Gadgetory

some cars have to be tortured to become electric vehicles others seem that they wanted to be from the day they were born I've got a hunch this is one of those let's drive the 2013 Fiat 500e efore electric and check the tap now see that's positioning this 500 e not entirely as a green car but also as a sporty car they're trying to split the difference here it might be a little bit semantics but you know there are different ways of tuning electric vehicles I hope this one is as sprightly as it is miserly spot one in the wild pretty easily you got 500 e badges around it different and I think kind of ugly wheels a unique sort of diffuser in the back and a low deep chin in the front that only the e has also no rag top is available on the electric like on the Cabriolet but you can get an optional glass sunroof the first thing you notice in this 500 different from the others is there's no speedometer that's kind of a trademark thing on this car but in this one they've got an LCD panel a round one with key zones on the Left that's percentage of charge of the battery down at the bottom estimated miles remaining it's a constantly moving target always being calculated based on how you drive and how you've driven and then on the right you're either into the power on the top you're kind of driving easily on the middle or on the bottom there you're putting some regen back in the battery that's what's going on there plus your speed now that brings us to the other screen these clip-on tom toms are nothing new for Fiat this one gets a few new tricks as you might imagine see that little button right there that will show an overlay of charging stations for example this units also got the intelligence to plot a route that is within your range or tell you it's not we also have here a slide from the navigation stuff is a car menu with some interesting integrated features between this pnd and the vehicle but over here this actually adds kind of three more gauges to this minimalist panel so you've got how much drag is coming off your climate control it might prompt you to turn down or off the heater of the a/c and this will tell you how much your actual drive motor is taking at the time well speaking of charge since the up there that's actually a giant charge indicating when you plug your smart phone in it's got the little indicator saying is charging about how much that's what this does for you and the whole world to see at a glance now the other big change in this cabin is since the engine goes away the shifter goes away instead you've got a very simple push-button drive control there's no transmission there's just a reduction gear so there are no paddles there's no sport mode there's no faux shipping now on to the audio system for sources pretty simple you got am/fm and satellite radio no HD radio by the way under media it's whatever you can ran into an aux jack or a USB over there in the glovebox if you don't want to rely on those new screens you've got a third with the Fiat access app you can put on your smart phone it duplicates a lot of what's on this screen in that screen but it's also got the ability to locate your car look at some information on the vehicles energy history if you're that kind of geek you can also check and initiate charge blow the horn preheat or pre cool the car while it's still plugged in and lock or unlock the doors the reason you want to preheat or pre cool the car is because you do that while it's still plugged in allowing it to do that off of shore power and not take out of the drive battery it's an interesting technique to use for most Dedes now under the ease diminutive hood about the size of a clipboard you'll find a special engine cover that covers no engine at all of course electric motor and here's the guts yes you can't see the motor what you see first is the inverter this is a key part that turns the DC in the battery into that AC the motor wants and the motor is down in there Down Yonder this is your service battery like all cars have electronic control unit basically nothing serviceable up here although you do see a lot of elaborate cooling reservoirs up here because this vehicle's key technology is the battery and that has a thermal management system so it in hot weather or very cold weather they say the rain stays pretty much spot-on that battery has 97 lithium-ion cells and it not unlike the technology in your phone or tablet total capacity of 24 kilowatt hours that's how they measure battery capacity in cars that delivers a 111 horsepower that's a few more than a standard 500 and 147 foot-pounds of torque that's a lot more than a standard 500 it gets is car up to 16 about nine point one seconds a few tenths faster than any non turbo gas engine 500 much slower than a turbo or in Abarth now the key here is 600 pounds extra weight that's how much those batteries way and that means this car could be a lot quicker if its own power that wasn't making it so quick wasn't so heavy you see how you kind of chase your tail and electric cars sometimes the efficiency numbers are good in fact class-leading says Fiat 108 MPGe that's the equivalent mpg as the EPA defines it which is an average of some city and highway put together same thing for range blend those two together you get 87 miles EPA stated now getting juice into that apparatus can be a Tale of Two Cities once this connectors plugged in and hooked up to the wall somewhere it may stay there 24 hours or four hours 24 would be charging from almost dead flat on a household connection a 110 120 outlet if you can find a 240 or a level-two like your dryer runs on this guy will charge from flat in under 4 hours a huge difference and you can have the Fiat 240 volt charger installed and wired up to your 240 circuit for about 2,000 bucks at your house little pricey or you can find a public charging station with level 2 and that's findable on your app or on the TomTom or you go to a Fiat dealer they're supposed to all have at least four high current charging outlets doesn't mean that I'll be waiting available but more than likely I'll check this out when you buy a 500 you also get 36 rental days at Enterprise rental car on the house from Chrysler Fiat for those longer trips those one or two week vacations where you don't want to be charging all the time they'll pick those up and stick you with a gas-powered chrysler you get 36 of those spread across three years so you've got roughly two weeks per year of gas engine driving on their nickel now first off you can't really tell but as I was coming out of that stop sign creep is built into the software so as you come off the breaks this car starts to creep like a car with an automatic transmission but it gives up almost nothing in terms of ride quality in a comparison to the Nissan Leaf and that has so far been my high-water mark my benchmark for really good ride quality in an electric car that doesn't cost near six figures but it's way more power than a standard 500 it's way more interesting power in a sense than a 500 turbo it's arguably the go to 500 configuration if you're into an electric car now let's talk about the way the thing handles corner zips around an angle it definitely sticks down to the ground much better than any of the other five hundreds that I can recall the handling of you can go around a corner better and it can either feel sporty or it can feel just heavier this one feels more heavy not in a bad way but it's not quite the same as getting a corner done better with a sports suspension it's getting a corner done better with 600 pounds of stuff and by the way the battery pack runs pretty much from the front of the pan back to about the rear axle line so that mass is nicely distributed in fact this car has a vastly better four to aft balance than a stock 500 which is really lopsided this car is not it's a fun little car to drive but the problem with a TV is at least unless you live with one a lot you're always worried about range you're always wondering well I shouldn't really dip into it too much because I might need those miles and as a result you may not have as much fun with those bolts as you'd like unless price of 500 e it goes bass 4:30 to 5:00 a lot for a 500 I know but it's no ordinary 500 here come the discounts and credits $7,500 federal tax credit as of this point in time $2,500 off on California tax now that's the only place this car is sold right now sorry I just tuned out 49 states worth of you and I hear there's up to $2,000 of cash on the hood at the Fiat dealer put all those into play and you're like 20 to 1 out the door and this guy load it up as much as you want to that's a hell of a deal so here is the point in the video where I normally tell you how long it'll take to earn back the penalty of a hybrid or an electric MSRP but there really isn't one