Abarth 500e review

Is the Abarth 500e a good car?

Abarth has injected real charisma and personality into its all-electric 500e hot hatchback. The car is swift rather than fast, but it has impressive road manners considering its upright stance and city car proportions. Add in an excellent cabin, plus the fabulous exterior design transformation, and the 500e feels like one of the most desirable compact hot EVs on the market – even if all that comes at a price.

How much does the Abarth 500e cost?

The peppy Abarth 500 commands a premium over its standard Fiat 500e sibling – as you’d rightly expect. The gain in performance is noticeable, and there are tangible differences to the way the car looks and feels inside and out. 

The stumbling block, therefore, will be whether or not the car fits with your lifestyle. The compromised two-door body, tight rear seats and tiny boot don’t make the 500e particularly practical, and that’s before you’ve considered the short electric range and average charging speeds. But the benefit of being this small is impeccable manoeuvrability and the ability to park almost anywhere.

There’s just one powertrain – a 42kWh battery with a 150bhp electric motor driving the front wheels. Two specs are offered (base and Turismo) but at almost £40k the higher of the two trims looks expensive.

We’d go for the base car, which gets 17-inch alloys, keyless go, twin digital screens and wireless Apple and Android connectivity. All trims also get an external sound generator that mimics the noise of one of Abarth’s petrol hot hatches. Upgrading to Turismo brings a few luxuries, including the Winter Pack and the Scorpion Style Pack with bigger wheels.
If you’re after a fully-blown hot hatchback, you’ll be disappointed, but the Abarth 500e isn’t without appeal. Indeed, if you can live with its shortcomings and can charge at home on a regular basis, then it could prove highly rewarding to live with.

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Fiat did a great job of reinventing its 500 city car for the electric era. But when it comes to the sporty Abarth, with no turbocharged four-cylinder engine under the bonnet, the question of how to mimic the regular 500e’s success is a tricky one.

Noise – or rather, the lack of it – is a major part of this, so Abarth decided to tap into the model’s playful nature and simply fake it. As a result, the hot 500e features a sound generator – with one speaker inside and one out – to try to replicate the sometimes flatulent sounds of a petrol-powered Abarth.

After turning the car on, the initial response is surprise – not at the sound itself, rather its quite unruly volume. Straight away, you can tell Abarth is not taking itself too seriously, a positive point despite the potential for teeth-grinding embarrassment, depending on the driver’s circumstances. The volume isn’t variable, and at a constant speed the burble turns into a drone, which you can’t disable on the move. We’re told a fix is on the way.

The good news is that this playful side is backed up with bespoke tuning, applied to the powertrain and the chassis, in order to give the hot EV more charisma. The motor now produces 150bhp – 35bhp more than the most powerful Fiat 500e – plus 235Nm of torque. On paper, the 7.0-second 0-62mph time is good, if not great, but more interesting is its rolling acceleration. Abarth says that the car is a second faster from 25-37mph than the 165bhp petrol Abarth 595.

Despite a relatively high seating position, the low-set battery helps weight distribution. As such, the Abarth’s chassis feels agile and playful without suffering a bouncy or brittle ride – quite a feat on a car with a short wheelbase.

It’s hardly softly sprung, but it is compliant even on the larger 18-inch wheels fitted to our top-spec Turismo. This is backed up by responsive, weighty steering, particularly in the Scorpion driver modes. It’s in these two settings that the e-motor’s full 150bhp is available, with the main difference being the level of regenerative braking. There’s lots of front-end grip, but get greedy with the throttle and you’ll need to manage traction.

You won’t feel bored, because the Abarth is broadly engaging and entertaining. Even the brakes, often a tricky element to get right on high-performance electric cars, have a good level of feel and are more than powerful enough.

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Given the standard 500e can do up to 199 miles on a charge, you might be disappointed to learn Abarth claims just 157 miles in official tests – or a little less if you go for the top-spec car on its bigger wheels. This (again, officially) rises to 209 miles in town, if you make good use of the car’s regenerative braking system. 

Peak charging speed is as per the top-spec Fiat 500e, at 85kW, yet due to the relatively small battery, a 10-80 per cent charge takes only 25 minutes. If you do most of your charging at home – all but essential in a car like this, we’d argue – then a full top up is possible overnight.

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The 500e looks menacingly different to the standard 500 on the outside, with a sporty aesthetic that’s emphasised in the car’s more exuberant paint options. More subtle colours are available if you’d rather blend in.

It follows the Fiat 500e by hitting the right notes inside, too, with high-quality black Alcantara trim and a novelty 12 o’clock marker on the steering wheel. This is backed up by a quality 10.25-inch infotainment interface and slick driver’s display, plus wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. 

Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment

When it comes to technology, the Abarth 500e has most of what you need and little of what you don’t. So there’s no dash-spanning Honda e-style screens – just a simple instrument cluster and a 10.25-inch central display. While some people might expect more at this price point, we love that it allows you to just get on with what this car is about: driving.

The main display is responsive and not too complicated, with all the usual features – Bluetooth and USB connectivity, plus DAB radio and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto if you prefer to use apps on the move.

There are some menus bespoke to the Abarth, including screens that show real time information on things like power and torque. These are nice to have and help separate the hot hatch from its humble origins, to justify the hefty price premium.

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Space in the rear is marginally improved over the combustion-powered Abarth, but this is not a car you’ll buy if you regularly carry tall adults. In fact, it’s not a car you’ll buy if you have young children, either – fitting child seats can be a real challenge given the car’s three-door body.

The boot is rated at 185 litres, which is identical to the older car’s. That’s smaller than a MINI Cooper and restricts what you can carry with the seats in place. However, if you’ve not got a full cohort of passengers, then the rear bench offers useful additional storage; treat the Abarth as a glorified 2+2 and you’ll not be disappointed.

The Abarth’s true strength in the practicality stakes is its compact footprint, which makes it manoeuvrable around town. This, matched to decent visibility, makes it simple and fun to drive on tight city streets. 

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It’s impossible to say with conviction how reliable the Abarth 500e will be. Parent company Fiat doesn’t have a very strong reputation – it finished second from bottom (31st place) in the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey – but that’s mostly based on the brand’s petrol models. The Mk1 500 (not the electric version) also finished poorly in the rundown, one spot from the bottom of our survey in 49th position.

Electric cars are inherently less complicated and should be more reliable. This, added to the fact the Abarth uses tried and tested technology borrowed from elsewhere within the Stellantis Group, should help.

In terms of safety, Euro NCAP hasn’t tested the Abarth 500e, but it did put its Fiat sibling through the wringer in 2021 – awarding it a respectable four stars. The Abarth is mechanically similar and gets much of the same kit, so we’d expect a similar score (albeit adjusted for more stringent tests) if it were assessed today.

The Abarth gets a host of airbags, autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assist and intelligent speed assist, plus things like electronic stability control and a drowsy driver detection system. Not the last word in cutting-edge tech, but certainly not as basic as you find in some small city cars.

Abarth 500e alternatives

There aren’t many electric hot hatches around at the moment, but if you’re considering the Abarth 500e, we’d recommend you also take a look at cars like the Cupra Born and Volkswagen ID.3 first. Both are based on the VW Group’s MEB platform, and come with a variety of battery and motor configurations – some of which have more than 300bhp. They’re more practical than the 500e, too.

The MG4 XPower is well worth considering, too. It’s not as beautifully built as the Abarth, but it packs more than twice the power for a similar price and is a more practical proposition day to day, as well.

At the top end of the hot hatch tree is the 600bhp Hyundai Ioniq 5 N – a true representation of how future performance cars might look and feel. It’s a peach, but you’ll pay north of £60k for the privilege.