After a long time of concept cars being shown and speculations of all kinds, Fiat takes this big opportunity and uses the Los Angeles Auto Show to reveal their next cars to arrive in North-America. Even in Europe, they’re making a big effort into taking 500 from an only version to a whole car family. The first steps were creating the Abarth sporty versions, then the convertible body called 500C, and now the minivan 500L. Here you will find out about two members of this stylish Italian family that just made their debut in the US.
Fiat has received many efficiency awards for the MultiAir and the TwinAir engines, but they’ve never performed any attempt of developing neither electric or hybrid propulsion for series production until now… which doesn’t mean that they weren’t working on it. But electric cars are a very expensive project to release in cars with low sales volumes, so the Italians needed to make a very good first choice. And which Fiat could be better to debut this new technology than their most charismatic hatchback of the last few years? At least in a first moment, 500e will be sold only in the US, but using lots of technology to compete with cars like the also recently shown Chevrolet Spark EV. The new Fiat comes in new color options and features an aerodynamic kit, with spoilers and wheels with less openings, everything to achieve a 13% better air flow. Those are some of the responsibles for the 108 city MPGe and 122 highway MPGe ratings, not to mention the 87-miles range – Fiat claims this is the best number in 500e’s class. The biggest inside changes are the new touchscreen above the console and the driving mode selector: instead of the gearshift lever there’s a button selector for the driving modes. These two-color external details shown in the pictures can be fully customized by the owners, but here’s the painful part of Fiat’s effort with 500e: in order to offer a reasonable price, they will lose money for each sold car.
On the other hand, the North-Americans now won’t need to give up buying a Fiat due to lack of internal space. Some months after the European release, the Italian minivan arrives at the other side of the ocean with some exclusive items: there are more body-color painted parts, giving 500L the appearance of a bigger car. But it also received slight updates to the headlights, including LED daytime illumination, and a panoramic sun roof: the minivan has arrived still only in the five-seat option, but these passengers will enjoy the 42% bigger space along with all the visibility brought by very big windows. And when the weather becomes unpleasant, they can enjoy the also exclusive entertainment system with the UConnect entertainment system with 5” touchscreen or the available 6,5” option. When it comes to opening the hood, this car takes the family with plenty of power but prefers to focus at a low fuel consumption rather than breaking speed records: this car uses the same 1.4 MultiAir Turbo saw in Dodge Dart, bringing the best of downsizing with its 160 hp using manual or automatic double-clutch transmission. Besides that, Fiat will repeat the big personalization options list offered for the hatchback, including different colors for the roof. But the cherry of this cake is the yellow car of these pictures: the 500L Trekking brings all that package wrapped in a more aggressive design, with exclusive colors, bigger wheels and black-painted external details.
