanical adjustment, not electronic, although you can have them heated as an option.

There’s a single cupholder towards the rear, presumably placed so rear-seat passengers can reach it, with a cubby further rearward that contains a 12V DC power port. You get a reasonably sized glove compartment. In the central console is a space for your mobile phone, which has wireless charging on the La Prima trim level, and also includes a USB plug.

When you get to the rear seats, however, you realise just how small this car is. It only has two doors and getting into the rear is a bit of a struggle. There are just two rear seats, not three, and that is probably a good thing because you would need to be virtually two dimensional to fit between two adults in the rear anyway. The seats are comfortable enough and there is an adequate amount of headroom, but kneeroom is virtually non-existent. You also don’t get any access to openable windows, air conditioning vents, or charging ports in the rear. There are ISOfix points for child car seats, however.

Storage and Load Carrying

Another area where you feel the Fiat 500’s small size is in boot space. With the rear seats up, the capacity is a tiny 185 litres, which sits in between the Mini Electric and Honda e. That will be enough for a weekly shop for a couple, but probably not for a family. There is a little space under the boot floor for cables.

Of course, if you need to transport more cargo, you can drop down the rear seats in a 50/50 arrangement, although not with the entry-level Action, where it's all or nothing. With the seats down, you get 550 litres, which is 200 litres less than even the Mini Electric, and one of the smallest capacities we have seen in an EV. The boot also has a narrow opening, making it even more difficult to get bulky items into the back of this car.

The steering wheel and accompanying stalks are mostly conventional. There is a slightly flattened section at the bottom of the wheel, but otherwise it’s round, with phone and media buttons on the left plus cruise control buttons on the right. There are stalks for lighting and windscreen wipers. Behind the steering wheel is a simple, mostly round digital display. This shows your speed in the middle, charge level on the left, and power or regeneration on the right. There are a few other icons, but overall, this is a great piece of design – pleasantly uncluttered.

The rest of the control system is extremely minimalist. The drive controls consist of four buttons on the central console for park, reverse, neutral and drive. There is a separate parking brake, but it engages automatically in park, so you only really need to use it for auto hold at lights if you wish. Otherwise, you can ignore its existence entirely.

Above the smartphone bay is a full set of buttons for controlling the air conditioning, although you can access further configuration through the screen. Next to the parking brake below this are rockers for hi-fi volume control and selecting the power modes, which include normal, eco, and “Sherpa”, which is super-eco and designed to maximise range if you’re worried about getting home with your remaining charge.

As we already mentioned, the entry-level Action doesn't have a media control screen at all, just a cradle for your smartphone, which has to become your media player and satnav. The Passion model gets a 7in screen that is meant to operate with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto but can do so wirelessly. This means you're using the phone's abilities for media and navigation, but via a separate screen, although there is a DAB radio integrated.

At Icon and La Prima trim levels, you get the 10.25in media screen with built-in DAB/FM radio and satnav. We found the latter was clear and easy to use. The menu system is also well thought out, although if you drill down into the car’s settings you can configure some useful things like scheduled charging.

Performance and Driving

The first thing we should stress about the Fiat New 500 Electric is that whichever one you buy, it’s not a fast car. The Action, with its less powerful 93hp motor, takes 9.5 seconds to reach 62mph, but even though the other trim levels have a more powerful 118hp motor, they have heavier batteries so still take 9 seconds to hit 62mph. The Honda e, Mini Electric, and BMW i3 are all considerably quicker. So don’t expect an experience even vaguely like the Fiat 595 Abarth.

That said, you of course still have the immediate torque of electric to make this car feel a little bit faster than it actually is at city traffic speeds. The steering is extremely light, with a great turning circle, making the New 500 Electric incredibly manoeuvrable round city traffic and narrow streets. We drove the car through Cambridge in rush hour during our test and it felt entirely in its element. Motorway driving was acceptable, if not as reassuring as some EVs we have tried. You can certainly sit at 70mph quite comfortably, but you may not want to for hours on end.

Range and Charging

You certainly won’t be able to sit at 70mph for hours on end with the Action New 500 Electric, either. Its 24kWh battery only delivers 115 miles of WLTP range. The 42kWh battery in the other cars provides a more acceptable 199 miles. This still means the New 500 Electric is best suited to cities, but at least the Passion trim and above can venture out for longer journeys more at a pinch, with similar range as the BMW i3, for example.

To help with this, all the 42kWh battery cars get 85kW DC charging, which means you can charge to 80% in a reasonable 35 minutes. The 24kWh Action only gets 50kW DC charging, so still takes 30 minutes to charge to 80%. If you were to drive the Action trim on a motorway journey, you’d need to charge for half an hour every hour, which wouldn’t make for a particularly efficient method of transportation.

On a 7kW AC wall box, the larger battery will take about 8.5 hours to reach 100%, while the smaller one will take less than five hours. So this is definitely a car you can plug in overnight and use fully charged again in the morning, or during a day’s work at your company’s premises.

Running Costs

If one of your reasons for buying an EV is frugal driving, the New 500 Electric delivers in this respect. This is a really cheap car to run. With a 14p per kWh supply, the 24kWh car only costs 2.92p per mile, and the 42kWh ones a similarly frugal 2.95p per mile. The basic warranty is the typical three years we find with European cars, but for unlimited miles.

The battery has the now usual eight-year warranty, but only for 62,000 miles and Fiat doesn’t say what usable percentage is guaranteed. The insurance group for the New 500 Electric isn’t listed anywhere yet, but none of the petrol versions of the previous version were above 15, so we expect this to be a relatively cheap EV to insure.

Safety

The previous Fiat 500 didn’t have a particularly great NCAP rating, only achieving three stars. However, one of the areas that really let it down was in safety assistance features, and Fiat has clearly beefed things up in this area with the New 500 Electric. It doesn’t have an official Euro NCAP rating yet, but all cars have drowsiness detection, autonomous emergency braking, lane keeping assistance, and traffic sign recognition.

The Passion adds cruise control, and with the Icon you get traffic sign information displayed onscreen. You also get Blind Spot Warning. The La Prima adds Fiat Co-Driver, which Fiat claims is the only Level 2 autonomous driving system available as standard in any small city car. This is adaptive cruise with automated ability to keep you in your lane proactively on motorways. Fiat also calls its 360-degree sensors a “drone view”, although there only appears to be a rear-facing camera. You can add this and the Co-Drive features to any car above Action as an option, although they’re pricey enough to make it generally better to just buy the next trim level up. Co-Driver for the Icon is £1,950, for example.

*based on electricity costs of 14p per kWh