Fiat 500 electric - long-term review

An unexpected boon of running an electric car over winter is the heating. It works instantly. No need to wait for the combustion engine to get up to temperature to then circulate its warm air around the cabin. In Top Gear’s long-term Fiat 500e, we simply maxed the temperature using an actual button (praise be!) and in a matter of seconds it was pumping out toasty, comforting heat. Seconds.

This has come in enormously handy now that the UK has been dusted with snow and plunged into icy temperatures. As previously mentioned, our 500e – in Icon spec – is fitted with the ‘Winter Pack’ that adds heated seats, and in combination with the really very good heater has very excellently turned the cabin into a sauna.

Less excellently, the cold snap has destroyed the range, but then that was never really going to be a surprise. Some context: after a bit of a learning curve mostly on my part, it’s surprisingly easy to get used to the 500e’s regenerative braking, so much so I can’t remember the last time I actually used the brake pedal – it’s fully become a one-pedal car.

And this driving style, coupled with an increasing consideration of what running an EV entails (easy on the accelerator, anticipating traffic movements, using Sherpa mode as much as possible), has meant a typical city/motorway schlep of 35-ish miles drops the range by 45-ish miles. That’s not bad at all.

In the cold, with the heater on full and the seat heater set to crispy? That 35-mile journey took BabyCar’s range down from 143 miles at the start to 67 miles. Average consumption? 4 mi/kWh, so a little down on what it achieved in warmer climes.

Again, this is no surprise. Batteries don’t like icy temperatures and truth be told, I was freezing and kept the heating on full blast for an hour. No regrets. Fiat even concedes that a) driving at 70mph nearly halves the range (so my earlier exploits on the motorway weren’t too bad), and b) using the heater can affect the range by up to 40 per cent. I didn’t plan ahead but had I done so, pre-heating would have helped.

Elsewhere, the 500e continues to be a joy to use. It’s small enough to slot in anywhere which means parking’s a doddle (small cars FTW), and a friend recently commented positively on the colour scheme and wheels. I said, ‘it looks cute, no?’ to which this friend replied, ‘no, it looks cool’.

And… it really does. The ‘Rose Gold’ exterior finish certainly looks plusher than the blues and blacks and whites of other Fiat 500s you see peppering the roads and fits nicely with the ‘dark finish’ 17in alloys. The exterior colour is replicated on the interior dash, too, which really lifts the ambience of the cabin; a clean, fuss-free design centred around that easy-to-use 10.25in touchscreen.

The central wireless phone charging tray is a little hit and miss, mind, and being a tiny city car there’s not much space, meaning you have to get creative. Here’s proof that the seats – resplendent in a fabric that features recycled marine plastics – can adorably store a little shop from the supermarket. And yes, the heating was off for this.