► Likeable small SUV with keen pricing
► Acceptable, if not amazing range
► Largely comfortable, not especially dynamic
If you’ve overgrown your cinquecento but just can’t give up those cutesy looks, the Fiat 600e may very well be the electric car for you. It remains a tiddler, albeit one with five doors and rear seats that aren’t best left for children and contortionists.
It is of course a small SUV, going up against the likes of the Hyundai Kona Electric and Smart #1 in the £30-£40k battleground. Fiat are even dangling a particularly juicy carrot in the form of a £3k grant. At the time of writing, that means a sub-£30k asking price that makes it easier to forgive a few familiar foibles.
While it might look like a Fiat 500e from the outside, Fiat made development as painless as possible by leaning on the Stellantis parts bin and pinching its car’s platform, battery pack, electric motor and interior technology from the Jeep Avenger. They’re even built in the same factory located (appropriately) in Tychy, Poland.
Fiat has some rather high expectations for the 600e, too. It expects the car to lead the charge on its transition into the electric era, as it was designed to corner two markets. The brand reckons it’s small enough to appeal to city-slicking singles and couples, but just large enough to serve as the main car for small families. We’re not entirely convinced, though.
Not convinced? Why not?
Well, the Avenger is a solid rather than sparkling starting point. The Jeep is a handsome and very likable implementation of the same raw ingredients, managing to be more than the sum of its solid but hardly class-leading parts. Fiat’s recycling of its components for the 600e has produced a similarly sound but relatively uninspiring electric SUV that, like the Avenger, trades heavily on its funky design.
We’ll start with the practicality. There are some good bits here, such as the deep door pockets and the enormous storage bin in the centre console that’s large enough to lose an infant child in, let alone your wirelessly charging phone. Fiat says that, if you add up all the cabin cubbies, there are 15 litres of storage space to play with, which means there’s no excuse for leaving clutter on show.
But the 600e falters when you load passengers into its rear. There’s very little legroom for the vertically gifted in the back, even without a six-footer behind the wheel, while even someone of average height will feel a bit cramped. There’s way more room in the back of a Kia Niro EV or Smart #1.
The 600e’s boot is average for the class, too. At 360 litres, it 37 litres larger than the Smart #1, but it’s a staggering 115 litres smaller than the Kia Niro EV and 110 litres pokier than the MG ZS EV. Fold all the rear seats flat and space expands to a more respectable 1231 litres.
What’s the rest of the 600e’s interior like?
Rather nice, especially when trimmed in Fiat’s range-topping La Prima specification. The cream leather-effect upholstery gives the cabin a real lift and we like the quirky embroidered Fiat motif on the seat backs and squabs. Fiat has also fitted the 600e with a daintier dashboard and a round binnacle for the digital gauge cluster, which it says are nods to the original 500.
Naturally, there are some similarities with the Jeep Avenger. The 10.25-inch infotainment system, switchgear and push-button gear selector are shared between the two cars and, for the most part, these components been integrated into the Fiat’s cabin design well. Menus are clear enough for the infotainment, but the software is laggy, but we do appreciate the physical heater controls.
You can see where the corners have been cut, though. The dashboard, steering wheel and magnetic flap for the central storage bin are reasonably high quality, but the plastic used for the door cards feels like it was lifted from an early Vauxhall Corsa. Price might have given it an excuse previously, but the Smart #1 feels far plusher for not much more cash.
Surely it drives well. Right?
You would think, given Fiat’s track record. The new 500e is joyous to drive, but Fiat hasn’t managed to transplant its character into the larger 600e. To be fair to Fiat’s engineers, though, that isn’t their fault. It’s the fault of the e-CMP2 architecture that Stellantis has thrust upon them. None of the cars on the chassis are particularly engaging to drive, so it was inevitable the 600e would be on the uninspiring side.
The 600e feels a lot like the Jeep Avenger, which is to be expected because the two car’s wheelbases are identical at 2.56 metres. Fiat’s lead engineer for the project also told us that her team didn’t design any new suspension components for the car. All they did was tweak the settings of the hardware they were given which, obviously, can only get you so far.
However, there are differences. The 600e is noticeably softer than the Avenger, which we think is a good thing for Britain’s battered roads. The suspension is noisy in its operation on potholed urban streets, yet shields you well from any jolts. There is a slight bobbing sensation as speeds increase without descending into float. wallow and heave.
There’s a trade-off for this comfort – and that’s body roll. It really leans over in corners if you attack them enthusiastically. But it’s quite hard to have fun in the 600e because its stability control will swing down on you like a guillotine if it senses even the lightest inkling of tyre squeal. It’s a stark contrast to the 500e, and an even bigger departure from small Fiats of the early 2000s which would actively encourage you to rip their tyres from their rims.
The steering doesn’t inspire confidence, either. Because Fiat expects the 600e to spend its days pootling around town, it tuned its steering to be as friendly as possible to city drivers. There’s an awful lot of assistance – and that presents a problem once you leave the town and hit the open road.
Its lightness doesn’t real build confidence and it’s easy to throw to much lock on enthusiastically. Sport adds a little heft if no more feedback to the fairly lifeless rack, soon dampening any enthusiasm you might of had.
Each drive mode has it’s own power level and throttle sharpness. Thankfully, full power can be accessed regardless of mode if you bury the pedal into the kickdown switch.
What’s the electric motor like?
Fine. It’s the same 154bhp unit found in the Jeep Avenger and the updated Vauxhall Corsa Electric – and it offers a perfectly reasonable amount of performance for the car’s target market. Fiat says it can get the 600e from 0–62mph in nine seconds and reach a top speed of 93mph.
That’s not bad, but the 600e’s rivals are appreciably faster. The Hyundai Kona Electric produces 215hp, which is enough for a 0–62mph time of 7.8 seconds. The Smart #1 (which is quickly becoming our favourite in this category) is faster still, boasting a horsepower advantage of more than 100bhp and a crushing 0–62mph time of 6.7 seconds.
In fairness, when you’re driving around town, huge power figures and short 0–62mph times are rather meaningless. What really matters for an EV is its 0–30mph capability – and, providing you floor it, the 600e has enough get-up-and-go to chop up your average petrol-powered hatchback at the lights. But the Kona and the #1 are much faster at these speeds, too. Like the Avenger, the 600e finds itself unmistakably average alongside its peers.
What about the 600e’s charging system?
Here’s where Fiat claws back some ground. The 600e supports 100kW DC rapid charging, which can thrash the battery from 20 to 80% capacity in less than half an hour. The 600e’s maximum charge speeds are slower than the 150kW charging offered on the Smart #1 but, because the Fiat only has a 54kWh battery rather than the Smart’s 66kWh unit, their charge times are comparable.
The 600e’s maximum real-world range is still somewhat of an unknown quantity because we haven’t yet had chance to run its battery completely flat. Fiat says it can drive for up to 250 miles with a mix of town and country driving. But if you’re only dawdling around the city, it says you can eke as much as 375 miles from the battery.
Like the Avenger, we reckon you’ll struggle to achieve those figures outside of a laboratory. Expect to get around 200 miles between trips to the plug based on our trip computer readings on test.
Anything else worth mentioning?
Fiat piggy-backed a rather bold marketing strategy off the launch of the 600e. The company has decided to chuck all its grey paint in the bin and only offer its cars in a range of bright colours. That’s a brave choice, especially when you consider that grey is the most popular paint choice amongst new car buyers in the UK, because cars painted grey have the highest residual values. We applaud the decision – we just hope that the British public is receptive to the change.
Fiat has also streamlined the 600e’s line-up. There are just two options available, called (RED) and La Prima. The former model is priced from £32,995 (before Fiat’s e-grant) which, rather importantly, undercuts the cheapest Jeep Avenger by a margin of around £2700. It also continues Fiat’s partnership with the international charity of the same name which combats illnesses such as AIDS and Covid-19.
The Fiat 600e (RED) has a reasonable amount of standard equipment including LED headlights, automatic windscreen wipers, automatic air conditioning, a 7.0-inch digital gauge cluster and a 10.25-inch infotainment system. There’s also plenty of safety equipment such as rear parking sensors, cruise control, lane-keeping assist, six airbags and a driver attention reminder. And, obviously, it’s painted red. Strangely, though, it still has 16-inch steel wheels.
Above that, there’s the Fiat 600e La Prima. It’s priced from £36,995 – and it features a lot more standard equipment, including 18-inch diamond-cut alloy wheels, privacy glass, heated front seats, an eight-colour ambient lighting system and cream leatherette upholstery. There’s some extra safety equipment, too, such as a blind spot monitoring system and a Level 2 autonomous driving system that bundles together adaptive cruise control and automatic lane centring.
Verdict
The Fiat 600e is rather difficult to champion. It isn’t particularly engaging to drive and struggles to deliver on its goals as a compact electric family car because it doesn’t offer enough legroom in the back for adults (or even teenagers) and its boot space is limited.
Despite this, the 600e makes a strong case for being the best small electric SUV within the Stellantis group. It’s the comfiest SUV-shaped e-CMP2 platform car that can absorb the abuse of a poorly surfaced road and, with its bold range of colours, bright interior and picture-perfect smile, it’s rather desirable. Its starting price even looks quite attractive.
But we think you could justify spending the extra money on the Smart or the Kia, because they’re objectively better cars. Overall, the 600e is a good first effort from Fiat, but in its current form it lags behind the very best small electric SUVs on sale