Even The Nearly Perfect 2024 Fiat 500e Has Flaws, Downsides, And Even The Occasional Con

At this point, those of you who have been following my cheap-lease journey in a 2024 Fiat 500e know the last year has proven largely uneventful. It's probably been disappointing for you, but trust me, it's been disappointing for me, too. I live in a pretty darn rural area of Georgia, drive a short-range city car, tried taking my 141-mile EV on a 760-mile road trip to the beach with zero planning, and nothing terrible has happened? That's just not right. There's supposed to be drama. 

Now, I'm not going to pretend my car choice hasn't been pretty confusing for a lot of people, but I do think "voluntary torture test" does a pretty good job of summing it up. Basically, I was convinced that modern EVs and charging infrastructure were already so much better than most people realized, I wanted to see how hard it would be to live with the EV that offered the lowest range and the slowest charging speed of any new car on the market. While living in a fairly rural area in Georgia. Oh, and now I can't charge at home anymore, either. 

Like I said, voluntary torture test. I did my best to make it hurt, and much to everyone's disappointment, it just hasn't been the high-drama disaster I was secretly hoping for. I mean, I leased an electric Fiat that Stellantis shipped in from Turin, Italy, and it hasn't even caught fire once? What the hell? But just in case you think I'm now a paid shill in the pocket of Big Electric Fiat, let me tell you —the 500e may be a great daily driver overall, but after driving it for a year, I have some complaints. 

For the last year, I mostly said positive things about my car, but it's finally time to air every single grievance take a look at the cons, downsides, and disappointments I'd discovered after 12 months of long-term testing a car I leased with my own money. 

Most of the time, I couldn't care less what kind of range I have available, and that's not because I live in a dense urban jungle like Manhattan where everything is available within a few miles. I just know where the fast chargers are now, and it's fine. I don't think about it. It might not be enough for you if you're constantly driving your kids from one activity to another, but there really aren't many people who need more than 141 miles of range to deal with their daily driving duties.

The problem is, there's one drive I make on a regular basis that the 500e can't do without stopping to charge — the airport run. Even starting with a full charge, there's just no way a 141-mile EV can drive more than 180 miles without charging. Because flying is a regular part of my job, I now know I need an EV with at least 200 miles of range, but that's really it. I can always rent a car for a long road trip, and what do you know, my eyes won't stop staring at used Taycans. 

The lesson here isn't that I screwed up, though. The lesson is that when you're buying an EV, think less about vague "road trips" and more about the longer drives you make on a regular basis. Since I live in Georgia, cold temperatures aren't as much of an issue, but they could be in your area. Do you need an EV that can drive from Miami to Seattle without charging? Of course not. But there's probably a drive or two you do on a regular basis that would be much more convenient if it involved zero charging stops. If that's, I don't know, 213 miles, maybe don't buy that early Taycan. That's my cheap Taycan.

Stellantis is a big company. It could afford to pay people who knew what they were doing to develop an app that was good, functional, and useful. Instead of doing that, the app they gave me is slow, buggy, poorly designed, and only occasionally works. I've complained before about how much I hate all the different apps our charging infrastructure forces you to download, but in this case, I'm complaining about the owners' app. It sucks, and Stellantis is far too big a company to think the Fiat app is an acceptable product.

Slow apps suck, but they're also something you can get used to. Just ask everyone still driving a new-ish Subaru with the slowest infotainment system ever invented. But I at least need it to work when I try to use it, and most of the time, it's a coin toss. Will I be able to remote-start my car to cool it down a little before I walk outside? Will the charge level it shows me be accurate or two weeks out of date? Will I even be able to open the app without it crashing? The answer to those questions isn't always "no," but it's a far more common answer that I'd like. 

Also, while I'm complaining, why do I have to enter my PIN again to see what kind of charge/range I'm working with? I already had to enter that PIN or tap my thumb to open the app, so I've already confirmed I'm an approved user by the time the app opens. I could see asking for it again in order to access payment information or anything private, but the predicted range and charge percentage show up front and center when you open the app. It's just almost definitely way out of date, so you have to update it again, and I simply do not understand why Stellantis decided it was cool to display inaccurate numbers but lock the real ones behind another security check.

You have to remember that, while I leased this Fiat planning to use it for things like driving 30 minutes to my brother's house or driving 25 minutes to my other brother's house, Fiat designed it as a city car for people to drive in the city. The 500e wasn't meant to make a Costco run, and it certainly was never intended to see an Ingles parking lot. I'm intentionally using this car to do things the designers never intended it to do, and that's always going to come with some issues. 

In this case, the sun visors are way too small, they're basically useless, and they suck. If the sun's directly in front of you, there's a chance the visor might be the right size to help you out. But if the sun's coming from either side of the car, the visors can't do a thing about it. It's almost more insulting that you still have the option to move them than it would have been if they were both fixed in place. 

Of course, were I driving this electric city car in one of the urban areas it was designed for, I'd probably have buildings on either side of me that would help block that sun and make the visors a lot less necessary. But out here, tall buildings are illegal, and even if they weren't, there wouldn't be enough of them to do much about the sun. I'll survive, but I don't have to be happy about it. And it's not like realizing that would be an issue would have stopped me from choosing this self-inflicted torture test. The blogs just matter more, you know?

As I've mentioned many, many times at this point, the 2024 Fiat 500e may be capable of handling non-city driving duties, but it's still a city car that was designed to be used in cities. If I told designers Dario Pellegrino and Lorenzo Battisti that I took their car on a 1,200-kilometer road trip, they'd probably look at me like I'd just told them Americans originally invented carbonara, and we're allowed to use bacon if we want. Okay, it might not go quite that badly, but they'd still want to know what the hell I was thinking. 

So, in the context of a city car that will most likely only be driven a couple of miles at a time and may never see the highway, adding adaptive cruise control would have increased the price without offering any real value for owners. It has regular cruise control, but even when Fiat brought the 500e to the U.S., it gambled on a lower price being more important than less stressful highway cruising. I can't say whether it was the right call or not because I can't convince anyone at Stellantis to risk their job to leak something so trivial, but I can at least understand the logic there.

Unfortunately for me, someone who doesn't think twice about hitting the highway in his little Fiat, adaptive cruise control would have improved my experience considerably. I don't need fancy steering assist or anything too crazy, but adaptive cruise control would be a nice thing to have on the way home from the airport. Of course, a big part of the reason I have this car is because the lease was cheap, but I think I would have accepted a slightly higher monthly payment in exchange for a small assist on the highways that Fiat never intended the 500e to drive on in the first place. 

I leased a bright red clown car while living in an area that's dominated by brodozers and giant SUVs, so I didn't exactly expect to blend in. But for a car that really isn't that special, it sure gets a lot of attention. Grandmas and aunties want to talk about it, sure, but that's to be expected. I'm just such an adorable young man, they can't resist. But even dudes who you'd assume would hate me on sight love the Fiat. Especially these days. If a guy straight out of MAGA central casting sees my car and decides to speak to me, there's a 98% chance the first words out of his mouth will be, "Bet that thing saves a ton of money on gas, huh." 

Heck, in the middle of taking ridiculous selfies for that top shot, a Redneck Youth walked out of the Golden Pantry, lost it when he saw me, and appeared to still be laughing as he drove away in his Silverado. I don't know what he was thinking when he saw me, but he didn't get mad. He just laughed. Because my car is too damn cute to get mad at.

With the attention, though, come the yappers. The randos who decide that me loading groceries into the hatch means I don't just want to talk about my car but stick around for a whole conversation. Usually about how much better cars were back in their day. It's generally all positive and friendly, and I'm not going to be a jerk to somebody's grandfather unless he gives me a good reason, but man, the old people who like the 500e sure are yappers. Which does mean it probably isn't a great choice for anyone who works at a retirement home. It's a cute car, but it's just too risky.