Fiat’s adorable city car returns to take another stab at the U.S. market. Can the 2024 500e convince urban drivers its charm outweighs its limited range?
Perhaps surpassed only by the Volkswagen Beetle, the Fiat 500 is one of the most recognizable European cars to ever exist. It’s been in dozens of movies, video games, anime, and more, and is a bona fide automotive icon. Despite the fame, the Fiat has only shown its face in the United States for a few years, more recently from 2007 to 2019.
Now, for 2024 the 500 is back in the States, only with notably more electrons and dubbed the 500e. Stellantis (the parent company of Fiat) flew me down to Miami from my dreary and rainy Pennsylvanian home to check out Fiat’s electric only American Cinquecento.
Before I reveal how Fiat handled its return to America, I must first comment on the setting. Miami, for those who haven’t been and in the context of a press event, is a bizarre place. It almost didn’t feel like an actual functioning city and more like a video game world. It’s impossibly colorful, I saw six Lamborghinis over the course of a drive, and the food was great. Conversely, I was not used to the heat and subsequent humidity, and my rural sensibilities have apparently not evolved to cope with Miami’s unique way of handling traffic. It’s a different world down in Florida.The Fiat returns to America
The event started with a presentation from the Brand CEO of Fiat, Abarth, and DS, Olvier Francois. Aamir Ahmed, Fiat’s brand head for North America and Paolo Gribaldi, the 500e’s chief vehicle engineer also spoke about Fiat’s electrified return to the U.S.
Over the course of the presentation from Fiat, the details of the 500e began to take shape. Numbers wise, it sports a 117 horsepower single motor drivetrain paired with a 42 kWh battery that amounts to 149 miles of range. It starts at $32,500. From an aesthetic perspective, the 500e bills itself as the ultimate city car in terms of both convenience and stylistic sensibility. Fiat was clear to point out that the new 500e is a daily city commuter, not a range monster that you would expect from the likes of Lucid or a General Motors’ Ultium project. It’s for short jaunts out and about town, not for cross country sprints.Sizing up the micro car
To the presentation, Fiat also brought a first generation Fiat 500 straight out of late-1950s/early 1960s Italy in all of its pastel-colored glory. It would look comically small next to most cars, but managed to look absolutely adorable alongside to its electric 21st century counterpart. A first generation 500e, based on the Fiat 500 from 2007 to 2019 was also in attendance. Having never sat in one, I took the opportunity to look around the interior. Fiat’s first foray into electric vehicles for North America felt like sitting in the seat of a forklift, with a high seating position.
