500e with a combustion engine? Fiat wants to maintain its sales through an original strategy – Executive Summary

All car brands have plans to gradually electrify their portfolio: the general trend is to use models with combustion engines and convert them to electric motors; There are also brands that make battery-powered models from scratch.

However, there is a brand that could implement exactly the opposite strategy: taking a model redesigned to be electric and converting it back to combustion. More precisely, for the microhybrid version.

The Fiat 500 is one of the best-selling cars in its class. This small urban car, along with the Panda, has been responsible for many delights for the Italian brand: at the moment, it is on the market in two versions: micro-bibrid and 100% electric, the latter being offered with a new image and a new platform.

However, according to the Italian publication “Il Corriere della Sera”, there is a possible shift of the electric model to mild hybridization, which goes against the general trend.

This decision has not yet been confirmed by the Italian brand, but there are several indicators that indicate the success of this strategy. On the one hand, the Fiat 500 Hybrid does not meet EU standards to be sold from July onwards, and the decision seems not to update this version, as happened with the Panda for example.

This would leave the electric Fiat 500 as the only marketable version, and is much more technological than the mild-hybrid EV (MHEV). However, sales of electric cars have not yet reached profitable levels: speaking of the 500e, the situation is the same as in the car market, although there is one difference: the combustion version accumulates good sales figures.

So how do you explain the decision? In order not to suffer losses, instead of updating the Fiat 500, the brand could take advantage of the 500e electric platform and modify it to create a new fuel version that has already been approved for sale.

The 500's electric platform is not the same as that fitted to other cars in the Stellantis range, and in its first appearance, it was confirmed that it supports other types of engines. Although at this time Fiat wanted to focus solely on electric cars, given the panorama facing the brand, this decision may have been reconsidered.