Fiat 600e La Prima long-term test: stylish EV divides opinions

Verdict

The Fiat 600e is held back by poor efficiency and comfort on long motorway journeys, but stick to the city and the small SUV is an excellent choice due to its smooth electric powertrain and compact size. 

• Mileage: 4,107 miles
• Efficiency: 3.7m/kWh

Ever since finding out that I would be running a Fiat 600e on the Auto Express fleet back in August, my wife, Paulina, has been very excited. Her first car was a Fiat Seicento that she owned in the early noughties and she adored it, so it was love at first sight when I took the 600e’s keys from former custodian Jordan Katsianis.

Her affection for the small electric SUV hasn’t really waned during the two months we’ve had the car. She mainly drives it on little trips, either to and from school, or on her short commute to work. This is where the Fiat 600e is really at home, because it’s a great city car. It’s small enough to navigate narrow streets and the smooth electric powertrain is well suited to urban living. It’s also extremely easy to park, with a crystal-clear reversing camera and a plethora of sensors.

However, the one thing she loves more than anything else is the way it looks. She thinks Fiat has really nailed it with the 600e.

Her compliments apply to the interior as well. Again, it’s pure Italian with cool white leather seats embossed with the Fiat name and a clever fold-away cover for the storage bin in the centre console. The blue stitching throughout also matches the exterior paint.

Sadly, I can’t say that I share her feelings, though. There’s nothing that I particularly dislike about the 600e, but there’s nothing that really stands out either. The main reason we disagree is because of the different types of trips we regularly take. As I’ve already mentioned, my wife mainly sticks to city driving, where the car excels, but I’ve done a lot of motorway journeys and it’s these that highlight the 600e’s flaws.

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Firstly the decent urban efficiency of around four miles per kWh plummets as soon as the speed rises. A long motorway journey can see that figure drop closer to three miles per kWh, resulting in the range figure falling to around 175 miles. Put the car in Sport mode, and you can expect even less.

Comfort is also a bit of an issue on these longer trips, because the seats don’t offer the all-round support that I want. I often arrive at my destination and am relieved to jump out of the car and have a stretch. The driver does have the luxury of being able to activate a massage function on their seat, but it’s not really the most relaxing of experiences and now I don’t even bother to switch it on.

The comfort is not helped by the shortage of rear legroom, because it means my children’s legs are usually touching the backs of the front seats. Admittedly, things aren’t helped by the extra space the child car seats take up, but the odd unintentional kick in the back as they switch positions is unwelcome.

I do agree that the car looks good, but I am less impressed with the interior. The white seats are already showing signs of wear and tear, despite the car having covered fewer than 5,000 miles from new. In addition, the dye from my jeans has stained the material in places, giving it a somewhat less-than-premium look. Although, to be fair, the back seats have survived a sustained bombardment from my children well. 

Overall, the Fiat 600e has divided the Baiden household. While I do agree with my wife that it’s a great car in town, it just hasn’t really suited my needs as a long-distance cruiser. My previous fleet car was a Skoda Enyaq, and that proved that electric cars are more than capable of eating up the miles in comfort. The 600e was never going to match that due to its more compact dimensions and smaller battery, but I can only judge it on how it coped with the challenges that I threw at it.

Fiat 600e La Prima: fleetwatch

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Some flimsy materials have left question marks over the Fiat 600e's build quality

I’ve only recently taken over as the custodian of our Fiat 600e, but I’ve already got a bit of a love/hate relationship with the electric SUV. Its compact size means it’s great for parking on the school run, but I’m dubious about its build quality. The windows rattle whenever you shut the door firmly, and I was alarmed when the plastic covering of the charging port popped off when I brushed past it.

Fiat 600e La Prima: second report

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The Fiat 600e electric crossover is to face a new challenge in the form of family life

• Mileage: 2,353 miles
• Efficiency: 4.1m/kWh

Four months’ life with the Fiat 600e have revealed something to me. Its circa 150-mile motorway range just isn’t quite enough to serve my driving needs day-to-day. So, we’ve decided to part ways a few months early, giving it a chance to prove its worth as a family runaround with a new keeper, web producer Pete Baiden. 

Despite my lukewarm reception to the stark contrast between its quoted range and reality, it’s worth noting that the 600e really does excel as an urban SUV. Critical to this are its good visibility, narrow body and quick responses from the electric powertrain. 

The Fiat is also a fairly nice thing to sit in, because the bright interior keeps things airy and the infotainment system works well, even if it lacks some of the frills of rival systems. It’s also largely annoyance-free, which is a blessing in 2024. The lane-keep assist system is a little over-eager – they all are – but can be turned off by pressing a physical switch and confirming on screen. 

Another good point is the fact the 600e does, somehow, ‘feel’ Italian. This comes from a level of clarity to all its controls, and makes the 600e appear almost alive and agile, when so many of its rivals feel heavy. 

The throttle response is good, especially in Sport mode, and while the brakes are mostly devoid of feel, they are consistent. It would also be nice to have slightly quicker steering, but when all considered together, it does have an energy that rivals from Vauxhall or Peugeot don’t quite match. 

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However, with its new keeper, it’ll have a new set of challenges that will more likely concern its interior space than the driving experience. Pete’s first reaction was – in fairly stark contrast to my own – “Ah, the interior’s very, erm, white, isn’t it?” That was a reference to how his two young ones might handle the pale leather. But I assured him that during my tenure, the seats have remained pretty much as-new, and seem to be very stain and mark-resistant. 

He also mentioned one more factor that has yet to come into play for me: legroom in the second row. This is a compact SUV, and as so often, it’s a compromise between offering good space in the back or a big boot. In this case it’s clear which direction Fiat took. But, while legroom is tight for adults, once inserted, the kids and their relatively short legs shouldn’t be too claustrophobic back there, because the large windows and white headlining keep things feeling airy. 

Pete did note the boot looks really big, though. This was an area he was quite worried about, because, in his words,
“it’s not just kids that you need to think about, but all the stuff that accompanies them.” I also showed him the under-floor storage for the charge cable, which should keep it out of the way. 

However, the biggest reaction was from Pete’s wife, Paulina, who’s far more enthusiastic about how the Fiat looks.
“It’s so cute, I love it!” she said. “When I saw pictures, I worried that it was going to be too small and too bright, but the colour’s lovely.” 

I informed her that it’s called ‘Sea of Italy Blue’, at which she raised an eyebrow. But in general, Pete and Paulina seemed thrilled about spending some time with the Fiat. How they’ll get on from here is now up to them, but from my perspective it’s a bittersweet moment. 

While I’m not hugely sad to pass the 600e on, I did begin to admire it, owing largely to the fact that in contrast to rivals, it feels refreshingly free of fluff, and could almost be imbued with some of that intangible Italian soul. The challenge for the Fiat now is its new keepers, who have some more important aspects of the 600e to put to the test over the next few months. 

Fiat 600e La Prima: first report

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Early impressions are good as stylish electric crossover joins out fleet

• Mileage: 634 miles
• Efficiency: 4.1m/kWh

Put together your ideal combination of elements for the modern urban car and you might end up with something rather like the Fiat 600e. It’s electric and quite small on the outside – 200mm shorter and 100mm narrower than a Ford Focus hatchback – yet still has four doors and a pretty spacious boot. You also sit relatively high up, which helps with visibility, and it has fairly high-sidewall tyres to help avoid brushes with kerbs or width restrictors.

I live in London, so all of this makes for excellent reading as I prepare for six months with a 600e. It’s something made all the more exciting by my natural disposition towards anything Italian. But first, we should take a more objective look.

The 600e is Fiat’s new crossover, adding two more doors and a touch more capability to the popular 500e city car to create a model that sits above it in the brand’s line-up. 

Fiat is a member of the Stellantis empire, so there is a deep level of platform and technology sharing between the 600e and models from other firms within the group, such as the Jeep Avenger that my colleague John McIlroy has only just parted with.

Pretty much all of the technical elements are common between the two – from the 54kWh battery pack and 154bhp electric motor to the e-CMP platform. This gives the 600e a claimed range of 254 miles – not bad for an electric car of this size. Look inside and there are plenty more tangible correlations, too, such as the shared digital interfaces, gear selector and (already irritating) iPad-like cover for the central bin. 

The effort to separate Fiat from Jeep, particularly in our La Prima model, is fairly convincing, even if there is a whiff of ‘Spag Bol’ about it; as any Italian knows, there is no such thing as Spaghetti Bolognese in Italy. 

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Yet while the details are sound, the overall design is potentially a little less convincing. In contrast to the smaller 500e, which has a deft touch to its volumes, bodywork, slick proportions and elegant detailing, the 600 is somewhat more cumbersome. Its oversized headlights and awkward silhouette look less like an upsized version of the 500e – as was planned – and more like an inelegant copy designed by an adjacent team via Google Translate. 

Additions on the La Prima edition include some plush-looking ivory leather seats with contrasting teal piping and embroidery, plus a matching ivory dash insert and the not exactly ambiguously named ‘Sea of Italy’ blue paintwork. There’s also a powered tailgate, wireless phone charging, a set of ornate 18-inch alloy wheels and a bunch of exterior brightwork and tricolores that help lift the Fiat’s basic styling. 

This is on top of the standard equipment levels found in all 600e models, including a rather narrow but smart-looking 10-inch touchscreen display, dual-zone climate control, adaptive cruise control, LED headlights and dark-tint windows from the B-pillar back. All in, the 600e’s price is £36,995 which, for a limited time, will be offered alongside a £3,000 rebate directly from Fiat, bringing it down to £33,995.

All of which leads us to some initial thoughts. The Fiat’s range, and its efficiency in town, are already impressing me. At the end of most urban journeys I’ve seen up to six miles per kWh, which is very good. I’m also liking the general driving set-up, which feels well suited to slow-speed driving, and makes short work of the sometimes appalling state of the roads of the capital. 

The steering is light, the throttle response clean and the brakes have decent feel to them – not a given on any modern EV. Some brief forays beyond the city limits have revealed a few compromises for the sake of this natural around-town ability, but we’ll come to those in a future report. 

However, does the 600e truly feel Italian? Some evidence suggests this might be the case, but it’s maybe not in the positive sense you thought I was alluding to. That’s another thing to delve into over the next six months.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.