• Fiat will shut its Mirafiori factory down for four weeks, starting Friday.
• Stellantis claims that it is due to low demand for the two-door EV city car. 

News of an “EV slowdown” certainly is a headline grabber; although sales of EVs continue to grow across the globe, that growth isn’t keeping pace with entrenched automakers’s original plans to quickly and seamlessly shunt ICE car buyers into EVs, isn’t going all that smoothly. Many automakers have reevaluated their EV plans, causing them to fast-track once-sidelined ICE car projects, and hit the brakes on their EV products. 

The latest victim of a softer-than-expected EV market? The Fiat 500e. According to reporting from Reuters, Stellantis announced that it will be idling the plant that produces the two-door electric city car for four weeks, in part due to poor demand. Stellantis told Reuters that this measure was necessary because there weren’t enough orders inside and outside Europe to sustain the output from the Italian factory. The shutdown period will start this Friday, and last for four weeks.

Currently, the Fiat 500e is only made in one factory—the Mirafiori factory in Torino, Italy. This is a historic factory, situated in the hometown of Fiat itself. It’s also the site of Italy’s Automotive labor union grumbling — local workers want a higher volume, more affordable model to be built at the plant, instead of just the Fiat 500e. Thus, Stellantis will invest $110 million in the plant and adopt what it calls a “higher performance battery,” to produce a hybrid version of the new 500e in the same plant. 

Although there is a very real softening of EV demand, I can’t help but think that part of the lack of demand for the 500e is partially due to Stellantis not keeping the model current enough. Coincidentally, I have a 500e on loan from the manufacturer this week. My full driving impressions will come in a longer form, but the 500e’s cute styling and charming driving dynamics can’t overcome its terrible value proposition. Even in Europe, where buyers are more willing to pay a premium for smaller EVs with less range, the 500e isn’t the only option as when it launched in 2020 for most European markets.

Just consider this: in Italy alone, a base model Fiat 500e is 29,950 EUR for a 93-horsepower model with a dinky 24 kWh battery. An MG 4 could be had for not much more at 31,970 EUR. The MG 4 has 51 kWh, 168 horsepower, a usable back seat and an extra set of doors. Even in Stellantis’s own umbrella, the Peugeot e-208, and larger Fiat 600e aren’t all that much more than the 500e, but they offer more range and space.

Fiat was adamant that the era of the $ 49-per-month lease would never come back. But, I do not see a way out here: the Fiat 500e’s Achilles heel is its high price. If Fiat wants to get more people in seats, it needs to figure out a way to bring the price down. That’s not easy, subsidies and clever accounting to get lease prices artificially low aren’t healthy for the brand. Perhaps the hybrid model due in 2025 or 2026 will get more people behind the wheel. 

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