Fiat 500e Heads To USA

Fiat Introduces 2024 Fiat 500e Electric City Car to USA

The retro-inspired Fiat 500e may arguably have fallen under the shadows of the brash and louder new Beetle and the revitalised Mini, but has time allowed the new Fiat 500e to attain equal measure with those two high-profile cars?

Fiat is planning to introduce the new 2024 Fiat 500e to North America, ahead of future sales across other parts of the globe.

From Fiat Trepiùno to Fiat 500e

Time certainly flies, but it’s now 16 years since Fiat introduced the revamped 500 to the world. The 500 didn’t stray too far from the 2004 Trepiùno concept, apart from some improved, slightly more aggressive, aesthetic styling.

The slight changes to the design from concept to reality was critical, moving the original concept car away from leaning towards a feminine look to something a little more unisex, which arguably attracted a larger buying audience than it may have, with all things considered.

In fact, it took just 3 weeks following the 500’s launch before all 58,000 units had been sold.

Electrifying the Fiat 500e

It’s no surprise at all that Fiat looked at the forthcoming future of the ‘electric road’ and decided that the Fiat 500 should get an extra little letter at the end and become an electric vehicle. 

The original 500e made its debut in November 2022 with a release planned for the following year, initially in limited numbers as the Scorpionissima limited edition of 1,949. Partly thanks to the pandemic, which thoroughly interrupted Fiat’s production, the Fiat 500e was limited to being sold in Europe, with later sales appearing in Israel and Brazil.

Now Fiat is finally widening its scope and releasing the 2024 Fiat 500e into the huge American market early next year, according to Stellantis. 

500e Autonomous Driving Technology

The 500e was the first small city car that catered for Level 2 autonomous driving; technology that can take over multiple aspects of what the driver would normally do, with computers that can merge speed and steering systems together, offering computer-driven directional, speed and braking (plus emergency braking) functions.

Lane Centering and Adaptive Cruise Contol (ACC)

In the main, Level 2 is current technology for autonomous vehicles. Incorporated within this the Fiat employs Lane Centering and Adaptive Cruise Contol (ACC).

This will be a major jump for the 2-door Fiat 500e as it expands to such a large market, and this will be the first of the 2024 models to be made available.

CEO of Fiat, Olivier Francis, certainly used some romantic wordplay to entice America towards the little electric Fiat, describing it as, “taking on BEVs in a way only the Italian brand can; combining ‘La Dolce Vita’ spirit of an icon with a mission of sustainability and zero emissions.” 

The Fiat 500e will be powered by an electric motor capable of 118hp and have a range of 149 miles, which should, cautiously speaking, be enough for a city car wherever it operates. Some changes on the original retro-modern interior of the 2007 model comes with a bit of an upgrade to materials and design, and it also features a 10.3-inch touchscreen system that uses the latest Uconnect 5 software.

The new Fiat 500 took 4 years following its 2007 release before it was shown to the USA, so in that respect, the 500 is still relatively new for America. 

Fiat is clearly relying on its inherent charm and nostalgic Italian appeal to successfully integrate it into the American market, as you might have gathered from Olivier Francis introductory speech above.

In a market that still traditionally likes a rather large automobile, it will be interesting to see how the Fiat 500e fares. For some perspective, in 2022 Fiat sold 340 units of the standard new 500 in the USA, which was a rise of 289 over the previous year. 

UK Prices for the Fiat 500e start from £28,125.

If you enjoy reading about small electric cars, you might also like to read SMALL ELECTRIC CARS: THE FUTURE on Smart-Motoring.com