I have a 2015 500e. I love it! Fastest vehicle I've ever owned. Live in South Florida and we have pubic EV chargers EVERYWHERE! Have mine for over nine months and had no problems charging without even having a EV charger at home (I live in apartment) . Am never, ever going back to a petro vehicle.
Drove one for 27 months on a lease. Turned it in on Jan 31 and really miss it. Full tank of juice every morning when I got in it, that with the included level 1 charger on 110 volts. Only plugged into a level 2 a half dozen times or so. Best commuter car I've driven.
To people who are not sure they can "take the plunge" into EVs, I recommend the following: - Reset your trip odometer on your regular gas or diesel car and drive it normally for 30 days. Then take that number and divide it by 30 to get your average daily driving. If you are like most people it will be less than 30 miles, but even if it's over 30 miles it is almost certainly less than half the range of even this Fiat. - Have a look at previously owned Fiat 500e's to find some incredible deals. For example, they can be found in large numbers under $9000 with low miles, one owner and in great condition and many are even less than $6000. - If you are concerned that there is no fast charge capability available (that is, no DC fast charging), most of the time you will not be charging from empty, so you may only need an hour's worth of charge even using just a level 2 220/240v charger to get back to full or near full. - If that's still not enough for you there are other choices of EVs that are also great deals previously owned that DO offer DC fast charging, such as Kia Soul EV, Volkwagen eGolf and BMW i3.
I own a 2017 500e. About 95% of my driving is within the car's range. I purchased the car for $11,000 out the door. It had 7,650 miles on it. I installed a Level 2 charger at my place at a cost of my labor and $400. The car looks and drives like new. Although I drive the car every day, My average KW is about 1.2 a day higher than last year. At $.10 a KW that is about $ 3.60 a month. I have upgraded my laundry so that may also figure in. The overall cost is my primary reason for the purchase of the car. The vehicle is dirt cheap to drive. Using a 100 mile charge range at 22.4 KW the car goes 100 miles for $ 2.24. My SUV gets 16 MPG. That is 6.25 gal for 100 miles, at $1.75/gal that is $ 10.94. The 500e is 5 times cheaper to drive.
I have had a Fiat 500e for a year now. Best little town car I have ever owned. It is a blast to drive. Most of them were leased. They are an excellent bargain when buying them on the used car market.
These cars dropped in value significantly . You can buy one for 10k. I like them but no deal if it doesn’t have DC fast charging or push button ignition
LucasLand Push button ignition? Firstly, there is no 'ignition' because there's no fuel to ignite. Secondly, are you really too lazy to just insert and turn a key? I guess just walking to your car must be so tiring for you! I suppose superficial things please superficial minds.
Well-made and sensible review. Thank you for being conscientious about terminology, such as the accelerator pedal. There is no gas in this vehicle, therefore no "gas pedal"
Thank you for this thoughtful and very helpful review...I'm doing my research now to buy a used 500e. One thing I am not clear about is the Bluetooth. I saw in one overview that it allows phone pairing only and not music streaming. Is the correct?
That is correct. I own one and I do miss built-in BT music streaming. What you can do though is get a little BT receiver that plugs into the AUX port and the USB for charge. Mine is a 2015 model and it's got two usb ports. One in the glove box and the other down in the center console next to the cup holders. The USB port next to the cup holders is a media streaming usb. You can plug your iPhone with a cord there and use the steering wheel buttons to go through the music player menus on your iPhone (does not work with android). I keep the BT receiver pluged into the usb in the glove compartment and have a lead with a 3.5 jack plugged into the aux port. It works for the most part very well. The caveat is that the phone (iphone in my case) connects to both, the built-in BT and the streaming BT and tries to use the streaming BT for phone calls too. Unfortunately, unlike on an android phone you cannot pick the different Bluetooth profiles for different BT devices connected with the phone. The dongle I have is also meant to be used as a handsfree but it's got a real poor mic and in my case is hidden in the glove box so when making calls I manually choose on my iphone to rout the call through the fiat BT instead of the dongle. Hope this helps. By the way, this should not be a dealbreaker because the car is awesome for shorter trips and commutes. I do miss DC fast charging for when I need it for a bit longer trip.
