The Fiat 500e – Fiat’s electric 500 – has gone on sale in the US with the same monthly lease payments as the 500 Pop – just £130 a month.
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Sergio Marchionne reckoned Fiat would lose £7k on every 500e they sell, but that may be a very conservative estimate judging by the deal Fiat has put together for the 500e in California, where it’s just launched.
For a very modest down-payment of £650 and then £130 a month, you can drive off in a brand new Fiat 500e. That’s exactly the same deal Fiat offers on the 500 Pop – a car that cost under £10k in the UK – making the 500e the first EV we’ve come across where costs are sensible.
But it’s not just the 500e you get, you also get Fiat’s other extras designed to ‘help’ drivers in to an EV, such as the Fiat 500e Pass Programme which gives 500e owners 12 days of free ICE car hire from Enterprise for those times when they need to go further than round the block a couple of times.
That all adds up to enough incentive to grab the 500e as a second car for use in town, with its 87 mile range offering most of the daily needs of most drivers and the rest of the 500 intact as a fun, funky urban transport.
We can’t see this deal doing much for Fiat’s bottom line – and the ability to do such a great deal on a new EV is partly down to a variety of taxpayer bribes – but for the car buyer it’s a great offering.
And if it goes really well, Fiat could manage to make even bigger losses than they already do.
Brian79 says
You ca guarantee the 500e won’t turn up in the UK, and if it does it will a great deal more than £130 a month. But if it was £130 I’d sign up now as a great runaround.