It is going to be no shock to anybody that the Fiat 500e, launched in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, hasn’t been promoting properly. Actually, gross sales have change into so poor that manufacturing on the Mirafiori plant in Turin, Italy needed to be paused at factors final 12 months, regardless of now being exported to the US.
A final-ditch effort to revitalise the town automotive has seen Fiat reengineer the pure electrical mannequin – at appreciable expense, I’m positive – to simply accept a petroleum engine, in step with the common trade development. Pre-production meeting of the combustion-powered model, merely known as the five hundred Hybrid, has begun forward of full-scale manufacturing focused for November 2025.
The automotive you see right here seems to be remarkably much like its zero-emission sibling, belying what was definitely a complete transforming to the entrance finish and underpinnings, which Fiat says is symbolic of the model’s “social relevance.”
The apparent few adjustments embody an anticipated bigger entrance opening (obscured by camouflage right here) to feed extra air into the engine, in addition to a gasoline filler the place the charging port would usually sit. With the exhaust pipe hidden by the bumper, the five hundred Hybrid seems to be in any other case equivalent to the 500e – even the 17-inch wheels are carried over.
Inside, the automotive is once more as per the electrical model, with a two-spoke steering wheel (right here with a purple 500 emblem), a ten.25-inch floating infotainment touchscreen and a shelf that homes a Qi wi-fi charger. Sprouting from below the aforementioned sprint is by far the largest indicator of the automotive’s combustion powertrain – an sudden guide gearlever, topped by a cute gloss black knob.
That row-your-own shifter implies that regardless of the “Hybrid” tag, the electrical help afforded right here can be delicate at finest. As Autocar experiences, the automotive is ready to utilise the identical Nm 1.0 litre naturally-aspirated three-cylinder engine and 12-volt belt-driven starter-generator because the previous-generation 500 Hybrid that was discontinued final 12 months, the place it made 70 PS and 92 Nm of torque.
The guide gearbox guidelines out Stellantis’ extra highly effective electrified small-car engine – a 1.2 litre turbocharged PureTech three-pot and 48-volt delicate hybrid system discovered within the new Grande Panda – as a result of that mill has solely ever been mated to a six-speed dual-clutch transmission.
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