Side-by-side: Fiat 500e vs Abarth 500e

Words: Peter Anderson
Co-pilots: Mark Dewar and Blake Currall
Images: Blake Currall

I've always loved the Cinquecento. Even when it's not very good – and there are a few versions that are borderline terrible – it's fun. The formula of tiny car/big personality is a dead-set winner.

While it has obviously grown over its nearly seven decades on the planet - and yes, I know, the 500 was out of production for ages – it's still a small car by modern standards. Smaller than the Mini which is now gargantuan. Smaller than the cars we now call small because stuff has just gotten so big over the years.

The 500 was resurrected in 2007 to take on its 1950s rival, the Mini, itself rebooted some years earlier by BMW. That second-generation spawned all sorts of nonsense like the entirely silly but somehow likeable 500X compact SUV (based on the same platform as the awful Jeep Renegade) but it also brought back the Abarth.

That car was deeply flawed but all the more fun because of it. There were so many versions including the hugely expensive Abarth Tributo Ferrari and the hilariously mad 695 Biposto.

For the third-generation 500, Fiat took a big gamble – it went slightly bigger but also went fully electric. I first saw one on the road in Italy in September 2022 and thought it was awesome. Coincidentally, my wife and I were haring around Puglia in a 500 1.2-litre manual mild hybrid hire car and we had the time of our lives. So the 500 was still fun after being on sale for nearly 17 years.

What would this chunky rebirth mean for this iconic car and its performance version, the Abarth?

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Fiat 500e and Abarth 500e: How much are they and what do I get?

Fiat 500: $28,900 +ORC
Fiat 500e La Prima: $52,500 +ORC
Abarth 695 manual: $38,900 +ORC
Abarth 5ooe: $60,500 +ORC

500e La Prima price and specs:

$52,500 before on-roads

Look, that's a lot of money. The La Prima is very much the city car biased machine but in this rose gold (another $990 if you please) looks the absolute business. I am not a pink car guy but I really loved the way it looked and thought the extra bucks worth it.

At the time of writing, it should be noted, the La Prima was going for $49,990 driveaway. While that's still not a steal, you'll see why it probably doesn't matter too much. It's still a hefty premium over the older generation petrol car, now only sold, bafflingly, in automatic. The Abarth is still manual-only, thank goodness.

The 500e La Prima ships from the Turin factory with 17-inch diamond cut alloys, LED headlights, panoramic sunroof, "eco" leather seat trim, heated front seats, reversing camera, adaptive cruise, six speaker sound system, climate control, keyless entry and a tyre repair kit.

Abarth 500e Scorpionissima price and specs:

$60,500 before on roads

Like the La Prima this is a stack of cash. On the road you're very close to a Polestar 2 with rear-wheel drive and the MG4 X-Power. Or a Tesla Model 3, but why on earth would you do that. Or the X-Power MG4, come to think of it – the rear-wheel drive cars are better and don't run out of brakes.

From the same factory as the 500e, you get 18-inch diamond cut alloys, LED headlights, panoramic sunroof, Alcantara-trimmed body-hugging sports front seats, heated front seats, reversing camera, six speaker sound system with JBL branding, climate control, keyless entry and a tyre repair kit.

Media and entertainment

Both cars feature a configurable 7.0-inch digital dashboard, though they have their own "personalities." They also both have a 10.25-inch touchscreen. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are present and correct, the screen is easy to use with both of these booted up.

Both cars have six speakers and there wasn't anything that jumped out at me about either of them. The Abarth has JBL speakers but I rarely find myself saying, "Oh, gosh, these are much better."

Annoyingly, the screen doesn't say much about the car's EV performance, something that is really starting to stick in my craw. So many cars offer next to no usable information on the battery and range. I have to check my maths a million times with most EVs when it should just tell me what's going on.

Cheeringly, the climate controls are not buried in a menu somewhere which is also good because the screen menus are a bit hard to hit on the move. The voice control is okay but only minimally useful.

Safety: Four stars (ANCAP, 2021)

Both cars feature six airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, forward AEB with pedestrian and cyclist detection, lane keep assist, blind spot assist and tyre pressure monitoring.

The safety systems worked fine but the front parking sensors on the 500e were cooked. Every time you pulled to a stop they'd start beeping even with nothing in front of you. I'm pretty sure that was an isolated fault but it seriously irritating until I worked out you could turn off the parking sensors.

Service and Warranty

Three years/150,000 kilometres
12 months/15,000km, capped-price servicing

Well. A three year warranty in 2024 on a tiny electric car costing quite a lot of money just isn't cricket. The 150,000km is meaningless given this car will rarely leave the confines of metropolitan centres.

The servicing regime is a 50:50 proposition. While you have to roll in every 12 months/15,000, the service will only set you back $250 for the first eight, taking you all the way to (theoretically) 120,000km.

Look and Feel

The 500e looks utterly superb, especially in Rose Gold. It's such a great colour and absolutely works with the proportions, detailing and the vibe. I love the way the bonnet appears to have been closed over the lights but they shine through anyway. I love the aerodynamic side indicator repeaters. The faithful rendering of the wheel-at-each-corner stance (why isn't this car rear wheel drive, though?), it looks splendid.

Even the wheel spec is just right.

Inside you'll find the very cool seats with Fiat embossed in the backs as well as the 500 motif. I don't like single-spoke steering wheels but I like this one because it makes sense to be able to see the dash but the flat bottom would – and in the Abarth does – look a bit funny with an extra spoke. I loved being in this car.

The dash on the passenger side even had a cool weave effect hinting at the textile roof and upholstery of the Nuova 500.

The seats are comfortable but as we'll shortly discover, could do with a bit more lateral support. Irritatingly the sunroof blind is perforated so utterly pointless in summer and makes the air-conditioning work harder than it needs to. On the right kind of day, the glass sunroof is really fun, though, with so much light pouring into the cabin.

Fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will get this gag – a black Abarth is like Hotblack Desiato's ship. Black on black. The light just falls into it.

As with the La Prima, the Scorpionissimo is really nicely detailed. I love the scorpion on the rear quarter, the wheels looks brilliant and it somehow goes from sweetness and light in the rose gold to dark and menacing in the Abarth black.

The interior has a cracking set of sports seats with a dodgy but good-looking pull strap to tip them forward for rear access. Alcantara is the perfect choice for the seats and it just looks great in here.

I never really warmed to the three-spoke steering wheel, though.

Ergonomically, the car is pretty good apart from the annoying door releases. A button that looks like a Mercedes starter button release the doors on the inside and on the outside you have to kind of squeeze the door handle. Perhaps more annoyingly is that you don't hear the car lock when you press the key fob.

Entry and exit for the front is easy because the doors are huge. Vision out is brilliant because there's lots of glass by modern car standards, too. My wife - who stands at 170cm – actually fit reasonably comfortably in the back seat behind my 190cm tall son. His head brushed the aforementioned perforated sunroof blind, so that's a pain because you can't get a 500e or Abarth without one.

It's remarkably roomy, though.

The boot is predictably small, but useful enough for a city car. The cables you see here at the standard inclusions and they zip up nicely into the bag next to it. If you use public charging, you don't really need these cables with you.

At just 185 litres it will take a few shopping bags or a single suitcase. You might squeeze a couple of cabin size bags in there too. But yeah, it's tight. No surprises really given the car is just 3673mm long. But the 2322 wheelbase means there's plenty of room for actual people, which is worth the trade-off I reckon.

Drivetrain and charging

500eLa Prima: 87kW/220Nm
Abarth: 113kW/235Nm

The 500e ships with a permanent magnet electric motor driving the front wheels (WHY?) delivering 87kW and 200Nm, obviously both technically at zero revs. Because the 500e is a bit of a chunky boi with another 400-odd kilos over the older petrol car, the official 0-100km/h figure is nine seconds dead.

Stepping up to the Abarth nets you another 26kW and 15Nm, knocking the 0-100km/h time down to seven seconds.

Now. Both feature the same 42kWh battery pack under the floor. So that means the more powerful Abarth is penalised fairly heftily on range. The 500e has a WLTP range of 311km while the Abarth drops to 253km, an almost 60km drop.

That's partly due to the bigger wheels and no doubt the different driving modes. So Fiat is being pretty honest on the differences. The 500e is rated at 14.4kW/100km while the Abarth climbs to 18.1kWh/100km. 14.4 isn't bad, 18.1 is up there with some much bigger cars, so the aero and the wheels really do whack it.

Charging is by a CCS2 port on the right rear quarter with a maximum DC rate of 85kW and AC rate of 11kW. Fiat says you can charge from 0-80 percent in 35 minutes.

In the Abarth I got 12.768kW in at a maximum rate of 45kW on a 50kW Evie charger. So that took just under 20 minutes which feels a bit slow. At 58c/kWh it cost $7.41 which would get me about 75km in the Abarth and about 90km in the 500e. So it felt like the charging wasn't all that quick.

The upside to the small battery is that you can charge at home if you have access to a power point. If you set it to charge to 80 percent at even 3kW per hour, that's an 11 hour charge. You don't need to do that every night unless you're burning around.

In the real world, the 500e was the clear winner on range, carrying me and my family 220km and finishing with 26% of charge.

The Abarth fared much worse, needing a quick top-up and really only squeaking through 200km with that extra 13-odd kilowatts. But again, if you've the access, it's all about changing your habits.

Driving

Let's start with a careful dissection of the 500e okay fine, it's so much fun. The 0-100km/h time doesn't really tell the full story because it rockets of the line to about 60, which is exactly what you want.

It's so wieldy and chuckable, the low-down weight does far more to help than hinder. Non-Abarth 500s are hardly point-and-shoot machines, especially as you can only get them in auto at the moment, but the 500e is a bit of an urban warrior, slicing and dicing the traffic.

You can just imagine this thing scything its way through the traffic in Rome, handling the cobblestones like they ain't no thing and generally being a menace (in a good way).

The three electric modes are reasonably distinctive but I'd like the option to tweak the settings to your own liking. I want the acceleration in Normal mode with the region in Range mode. I tended to leave the thing in Sherpa mode which limits you to 80km/h (unless you smash the throttle against the firewall) which was a pretty good balance.

It probably wouldn't be much good in summer as it also limits the air-con.

For such a small car, the ride is quite good even though the stiffer springs and suspension to stop it scraping its belly and sparking like an F1 car would murder the comfort in anything else this small.

You're always aware that it's stiff but it's only on really bad stuff that it becomes a problem.

And this is where we come to the Abarth. Unfortunately, it's too stiff as a daily. I took it across lots of different surfaces and it never really settles. Yes the turn-in is sharper and you can really make this thing go around corners at absurd speeds, but it bounces so hard your foot comes off the accelerator.

I imagine there was a lot of discussion about this. The seats help you to brace your leg for more control, sure, but to make it less kangaroo-ey would mean softening the response which would...suck.

It is probably hilarious fun on a track but you'd need a fast-charger because the range from the same 42kWh battery is compromised by the extra power draw of the motor.

The three modes in this car are basically Normal, Fast Street and Fast Track. That final rips out the regen so when you lift off the throttle, it coasts rather than applying any braking force.

At first this annoyed me but then I remember what happens when you hit a bump, and it all became clear. When you're having fun, this will stop you making yourself ill. The safety systems are too good for you throw it in a hedge because of an imprudent lift-off in the Scorpion Street mode, but it will certainly make the car more predictable when going fast.

It is even more than the 500e but for the extra money, it's less usable. That sort of makes sense in the Abarth 595 because it's not mid-$60k on the road (although it is mid $40k...) but this one is for the really committed Fiat fan.

Redline Recommendation

They're both enormous fun and if you've got the money to burn, I've given you enough information to tell you which one is best for you.

The thing about the 500e platform is that I think it's everything good about electric vehicles. It makes absolute sense in its intended environment, it does a great job and it's enjoyable.

While the Abarth is fun, it's not everyday fun and the limited range blunts the overall brilliance of the package.

The 500e meanwhile will put a smile on your face very damn time you drive the thing. I'm not even going to get into the value for money argument because there isn't one, it's expensive, even at the promo price.

To be fair to Fiat Australia, the 500e and Abarth 500e are expensive everywhere. There's not much to strip out to make a meaningful difference to the price, so we get them fully-loaded.

If it was $45,000 on the road, it would still be pricey but people would consider it because once they drive it, they'll be hooked. I genuinely haven't stopped thinking about this car for weeks.

Everything else this small has question marks over it because they're not from a company that has been nailing the brief on small cars for 70 years. This is by far the most convincing small EV since the BMW i3, a car so good that nobody has been able to get close to it for over a decade.

I'd have one of these as a second car in suburban Sydney in a heartbeat. It's fun, the charging is doable at home (I have the luxury of a garage) and every single person in my family loves it, including the dog. In a couple of years time I will be on the hunt for a used one, no question.

I'll occasionally think of the Abarth but wouldn't regret the 500e. Not for one moment.