2024 Fiat 500e review: The dumb money's EV

If I told you to picture an ultra-exclusive car what would you imagine? A Lamborghini Revuelto? Maybe a McLaren P1? How about a Fiat 500e?

Fiat’s newest, all-electric 500 went on sale earlier this year, but you’d be forgiven for not spotting one around. Since launch, Fiat has sold just 439 500e’s in the United States. But, unlike the Lamborghini and the McLaren, the new 500e’s rarity isn’t by choice. People simply aren’t buying it.

This fact made me wonder — is the 500e simply not a good car? Or is there just not enough demand among SUV-obsessed Americans to make a car like this financially feasible in the U.S.? I borrowed one for a week to find out.

Why you should buy a 500e (if money is no object)

The biggest criticism leveled against the new all-electric 500 is its price tag. Starting at $32,500 and climbing to $36,000 for the “Inspired by Music” trim (yes, that’s actually what it’s called), the 500e’s list price is dangerously close to a base Tesla Model 3.

But, for the sake of argument, let's set aside price for a moment. If money were no object what makes the 500e worth buying?

The style

Fiat has given the newest 500e a subtle facelift over the last generation, including new front and rear LED lighting, aero door handles and an updated front grill. The new design strikes an effective balance between modernized styling and the 500s classic look.

In the Inspired by Music trim, you get a Tuxedo Black paint job paired with subtle touches of chrome throughout the exterior. The 500 is exactly the kind of car people buy for its cutesy looks, so if you have your eyes set on that classic Italian look, it might be hard to settle for the utilitarian styling of a Tesla Model 3 or a Nissan Leaf.

Of course, a big aspect of the 500s style is its small footprint. This newest generation has grown a half size over its predecessor, but it’s still compact enough to make tight street parking a joy — or at least much less of a hassle.

The tech

Fiat isn’t offering anything revolutionary in the tech department, but the 500e does come equipped with a satisfying tech suite, including active cruise control and lane keep assist, one-pedal driving and, if you splurge for the Inspired by Music trim, a hell of a sound system.

Level two semi-autonomous driving tech won’t exactly chauffeur you around town, but on relatively straight highways it can hold its own. During my time with it, I took the 500e on a couple of highway-heavy trips and found it capable of handling all but the most curvy parts of the New York interstate.

For popping around town, one-pedal driving was pretty seamless. Compared to the three-pedal Fiesta ST I usually drive around Brooklyn, only having to use one pedal made city driving a far more relaxed experience.

The seven-speaker JBL setup (complete with a subwoofer) does not disappoint for all the bass enthusiasts out there—myself included. The JBL speakers delivered the kind of intimate audio you expect from a nice pair of headphones along with the chest-rattling impact of a premium car sound system. I found 2Pac’s Ambitionz Az a Ridah to be a great pairing for the speaker setup, if a slightly awkward one with the styling.

Why you shouldn’t buy a 500e (starting with that price)

Now let’s return to that price — $32,500. A price like that isn’t anything radical in the world of new EVs on sale today, but compared to the MSRP for the last generation 500, it’s a pretty shocking leap. In fact, the base 500e costs very nearly twice as much as the base Pop trim on the previous ICE-driven 500.

For all the cute styling and quality-of-life upgrades, the 500e still does a poor job of justifying that price. For your money, you get an estimated range of just 149 combined miles — one of the shortest ranges of any EV on the market today.

To Fiat’s credit, I managed to hit their posted range estimate almost exactly during my week of driving the car, which isn’t always the case when taking an EV from manufacturer testing to real-world conditions. Across a mix of city and highway driving, I covered 130 miles with 88% of the battery. That puts the total range at about 148 miles if I were to drain the battery to 0% (not that anyone would actually do that of course, making the effective range shorter than that).

For relatively quick trips in and around the city, I found the 500e perfectly sufficient for a full week of driving with no charge, but the limited range makes the prospect of longer road trips pretty unappealing.

Related: Top 5 PHEVs under $50K — with 35+ miles of electric range

All the little things add up

If you’re willing to spend the money on the 500e — if you have your heart set on the classic styling and you can stomach the lack of range — you at least want the rest of the experience to meet the expectations that the price tag sets. And that’s the biggest issue, it doesn’t.

The issues with the 500e that dig at you aren’t the obvious things like the price and range, it’s the little things that make each drive that little bit less pleasant than it should be.

One, two, three, four emergency vehicles!

The first example of that you’re likely to experience driving the 500e is its alerts of nearby emergency vehicles. When you’re driving around town and an emergency vehicle of any kind is within about 100 feet of you, the car will interrupt your music, play an audio alert, and display a big warning on the screen.

On my last drive in the car, about a 45-minute trip through Brooklyn and Manhattan, the alert went off four times, because of course it did. If you’re driving in a city, as I suspect just about anyone interested in buying a 500e will be doing, you’re bound to drive past some form of emergency vehicle on just about every trip you take. It’s not only a useless and annoying feature, it’s also impossible to turn off as far as I can tell.

Can you repeat that?

And the software issues don’t stop there. While the car supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the voice-assistant button on the steering wheel only works for Stellantis’s UConnect assistant.

This is incredibly annoying for a couple of reasons. First, if UConncet’s voice assistant could do the same things that Android Auto could do, like play a specific song on Spotify, I wouldn’t mind using it. But it can’t, so I do mind.

Second, there’s seemingly no way to change the function of the voice assistant button to work with Android Auto, making the button effectively useless to people who aren’t interested in using the built-in UConnect assistant.

The cherry on top of both of these problems is an intermittent software glitch that would shut off audio coming from Android Auto when something like an emergency vehicle alert would pop up. Fixing this required fully restarting my phone in the middle of driving in order to keep listening to music.

The cup holder conundrum

I thought cup holders were a technology we figured out a while ago, but apparently Fiat is still working out some hiccups. Towards the end of the week, after I’d gotten used to the 500e’s various software annoyances, I decided to really push the car to its limits by putting a plastic cup of iced coffee in its cup holder. The test was clearly too much to bear because when I went to grab my coffee out of the cup holder, the cup holder came with it.

For a reason that escapes me, Fiat decided to use a loosely attached rubber insert in their cup holder that simply can’t stay put for the life of it. I tried my best to click the insert back into the base, but after it released over and over again I decided to just drink my coffee with the attachment suctioned to the cup — ah, true Italian refinement!

Final thoughts

For all of the 500e’s troubles, I still enjoyed my week with it. Instant torque and its compact footprint make driving it around even cramped Brooklyn streets fun, parking is a breeze, and when you get out you’re confronted with a very pretty exterior.

Yet, a handful of issues, big and small, make the 500e hard to recommend. There’s certainly a market for these out there, just not a very big one. So far this year, it seems there’s a market of exactly 439 willing and able buyers. Do you want to be 440?

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