Staff Cars. Four Years With ‘Panic’ the Fiat 500e and other Italian Musings.
The second generation of the Fiat 500e was launched in late 2020 and first delivered in the UK in 2021. And is still in production (after a brief hiatus).
Trims
Two trims are offered with two battery options.
Fiat 500e ICON 24 kWh: £17,245
As standard, the 500e ICON comes with Automatic Air Conditioning, 16" Alloy Wheels, Uconnect™ Infotainment Touchscreen 10,25'' with DAB Radio, x1 Front USB-A Port (Charging, Data Transfer & Screen Mirroring) and one pedal driving. WLTP range is 118 miles.
Fiat 500e ICON 42 kWh: £20,245
Same as above with a 202 miles WLTP combined range.
Add £3,000 for the convertible.
Fiat 500e La Prima 42 kWh: £23,245
La Prima adds Rearview Parking Camera, Uconnect™ Infotainment Touchscreen 10,25'' with integrated Navigation system & DAB, 17" Diamond Cut Alloy Wheels and LED Headlamps, plus much more, but it’s only available with the larger 42 kWh battery pack providing 202 miles of range.
My wife and I have long been a fan of Italy, Italian things, food, wine and even their cars for as long as I care to remember. We’ve toured it extensively and love to have a blast on an Italian scooter or in an old ‘puddle-jumper’ car when we’re there if we get the chance. Lois is much more comfortable on a 50cc than anything bigger. Pictured is one result of her ‘lack of talent’ shown here when she fell off it at like 2 miles per hour. Into an old wall. Rather than bail from the bike, she held on for grim death and both her and the bike toppled over into said wall and smashed the headlight and scuffed her painted nails. Did I laugh? Perhaps.
Anyway, that resulted in her being put in the Tuk-Tuk of shame for the rest of the day’s trip through Tuscany.
I digress, and we move forward to 2016 when she fell over a new Fiat 124 Spider (which is actually not really a Fiat, it’s a Mazda MX5 in a dress with a 1.5 litre turbocharged Fiat engine). On our return, one was purchased, but that was replaced couple of years later, when she saw in the dealership, the Abarth Spider. This is an angry version that- like that little Italian man who shouts about his fish at an Italian market-is noisy and somewhat abrupt, but expressive and entertaining.
I just laughed again and the deal was done. This was 2019.
Fast forward to 2021 and the Abarth had now only done ~2000 miles. It mostly sat in the garage as a nice ornament that I dig out occasionally for a noisy blast-as it’s not really dog or shopping friendly- but mainly because she pinched my new Kia eNiro, almost the instant it was delivered, and she’d had a go in it.
Said Abarth Spider next to my old Vespa
So, I protest, FWIW, but obviously lose that conversation. A while later, I stumbled across a Rose Gold Fiat 500e La Prima 42kWh in BCA Blackbushe (I’m a car dealer)
Weirdly, it was one owner (Fiat dealer), and entered along with a few other ‘new’ cars from them. Perhaps they had gone ‘pop’ I don’t know. However it had only done 7 miles, clearly had never had a PDi or even put on as a ‘demonstrator’ as was still sporting a lot of the transport factory stickers/plastic.
I asked her if she wanted it. She approved and so I watched it go through ‘the block’ the next day.
Now with, shall we be nice and say- in ‘some’ auctions, what appears to be a popular car with lots of bids, often is nothing more than the back wall or the fire extinguisher bidding. Anyway, it ‘sold’ for a fair bit more than I wanted to spend, so that was that. For now.
Later that evening though, it popped up in their ‘Buy it Now’ section at a very reasonable price, and then I was instructed to pull the trigger.
Next day we head on up to Blackbushe (about 70 miles away in the eNiro).
I collect it and drive it out of the auction yard into the car park. It’s showing 3 miles range remaining and there’s a few screws and a bit of plastic panelling in the footwell. My spider senses are tingling, but no worries, it’s new and obviously still under warranty so I’m not massively concerned.
Quick check of ZapMap shows some Instavolt rapid chargers at a Starbucks drive-thru not far away. I was a tiny bit nervous I’ll admit, but it made it (after shouting at me in various panicked ’beeps and bongs’) and we charged up on the Instavolt premium-electrons. The Fiat actually charges a bit quicker than the eNiro at 85kW peak vs only ~77 for the Kia.
All was good, no warning lights or apparent issues so Lois put her brave-pants on and took over for the drive home.
Newly acquired ‘Panic’ the Fiat 500e and my trusty Eniro.
So I was back in my car finally (but had just ordered the eV6) and The Boss was happy in her ‘it’s not pink!’ Fiat.
Fast forward four years to today (it’s just had its 2nd MOT and passed with no advisories) but what has it been like? What does she think of it and how has it been? What do I think of it? Not that that really matters of course.
Well it’s utterly brilliant. I will steal it often if I can. Lois is still super happy with it and won’t hear any talk of replacing it.
‘Panic’ still likes to shout at you often in that Italian way when it thinks you’re going to crash into that stationary parked car at the side of the road, or if it knows you’re within a hundred miles of an obstacle or speed camera.
Bright sunlight in its eyes? Well then it throws a yellow light showing a crashed car symbol (the collision warning system has been blinded).
Sometimes when the little Mario is off and locked and you open the door, the radio will come on. Sometimes that’ll happen when you open the passenger door. Even occasionally if you simply plug it in to charge. Usual Italian things.
Has it been all rosy?
Pretty much, yeah. There was however something afoot with it, that I noticed after a few months-and cast your mind back now to the pick up day and those removed plastic panels and screws.
When it was AC charging, and you selected the highest charging rate option, the car didn’t pull the full ~7kW. Instead if you looked at the charger’s log, it was ‘cycling’ up and down between 3kW and sometimes the 7. It would also sit at almost zero kW for a few seconds.
As far as most non EV nerds would know, everything was alright and the car showed no charging issues or warning lights, and it would always charge.
Despite Lois telling me not to worry about it and to “stop being an EV tw*t” (I’ll let you guess if that word was ‘twit’ or not), I asked the main dealer to take a look, who saw the issue and said they’d sort it.
They plonked us in a new 600e demonstrator they just had in (not a big fan and it’s not a patch on the 500e) and we left Panic with them expecting a quick fix.
A couple of weeks passed, which then became a couple of months. By then they had asked for their 600e back and Fiat UK put her in a Lexus UX300e -which she utterly hated. But that’s another story.
Over the following weeks, they remained stumped and handed it over to Stellantis UK fault HQ who told them to replace an ever varying number of components in that age-old main dealer game of ‘parts darts’.
Side note: the Fiat 500e is NOT a Stellantis product. As in it’s not a Stellantis design or build. It was entirely a Fiat Chrysler (FCA) thing, built by Fiat in Torino before the Stellantis merger.
Three months passed, into the new year, and still we were in the Lex-arse, as it had come to be unaffectionately known.
They’d replaced the charge port and harness as it was ‘definitely’ that. It wasn’t. OK, some more HV cables. Nope. OK so it must be the ‘EV unit’. I was perplexed to learn this is their name for the inverter stack above the motor. Containing all the various boxes of tricks. Rather than try and track down the offending unit or whatever, they just ordered a new complete stack.
It arrived quickly and they fitted it. Hilariously (by now it was funny) again there was no change.
That left another couple of wiring harnesses and connectors to throw at the dartboard before the only remaining option-a new battery. However, ‘hallelujah’ all good and it was finally fixed!
I’m sure it was simply a broken wire or an incorrectly fitted connector, but they never admitted it or even told me exactly what the issue was. I wonder if they even knew tbf.
For balance, I’ve experienced this many times over the years with main dealers. Sometimes a car just stumps them.
Back to Panic: it’s been great. It’s a brilliant little car that’s very capable. With excellent spec. It’s nippy and easy to park. It feels at home at speed on the motorway too. Although for me it’s a bit cramped for long distance as I’m lanky legged sort. The back seats are only suitable for grown ups without legs or if they are child sized.
It also ‘sings’ loudly to anyone it passes when you first start it up and hit 18 mph.
Italian things.
