This Cheap New Fiat Might Clue Us Into Jeep’s $25K EV

Stellantis and Fiat are making good on their promise of cheap EVs with the new Fiat Grande Panda in Europe. The compact EV marks 125 years of Fiat by putting a new spin on an old badge, and it will start at under €25,000, or $27,260 at current exchange rates, according to Reuters. This latest addition to the Panda family will likely not make it to the U.S. despite the model being Fiat’s return to the global market, but the Grande Panda could present an opportunity for Stellantis to actually bring a Jeep EV to America for less than $25,000.

Many have been skeptical, this site included, of Stellantis’ claim that it could get a new car on the U.S. market for less than $25,000 at all, let alone a new EV. The Grande Panda rides on the new Smart Car Platform, which it shares with the Citroën ë-C3 for now. But the EV-focused platform is slated for another five new models from Stellantis for a total of seven, and any one of those could conceivably become a rebadged Jeep EV that could undercut so-called cheap models from Tesla and Stellantis’ other EV rivals in the U.S.

There’s precedent for a Fiat with a Jeep badge in America, what with the Jeep Renegade essentially being a rebadged Fiat 500X. The Renegade is now discontinued in the U.S., however, meaning the Jeep lineup could stand to regain a small crossover, especially if it’s an EV. There’s even some historical overlap between Jeep as a brand and this new Panda: the beloved Fiat Panda 4×4 is famously a stout little off-roader. Jeep could lean on that heritage if it really wants to avoid making an all-electric Wrangler to “protect” the brand.

The Grande is the first model among a new wave of Fiats “being studied for global markets, including North America,” according to Stellantis. In Europe, the Panda will be available either as an EV or a hybrid. The hybrid will be even cheaper than the EV, starting under €19,000 (or $20,700,) per Reuters. The Grande Panda EV will be powered by an 83-kilowatt motor fed by a 44-kilowatt-hour battery. That battery pack gets the EV an estimated range of more than 320 kilometers, or 199 miles, based on the European WLTP cycle—so the range would drop going off the EPA test cycle. Even so, a Jeep EV for less than $25,000 with a design as cool as the Grande Panda could be welcome in America and give Jeep a worthy competitor to the upcoming Chevy Bolt revival.

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