We're discussing the apparent demise of all the current engines bar the excellent but well venerable 1.2 in the 500 in another thread.

If Fiat really are going to limit the fossil-fuelled engine choices to the 1.2; then IMO FIAT need an electric or hybrid alternative in Europe, soon, or what's left of Fiat's market share will disappear faster than the charge in a Renault Fluence.

This is the place to discuss your thoughts on an electric 500 without drifting hopelessly off-topic.

The petrol versions are over priced can you imagine how much an electric one would cost?

I'm quite surprised no large car company made us an electric pickup yet. Plenty of space and load capacity for batteries, easy to implement 4wheel drive without resorting to separate gearboxes etc, and with the larger battery pack would come increased range.

Electrical 500 (or Panda, please?): indeed, very good idea for inner city use. But who in his or her right mind would pay for it at current price levels? As comparison, excellent small car the VW Up: in Belgium starting as of 10.880 EUR. The all-electric e-UP: as of 27.600 EUR (just under the base price of a Passat)...

Price for electrical car not counting the installation cost of a high-voltage charging point in your house, nor the insurance increase for said house (due to fire risk if car parked inside).
Something else to keep in mind with electrical cars: at least speaking for Belgium, we simply do not produce enough electricity to support even a minor increase of nightly charging of these cars. Note that the past 3 years every winter government panicked about lack of electrical power. No blackouts yet, but if France ever has an issue producing electricity we'll all be in the dark overhere as we import majority of our electricity from France since our nuclear plants were found to be unsafe and thus switched off.
Not convinced - yet.

jrkitching said:

We're discussing the apparent demise of all the current engines bar the excellent but well venerable 1.2 in the 500 in another thread.

If Fiat really are going to limit the fossil-fuelled engine choices to the 1.2; then IMO FIAT need an electric or hybrid alternative in Europe, soon, or what's left of Fiat's market share will disappear faster than the charge in a Renault Fluence.

This is the place to discuss your thoughts on an electric 500 without drifting hopelessly off-topic.

Click to expand...

I suspect that there’s virtually no chance of seeing an electric version of the current car in the US, but Fiat have stated that they will be heavily into BEVs in the future.

perelaar said:

I'm quite surprised no large car company made us an electric pickup yet. Plenty of space and load capacity for batteries, easy to implement 4wheel drive without resorting to separate gearboxes etc, and with the larger battery pack would come increased range.

Click to expand...

One problem is payload; you want to reserve as much of the gross vehicle weight as possible for this, which goes against having a heavy battery pack. EV commercials could work well in the multi-drop role in urban environments when the need for range is not great; the milk float is perhaps the classic example.

Another good use could be for the Royal Mail; all the letter deliveries in my area are done using small vans running house-to-house from a depot 2 miles away and an EV would suit this well, but cost is an issue and I suspect the bottom line is that a Vauxhall Combo is simply better value for money.

Renault will sell you an electric Kangoo today for under twenty grand, but you've to pay battery hire charges on top of that and in cold, hard economic terms, it's just not a viable business decision for most users.

Most pickups (remember, I can only talk about market in Belgium) these days are sold as "lifestyle vehicles", and will never have anything like their full payload. I can't in fact remember ever seeing a pickup with a full load here.

Taking into account a decent diesel pickup has a 1t load capacity, removing weight of diesel engine and fuel tank and adding 500 kg of batteries + 200 kg of electrical engines, I think you can still have at least 600 kg load capacity left. On top of 5 passengers and an unchanged tow rate...

In Ireland there is zero BIK on EV's so there has been a big increase of Teslas on the road recently - particularly the Model S. These are been bought as company cars obviously so from that perspective its quite attractive.

Mercky said:

In Ireland there is zero BIK on EV's

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I think that, in the short term at least, EV takeup is going to be more about political issues and fiscal incentives than technical merit.

In London where local pollution is a major concern they are now switching to all electric taxis and to electric delivery vans and in some cases lorries, that make short regular runs around London and would normally sit in traffic chucking out tons of CO2 and NOX.

Fleet buyers already spending a few million of a large amount of vehicles will get a very good deal when doing so and when they look at the cost of the vehicle they will also consider its expected life span and running cost as part of their calculation so what might look like a very expensive van or car to us, could actually be a cheaper alternative to a fleet buyer (remember electric vehicles have very low servicing costs)

A builder with a pickup (which is the main demographic for this type of vehicle in the uk, is simply not going to buy an electric car as they will be on building sites and hauling big loads, in Belgium it might be different but again in France I never see many of these vehicles, so to specifically design an all electric pickup for one market, is not financially viable. Vans however they will sell millions of in all markets so it makes it much more viable to focus resources on development there.

Fiat as a small and cheap car brand, usually and deliberately lag behind waiting for the costs of the technology to come down before adding it to their own cars, prime examples include their dodgy efforts with stop start, there only recent improvements in multi media systems, and their engines which (apart from diesels) haven’t seen a significant improvement in decades, even the multiair and twin air which are good as a concept have been poorly executed and are now seeing catastrophic failures at 5 years old.

The problem is what would be a £12k fiat becomes a £30k car when you add an electric motor and batteries. The technology is too expensive and fiat customers are not going to spend £30k on a run of the mill fiat panda or 500. They will if they can afford £30k go and buy something else like a top end focus if they are not bothered about electric drive, or they will go to Tesla or Nissan who have a proven track record of making reliable electric vehicles.

And so fiat are between a rock and a hard place, they need to develop but know one is quite sure currently which way to go, BEV, hybrid or all electric? Investment in one area could bankrupt the company if the world moves in a different direction. They are so late to the game with the new technology, they are almost building wooden galleons in an world of nuclear powered aircraft carriers.

Fiat need to probably focus on making cheaper small cars for the time being while developing technology for their higher priced cars, Maserati/alfaromeo then filter the technology down to the fiat brand as it becomes more affordable.

If they do nothing (which at the moment they essentially are) then they will be left very much out in the cold as one day in the not too distant future there will be a sudden overnight shift when the world goes out on mass and buys all electric and fiat are left scratching their heads.

Sergio’s attitude was one of, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But then they’ve not really been able to bring new models to market in a timely manner hence why we still have the same Punto, 500 and not much improvement in the panda for more than a decade.

If they can’t keep momentum going with what they have the. Why should we think they will do anything different with this new technology.
They are now the only manufacturer not really doing anything to change

It’s almost as if Sergio Marchionne didn’t have any idea what he was doing and was only interested in posting a profit in the short term.

Fiat and electricity you say?

I'm somewhat conflicted by electric cars. I've driven plenty of them - the majority of our pools cars are EV's or hybrids. Range anxiety isn't an issue for me as I'm pretty low daily mileage as most city car usage would typically be. I'm not bothered about home charging as I don't have a petrol pump outside my house either. Free charging at place of work along with free parking when not charging easily covers the cost of a monthly battery hire. Less moving parts to go wrong, great torque, smooth power delivery and they're easy to drive around town. So all good news, yes?

But, I enjoy driving, and on a B road blast I really despise driving an automatic.

AndyRKett said:

Sergio’s attitude was one of, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

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There's an old business adage: "Whatever it was you did to get you to where you are today, won't be sufficient to keep you there tomorrow".

306maxi said:

It’s almost as if Sergio Marchionne didn’t have any idea what he was doing and was only interested in posting a profit in the short term.

Click to expand...

I'd agree with half of that.

My take is that Marchionne knew exactly what he was doing and was only interested in posting a profit in the short term.

Prices are slowly coming down, capability increasing quite fast. Hyundai are now selling a 64kWh Kona for under £30k with the govenment grant. This should have a real-world range of around 300 miles, and gets to 60mph in under 8s.
Hyundai have sensibly gone for an SUV platform because they are the best selling style at the moment, and the height enables easier battery packaging.
I think it would be difficult to package a decent-range electric drivetrain in the 500 at the moment due to its dimensions, but improvements in battery energy density should make it viable soon. Given the present design has been around for 10 years they must be working on an all-new replacement, which should be designed to accept an electric power train.

On the EV theme, as Citroen values awful, the fact the Citroen C Zero came out before anything else similar? The Nissan Leaf has lost a lot since 2011. If charging points as easy to come across as petrol stations, would values firm up?

The Yaris hybrid appears to have fairly big premium on compared to 1.33/1.5 models as an auto. Didn't know the 2012 Yaris Hybrid power figure includes electric motor and is quite a bit heavier. Think the 1.33 auto would do me until outlawed. Goudrons driven a few Yaris Hybrids and said they're not much fun. And don't believe claimed performance. The charge generated would get me to work the short way. A Leaf would. Longer journeys would be a pain. Neighbour has a 330E, good as company car at the moment. And it's not a 3.0 either.

Hi guys.
Not been here much recently.

We looked at buying a Renault Zoe some time back, and the cost of the battery rental was much more than the cost of the petrol we had been using over the years. Yes, the lecky was cheaper than petrol, but the cost of the petrol plus cost of the lecky was more than we were paying per year on a non-zero VED car.
Now, we have a Yaris Hybrid on zero VED.
EV cars don't even get a look-in with running cost with us.

How far do you have to drive to even break even? Doing the maths, the Renault Zoe makes no sense at all even if you must pay VED.

We do 6,000miles a year absolute maximum.

Mick.

Mick F said:

Hi guys.
Not been here much recently.

We looked at buying a Renault Zoe some time back, and the cost of the battery rental was much more than the cost of the petrol we had been using over the years. Yes, the lecky was cheaper than petrol, but the cost of the petrol plus cost of the lecky was more than we were paying per year on a non-zero VED car.
Now, we have a Yaris Hybrid on zero VED.
EV cars don't even get a look-in with running cost with us.

How far do you have to drive to even break even? Doing the maths, the Renault Zoe makes no sense at all even if you must pay VED.

We do 6,000miles a year absolute maximum.

Mick.

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For people doing low mileage, it’s going to take a long time to pay you back, if ever.

I have done 47,000 miles in the last 16 months, so anything that can reduce my running costs it will make a rather big difference

MPG.

Miles per gallon.
What is the cost of a gallon of petrol now?
Let's say you do 40mpg.
That's perhaps 4.5Ltrs per 40miles = £1.30 per litre = £5.80 per imperial gallon that will get you 40miles.
That's 14p per mile perhaps?

What does an EV car cost per mile including the battery rental?

Last time I looked., Renault were charging about £50 per month in battery rental alone, let alone the lecky to charge the thing up.

We personally don't pay anywhere near £50 a month in petrol - perhaps £30 per month. We have done 5,500 miles in the last year.

It doesn't make sense at all to run an EV unless they reduce the price of them.

Mick.

Mick F said:

MPG.

Miles per gallon.
What is the cost of a gallon of petrol now?
Let's say you do 40mpg.
That's perhaps 4.5Ltrs per 40miles = £1.30 per litre = £5.80 per imperial gallon that will get you 40miles.
That's 14p per mile perhaps?

What does an EV car cost per mile including the battery rental?

Last time I looked., Renault were charging about £50 per month in battery rental alone, let alone the lecky to charge the thing up.

We personally don't pay anywhere near £50 a month in petrol - perhaps £30 per month. We have done 5,500 miles in the last year.

It doesn't make sense at all to run an EV unless they reduce the price of them.

Mick.

Click to expand...

Not all companies charge for battery rental. BMW for instance doesn’t charge battery rental. The one thing that should be mentioned is that paying battery rental gives you a warranty. So it’s not quite as simple as you make out.

1 gallon of fuel is £5.90 (at a rate of £1.30 a litre) I get 60 mpg so about 10p a mile way cheaper than 14p a mile.

1000miles a month (I actually do this a week at the moment) = £100 a month in fuel.

Using over night rates to charge your ev and having the right supplier (not counting free charging at work which a lot of people with Ev’s do have access to) and you can pay as little as 2p a mile... £20 per 1000 miles, I think that difference for a fairly average mileage makes the EV cheaper and you don’t have any expensive bills if the battery goes wrong

Mick F said:

MPG.

Miles per gallon.
What is the cost of a gallon of petrol now?
Let's say you do 40mpg.
That's perhaps 4.5Ltrs per 40miles = £1.30 per litre = £5.80 per imperial gallon that will get you 40miles.
That's 14p per mile perhaps?

What does an EV car cost per mile including the battery rental?

Last time I looked., Renault were charging about £50 per month in battery rental alone, let alone the lecky to charge the thing up.

We personally don't pay anywhere near £50 a month in petrol - perhaps £30 per month. We have done 5,500 miles in the last year.

It doesn't make sense at all to run an EV unless they reduce the price of them.

Mick.

Click to expand...

As above it isn't quite that simple. Where I work, there is no staff parking. A Council parking permit is circa £90/month for combustion engined vehicles but is free for EV's. Charging points at car parks are also free. Taking these incentives into account an EV like a Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe or possibly BMW i3 would be cheaper per month than my current 1 Series BMW on a daily commute.