A rendering of the 500e Abarth by X-Tomi Designs.
The city slicking 500e isn’t fast because it doesn’t have to be.
The quintessential Italian peoples car recently got EV treatment and tuning company Abarth are reportedly concocting a hot version of that. The near future for the brand might be scattered with a nippy and silent Abarth 500 EV!
A rendering of the 500e Abarth by X-Tomi Designs.
Austrian designer Carlo Abarth was responsible for creating some seriously obscene cars which possessed his name but the most notable which have left a lasting legacy is that of the city slicking Fiat 500 models. While the Abarth brand may no longer fettle and tune the compact hatchbacks in-house after being absorbed under the Stellantis brand, keeping the high performance Fiat branch relevant is important for future success.
The city slicking 500e isn’t fast because it doesn’t have to be.
Thus an Abarth 500 EV is reportedly in the works and can make landfall as early as next year with a more powerful powertrain and sporteir bits to the electrified Fiat 500e. Abarth’s boss Olivier François has explicitly stated that it hasn’t been as simple as installing a more powerful electric powertrain alone, alluding to the fact that the electrified Abarth will also opt for improved suspension and braking characteristics that will require some hardware upgrades as opposed to its standard zero-emissions counterpart. Over and above stating it was in development, he also added that final tests are underway.
While the standard Fiat 500e is more focused around being compact and economical, its performance expectedly does not set the world alight. A meagre 0-100 km/h sprint time of 9.0 seconds and a 150 km/h top speed were the benchmark to beat and claims that the Abarth can do the sprint in 7.0 seconds with a 160 km/h top speed have been murmured.
We will have to wait until next year to get official figures but based on the current progress, the production version of the Abarth 500 EV may arrive towards the end of this year or early next year.
Keyword: The Abarth 500 EV intends to “heat up people, not the planet.”