Although it may seem that the new Fiat 500e is related to the older model, launched in 2008, it is a completely new electric car, redesigned from scratch to be electric. Fiat took the issue of electric cars seriously with the new 500e, not as it did with the old 500e which was only available in the US states of California and Oregon.
We were glad that the new Fiat 500e electric car has nothing to do with the old model (which will be sold in parallel for another 2 years) because it solves several problems it had. First of all, the diameter of the steering is much smaller - with the old 500, sometimes you had to do two manoeuvres to get out of certain places, unacceptable for such a small car and which should have been easy to handle.
The new 500e electric car it's not as manoeuvrable as the Honda is, but it's superior to its petrol brother. The quality of the interior has also increased, even if you don't have soft plastic anywhere in the passenger compartment. However, now that there is a depth adjustment of the steering wheel, the driving position becomes much more relaxed and comfortable - in the old 500, you were either too close to the pedals or too far from the steering wheel and you always had to compromise.
As I said, Fiat even tried to make 500e a satisfactory electric car. It comes with two battery variants (42 kWh and 24 kWh) which offers declared WLTP autonomy of 320km and 185 km respectively and the possibility of fast charging with 85 and 50 kW respectively. There are also two power variants: 95 and 118 hp.
We examined the version with a large battery and a more powerful engine and we have nothing to criticise. It is a better, more premium, more sophisticated car, one that you should not ignore if you are looking for a small electric for the city. (via fiat)
