2024 Fiat 500e First Test: The Ultimate Urban Barnstormer?

“Whhheeee!” is basically this car in a nutshell. In the city, the 2024 Fiat 500e is the most fun a vehicle can be outside a full-on sports car. Easily capable of whipping through traffic and darting through nooks and crannies only locals would know, every motion of the 500e is both comically exaggerated yet firmly controlled. The accelerator feels directly connected to a valve that lets out speed, the steering has both the feel and quickness of a Mario-Kart Wiimote, and the motor’s quiet “Whheeeee” when pushed could be medicinally prescribed to uplift your mood. Is that mood uplift worth $37,595, though? Especially when it can’t easily get you to the next major city on a single charge? For a few, it might just be.

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High Prices, Artful Interior

$38,000!? For a Cinquecento?! For the top-of-the-line Inspired By Music trim, with ritzy white leather interior, yes. Good looking and reasonably comfortable, the seats could do with a little bolster for cornering and longer distance drives, but considering few drives are likely to last more than an hour in the 500e, that’s alright. The wheel’s leather wrap on this top trim example feels good, the push-button "transmission" controls are intuitive, and the rear seats are surprisingly usable, as long as rear passengers are under five-foot-five. In the front, headroom is adequate even for those beyond six feet. The driving position is upright and chair-like, keeping you at the same height as you’d be in an Escape or CR-V.

Despite the pricing, materials are a mixed bag. The upper dashboard on the equally-priced “Inspired by Beauty” and “Inspired by Music” trims is a beautiful textured piece, and even the base trim’s solid color red dash looks great. Below that dash panel, however, you get cheap rubbery material that’s much less pleasing to the eye, though it is soft when your knees bang into it while flying around the neighborhood. The door release buttons have more aesthetic attention devoted to them than the rest of the door panel.

For the base cloth-appointed Inspi(red) trim, pricing drops to a less-painful $34,095. By comparison, the 2024 Mini SE starts at about $32,000 with similar range and much more power, and the much more practical 2023 Chevy Bolt EV went for about $30,000 with roughly double the range of the smaller two-door hatchbacks. EVs still aren’t cheap, but that’s changing faster than many realize, meaning no 500e bought in 2024 is going to be a good deal.

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Emotion > Numbers

So why would anyone get one? Because it looks like it says “ciao” and it goes like a Superleggera Magic Carpet, at least in the city. If you can afford an almost $40,000 car that’s realistically only for city duty, you’re not paying for a spec sheet, you’re paying for personality. The 500e’s personality is raucously joyous, like a raver when the beat drops, or an extrovert meeting long-lost friends.

Accelerating from 20 to 50 when on a nearly full charge, especially over rough pavement, is a giggle-producing event. It makes the 500e feel dramatically more powerful than the rated 117 horsepower and tested 7.9 second 0-60 time, as the motor whizzes away with that inexorable electric torque. Twisting the wheel and yanking the car through corners feels almost like arcade physics, even on the less-than-stellar factory tires. Thanks to the floor-mounted battery the center of gravity is cartoonishly low for the 500e’s height. Handling is impressively neutral, with enough rotation to swing through a corner, but no detectable oversteer or handling vices.

The 500e’s handling is so good one might swear the quoted 2,982-pound curb weight was more like 2,500 pounds. Until you need to brake. Braking distances were around 126 feet during testing, and are notably high for a vehicle of this weight. When driving hard, leave plenty of extra space to stop. The 500e is a riot around town, but this is no racecar, though one wonders what the Abarth is like. Traction control is easy to trip, especially with ESC on, and on dusty or loose surfaces power needs to be fed in slowly when accelerating out of tight corners to keep juice from being cut.

While handling balance is great, the suspension is comically bouncy, and somewhat harsh. This just lends itself to the peppy charisma of the Fiat in most cases, as accelerating away while bounding down the road is rollercoaster-levels of fun. But when you’re tired and just need to get home, that bounciness begins to overstay its welcome.

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European City Chic

The bouncing joy of the 500e’s driving experience is only half the reason anyone interested in the cute runabout will get one. No matter where it’s parked, this very electric Cinquecento looks like its next destination is a Milan art gallery. The Inspired-By-Blank trim level names, intricately designed door buttons, and admittedly deft use of chrome on our tested example all evoke thoughts of people who take style very seriously. Unfortunately, as stylish and fun as the Cinquecento-E is, using it outside a metro area isn’t a good idea.

Besides some wind noise, highway driving itself is just fine, though the Fiat no longer feels any faster than its rated power at highway speeds. A quoted top speed of 93 mph is cute, and more than anyone using the 500e correctly needs. When the Fiat does occasionally venture onto the highway however, it feels much better than the previous generation’s 1.4-liter engine, despite having only 122 miles of MT Roadtrip Range.

That’s 13 percent less than the EPA 141 mile range, a drop smaller than most vehicles. If you aren’t driving more than 40 miles a day, trickle-charging from a standard 120-volt outlet is surprisingly enough to keep the 500e going day after day, and one can confidently take two-hour round-trip journeys with a sizable reserve, if you stay off the highways. That said, Level 2 charging at home is definitely the best idea. We saw a peak charging power of 85 kW, with time 27 minutes for a 5-80-percent charge and 72 minutes for a 5-100-percent charge.

In its element, the 500e is clearly a bundle of fun, but unfortunately that niche isn’t large. However, for those whom the 500e makes sense, it’ll be the apple of their eye.

Cumulative Range Added @ 15 min: 64 mi

Cumulative Range Added @ 30 min: 103 mi

Cumulative Range Added @ 45 min: 109 mi

Cumulative Range Added @ 60 min: 117 mi