FIAT 500E First Drive: Will The World Famous Abarth 595 Hater Be Impressed?

Hello everyone, today I invite you to join me on a tour of some beautiful Scottish countryside on a beautiful afternoon in what must be the most important Fiat of the last 20 years. This is the new electric Fiat 500. I am more than aware that I have a reputation for hating the 500 or, more accurately, hating the Abarth 595. This is not a reputation I am going to fight against because it means that if this car is really good and I say so, that means that Fiat has certainly been successful and I truly believe that. I think this is one of the most important cars the company has ever created.

US viewers may be a little confused at the notion of an all-electric 500 being something new. When I heard that Fiat was making an electric 500, I thought so. This is no longer the case because my aunt has had one for the last eight years, however, she lives in California. It turns out that the Americans were the only ones who received the old 500 electric, which was essentially an electrified version of the car, I'm sure. already familiar with, you only need to take one look at this car to realize that it really is something completely new. Yes, the overall profile is still recognizable as the Fiat 500, but in the same way the new mini looks like the previous mini, that is.

Like the latest Mini, which looks a bit like the original, this one is slightly larger than the previous car, about two inches longer, two inches wider and an inch and a half taller. Here in Britain, you can have it as a three-door hatch, which I'm driving today, or as a convertible on the continent. You can also get what they call the three plus one which has a sort of rx8 style suicide door on one side to allow you to get into the back a little easier. The fact is, although many people didn't like me because of what I said about the old car, even those who really loved it didn't have to admit that it was getting a little long in the tooth, the platform could trace its roots.

For the Fiat Panda, which is about 20 years old and the engine has its roots in the 1980s, so it badly needed an overhaul, the truth is that, in my opinion, a car of this class that is hybrid has no sense. I'm worried about whether you want a small capacity petrol engine or fully electric, so I think the switch to electric power is very sensible, as I'm sure many of you expect me to criticize the car. I can also get a couple of things. First, my biggest complaint so far is the fact that Fiat's website is absolutely atrocious.

Trying to research this was almost impossible. I don't know if it's because I was watching it on a phone, although in 2022 that really should. It can't be an excuse, but I just couldn't get the information I wanted. All I really want from a car's website is what the trim levels are. What are the engines offered? How much they cost? What are the different features in the model range? Tell me that in a nice, easy-to-read format, but no. Instead, Fiat's website was too obsessed with looking pretty instead of telling me anything useful. The information I was able to obtain was not always so important, but this is what I have been able to.

To decipher this car is available in several different trim levels, at the bottom you have the action, then there is a red icon and this is the top of the range Botelli Fiat's premium, has decided to consult with the Italian tenor Andrea Botelli to help to produce this I must say that the car certainly feels much newer and more modern than the previous one. The owner of this car, Vlad, who is a lovely guy who recently moved to the area, considered a Honda E and I would say that on the inside, the Honda certainly feels like the most space age sci-fi, this is still very familiar.

A dashboard here stuck on the iPad, here, buttons here, but for some, including me, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You get Android Auto Apple Carplay and it certainly feels a step up from the old 500, though. I still have some problems with the scratched plastics. I didn't like it in a £12,000 car and I really don't like it in a £30,000 car, which is what it is and that's one of the problems I have with electric vehicles in general, they add a lot more to the price and they don't really feel like they offer good value for money.

The owner of this car also has a w12 audi a8 and a modified 460 horsepower lotus demanding, so I think we can all agree that he has his gas. main credentials in order, I must confess that for city driving I really am a fan of electric cars, they are quite comfortable, they also do their best economy in the city and the theory is out of the question, they should be quite fast as we seem be the only car on this stretch of road, let's put it to the test because I found out that not all EVs are really that bright at the junction, which wasn't brilliant, it's 30 there, so the initial response was Decent, but it just doesn't turn on. towards the horizon like other electric vehicles do, there are two different battery and motor options, but not all of them are available with all trim levels.

The base car comes with a 24-kilowatt-hour battery with a 94-horsepower motor. This has a 42 kilowatt hour battery. with a 117 horsepower engine, so it's good for a top speed of about 94 miles per hour and a range of just under 200 miles, the other one is more like 120, which means it's considerably better than the honda e, which costs about the same and can only

drive

about 110 miles, which to be honest is just embarrassing nowadays, that being said, when you're moving at 50 miles an hour or so, put the pedal to the metal and the car seems to move, the throttle response is impressive, as it Should be that the ride quality is not brilliant, although very firm, nowhere near as luxurious as, for example, the VW e up I drove recently.

It's a disappointment. I would have expected it to be a little better. I guess the theory is that I should. It's a little more fun in the curvy areas and we happen to have a couple of corners coming up so I'll test the dynamics of the car. I'm feeling something through the steering wheel, this is a pretty difficult road, so if you're not making it. You're never going to do anything here, but it's actually decent. The wheel itself is a two-spoke wheel with a fairly thin rim and a two-tone color scheme that I quite like. It is designed to evoke memories of the old 500s of the 50s, as if many of us actually had one of those, but I don't mind its retro touch here and there, if the rest of the car is really decent, this Laprima model comes with a 10 and one inch screen up here not sure if other models have a smaller one im sure they still have something and a jbl stereo which according to

fiat

has no comparison considering i have heard stereos that cost more than the whole car, I'm pretty sure this won't blow me away, but the latest Last week I drove the music-inspired Rolls-Royce Wraith which they say is unmatched in the stereo department, so I'm going to put some songs very quickly.

Unfortunately you won't be able to hear them and I'll give you a five second summary of whether the system is really good or not, you know what won't blow your mind but it's actually pretty decent for a car like this, it's fine if it was a production car. 15 thousand dollars, I would be very

impressed

Anyone who has heard the name Bentley or the Rolls-Royce system

will

be very disappointed, but that's not really a surprise. This car is brand new and Italian. I'm sure you expect it to be full. with quirks and features, luckily you wouldn't be wrong in claiming that with a fast charger you can put about eighty percent of the range in this car in half an hour, although their website also humorously claims that you can

drive

a day on just one charge of five minutes which as far as they're concerned is about 30 miles, being a city car I'm going to quickly use the co-op parking to test how good it is for the city car transmission buttons. down here it reverses nice and quickly very good tight turning radius that's what you'd want to have a reversing camera that's pretty decent easy to fit as you should be very happy with that nice car the indicators on the front of the car like the The steering wheel is also designed to evoke memories of the old 500.

I'm not sure how successful they are, but I don't hate them. The door handles are interesting and completely recessed. He reaches in and feels a button. They actually feel quite intuitive. I'm a little less

impressed

with the get out of car button you'll find here, it feels very cheap and plasticky, which I suppose would match the rest of the door card if it were covered in the same material as the seats. Being really impressed by the interior, which is a shame, even more so, the fact that down here you

will

find the emergency door unlock, the same as there, and it is actually quite pleasant to use, the action is really pleasant, It's much more satisfying than pressing this unpleasant key.

The little button that should have been the way to get out of the car every time feels like the launch on the 430. It's lovely, if you're expecting Tesla levels of toys and stuff up here you'll be very disappointed, there's really nothing outside of it. the usual. Same for the dashboard, very functional, very simple and the buttons on the steering wheel are a bit disappointing because they feel a bit cheap. This car also has the same little toggle switches behind the steering wheel that they have been putting in cars for about 15 years. Although I'm not going to complain too much about that because they are very useful and you don't see them, so I'm not that worried.

I like the fact that down here you have USB A and C ports for your phone. Well I hate the fact that car manufacturers are starting to put USB-C ports in the car because to me USB-C should go on the end of the phone, not on the device, it's a stupid design. USBC, I really don't like it along with those ports. You'll find plenty of space for your stuff and in fact the whole cabin is quite light and airy, partly thanks to this sunroof, which I really appreciate, although sadly it doesn't open, apparently the reason for this was that it made the car was a little bigger.

Too expensive to receive the government subsidy, which is now discontinued anyway, I mentioned before, there were some curveballs and they were put in containers. The car is actually quite entertaining through its tips, it is quite agile and the more you push, the better the car is. It gets the suspension going a little, but there's always a level of jitter and harshness that's a little disappointing. I can't say I noticed it today, but one thing Vlad did say was that it felt like when we were doing the drive-bys after a few passes and we felt like the car was no longer delivering all the power, if that's the case , that's a little disappointing because it's not like we spent all day at the track and given the fact This is a liquid cooling battery pack.

He would have hoped the car could perform a little better, whether that's a feature of the car or a fault. I couldn't say any other things here that you might notice in this high-end car of yours. I have this Fiat upholstery that I'm pretty sure isn't leather because nowhere on the Fiat website is the word leather mentioned so I guess that means it's not leather and that being said it makes a decent impression so I really do not care. It feels good and I also love the Fiat monogram on the seats, that's cool, that's what I like.

The same goes for the Turin city skyline here on the wireless phone charger. Turin is the place where these cars are built, the other 500, which are still in production, are manufactured in a factory in Poland. Fiat is also proud of the fact that it has brought several features that you may have seen on other larger, more expensive cars to the city car class, so it has semi-autonomous driving - in other words, very smart. Cruise control when you are on the highway and in the city. It's the

first

small car to have level two automated driving, which in theory means it can navigate traffic more or less on its own.

I'm not going to try it. which tonight, because at nine o'clock there is no traffic around here to be effective, there is also a selection of driving modes as you would expect, but only the three here are normal, which until now I have been using a range I just changed. The key difference to the range is that it has much more aggressive regenerative braking. It also changes the throttle mapping. It's not slower than normal, but you have to press the pedal a little. A little further to get maximum performance, I actually like it and I can see why Vlad uses it through that little container there, the car was really fun.

The visibility is also very good because of the way you can see everything andthe B pillar. Luckily a lot of modern cars get this wrong, the third and final mode is quite disappointing, it's called sherpa and when I saw on the Fiat website that this car had a new sherpa mode I couldn't help but wonder what They meant in case you don't know that Sherpas are the people who skillfully guide tourists to the top of Mount Everest, so I thought how does that connect to a car? I started to wonder, maybe Fear developed some new super-intelligent satnav that finds the most efficient route or an interesting landscape. one, no, that's not the Sherpa way at all and if I were a Sherpa I would be very angry.

What sherpa mode really is is eco mode, so you get quite a bit of regenerative braking and if you floor it, you don't really. I want to give you all that power, even worse with sherpa mode on, unless you put your foot all the way to the reverse button the car will also be limited to 50 miles per hour, what does that have to do with sherpas? Seriously, I'm scared, come on. other boring things to note road noise is reasonable it's there, this particular stretch I know it's pretty bad, small cars never do it so brilliantly, this isn't Vlad's, a long distance between eight axles, but I think it has good trunk space.

It's pretty decent too, you get a cable with the car. The lower power variants with the smaller battery don't charge as fast as this one. They are limited, I believe, to about 50 kilowatt hours. However, both can charge with AC or DC. with AC, you're limited to 11 kilowatt hours of charging. Vlad charges this at home, but he doesn't have a wall box installed because one of the benefits of smaller, cheaper cars with smaller batteries is that you can get a useful amount of charge from a three-pin household socket overnight, try plugging in a tesla and eight hours later you won't have much more range with one of these and in fact it did quite well, impressively vlad actually didn't even have to.

Waited so long for this car because you ordered it in March and picked it up just a week ago so it was the end of June, that's a little surprising because right now almost anything and everything is on backorder for a year or two . Whether that means they are struggling to find buyers for these or have simply made a deal with the devil to get the parts they need, I couldn't say, however, would I recommend it? This is the £30,000 question too. Known old car

hater

, I feel like this has done enough to move the game forward, you know what I think it has, there are disappointments, this cabin should really feel like a small step forward, they've come so close, I love the stuff. on the dash I like the seats I like the look of the car the color options are a bit disappointing they are all a bit Scandinavian and I want bright yellows bold blues bold reds all sorts of things but beyond a rose gold and a kind of green funky turquoise, there really isn't much exciting to choose from, this car was already specced and maybe that's one of the reasons Vlad was able to get it a little quicker, there was even a small contribution from the dealer and anyone who tried to buy a car recently will know.

Getting them isn't as easy as it used to be complaints with the interior quality and the driver's restless side, although I actually like it, it seems to have a bit of genuine personality, I'm sure there will be many who will complain. the step of the old Abarth, but I would love to see what they can do with this attractiveness of these, let's say 180 or 200 electric horses and I think this would be crazy, it's just not the car for me because it just doesn't have enough range, but if the 199 miles of this is good enough for you and around town, you'll probably get more than that, I'd say it's a car I can really recommend and I'd probably have it over a Renault Zoe because it feels a little better here.

I think everything feels a little more sophisticated and the things Renault has done with Zoe to make it stand out. I really don't like this. I do the Honda e similarly if you live and drive. Exclusively in urban areas is probably a good alternative, but if you venture beyond the city walls, I think it's worth having the added range of this and essentially no premium over what's actually hanging on that curve. Promise on this, I think it's a big promise anyway, I think it's more than enough on my part. I hope you enjoyed today's video. I want to say a huge thank you to Vlad for bringing his car today and as always thanks to you for Watching, don't forget to hit the like button, comment below, subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you all in the next one, bye.