2024 Fiat 500e Proves Why City Cars Are Best As EVs

Even by electric vehicle standards, the original Fiat 500e wasn’t exactly a huge success. The Italian EV was mostly available in California, and sales peaked in 2015 with 6,194 units dropping to 2,250 by 2018. Former CEO Sergio Marchionne also famously claimed the company lost $14,000 on every 500e sold, which meant the less successful it was, the better. So we weren’t exactly surprised when Fiat killed it off along with the gas-powered 500 in 2019.

An electric subcompact with only two doors, limited range and a price tag that started north of $30,000 just wasn’t a car that a lot of Americans were interested in, and on a certain level, we couldn’t blame them. It worked best as a city car, but if you lived in a city where the 500e’s small size would have been useful, there was a good chance that you didn’t have anywhere to park it if you even needed a car in the first place.

And yet, a few years after Fiat redesigned the 500e, it’s decided to again offer the little car in the U.S., this time in all 50 states and without losing money every time someone buys one. So if you want to buy one to drive around Houston, you’ll be able to. You might get crushed by a lifted Chevrolet Silverado HD, but Fiat isn’t going to stop you. I recently got a chance to drive the 2024 Fiat 500e in Miami, and while I didn’t get a ton of time behind the wheel, it’s clear that Fiat put a lot more effort into making its tiny EV a better car.

Full disclosure: Fiat flew me to Miami, paid for one night in a hotel room, fed me a nice meal, bought my drinks, provided the car and thankfully resisted the urge to feed me to the alligators.

Before we can get into the review of the new Fiat 500e, we need to rewind back to 2020. I was living in LA’s Koreatown neighborhood and needed a car. I was working for a new site that was too small to get press cars, and the idea of going electric was fascinating. After considering a few other options, I ended up buying a 2015 Fiat 500e. Was it the best EV on the market at the time? Not at all. Was it the best EV I could afford, though? Oh yeah.

While it wasn’t as fun to drive as the Abarth version, man, that little 500e had charm. It was so dang practical, especially with the rear seats down. Charging was mostly free because I found an electrical outlet in my garage that my landlord didn’t know I was using, and I could navigate tight parking situations with ease. Heck, I even strapped a Christmas tree to the roof a few months later. It had its flaws, sure, but it really was the perfect car for me at the time. Plus, unlike a heavily depreciated Nissan Leaf, it wasn’t hard to get 100 miles out of a charge.

Sadly, life happens, and I no longer have my old 500e, but that did mean I had a particular interest in driving the new one. There’s still a Fiat-shaped hole in my heart, and the 2024 500e seemed like the perfect new car to fill it. On paper, that shouldn’t have been hard to do. The new car offers more range from its 42-kWh battery pack, now getting 149 miles compared to the old car’s 87, and it makes more power, too. The 117 horsepower and 162 pound-feet of torque the electric motor sends to the front wheels isn’t much by today’s standards, but it’s still an improvement over its predecessor’s 111 hp and 147 lb-ft. It’s also slightly longer, wider and taller for more passenger room without losing the previous car’s charming styling and small stature.

When it comes to charging, you’re probably going to want to make sure you have a Level 2 charger nearby. If you stick with Level 1 like I did with my old car, Fiat says it will take 37 hours to fully recharge from five percent. With a Level 2 charger, you can reportedly go from empty to a full charge in six hours. Stick it on an 85-kWh fast charger, though, and you can get an 80-percent charge in about 35 minutes — the old car didn’t offer fast-charging from the factory. You still probably don’t want to try to road trip the new 500e, but at least this time around it’s sort of theoretically maybe plausible.

This time around, the 500e also has features. I didn’t exactly mind not having much beyond a radio, air conditioning, power windows and power steering, but I also bought my car for about $6,000. People spending more than $30,000 on a new car, on the other hand, are probably going to expect something a little more modern, and while there are no Mercedes Hyperscreens dominating the dash, having features such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integrated into the infotainment system, multiple drive modes and an updated driver display are certainly nice upgrades.

It’s also more spacious inside than you might expect. Priority is, of course, given to the front seats, but I was able to fit my 6-foot-tall drive partner behind me without having to amputate his legs. Cabin materials also feel much nicer than before. I wouldn’t call it luxurious, but it’s nicely designed, and nothing I touched felt like Fiat cut major corners. It’s also not like other cars in the sub-$40,000 price range offer open-pore wood, aluminum trim and Nappa leather seats.

One thing that did stand out to me as a former owner is that the new car’s rear seats don’t fold as flat as they did before. It’s far from the end of the world, but at the same time, it does seem like it would make the new 500e a bit less practical if you’re trying to transport larger items.