TURIN – Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares could announce as early as Monday that the full-electric Fiat 500e will get a platform mate – a gasoline version with a mild hybrid powertrain, according to information from suppliers.
The move would give a major boost to the automaker’s Mirafiori factory here.
The current 500 gasoline model, first launched in 2007, is built in Poland, where production has already ceased. The 500e is slightly larger and is built on a different platform that was designated as electric only, so using the platform for a mild hybrid derivative of the minicar is uncommon.
Suppliers told Automotive News Europe that they had received requests for quotation (RFQs) from Stellantis Italy to increase production of the 500 with two powertrains to 200,000 units a year.
In March, Stellantis had asked suppliers for quotations to increase production of the 500e at Mirafiori to 175,000 units annually from the 77,260 that were built in 2023.
The news of the potential conversion was first reported by the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera and confirmed to Automotive News Europe by suppliers in March.
The new target of 200,000 units includes adding 125,000 gasoline-engine models, the suppliers said on condition of anonymity to disclose confidential information.
Kerrigan Advisors recently sat down with Donnie and Denny Buckalew, co-owners of Buckalew Chevrolet, the 5th highest-volume Chevrolet dealership in Houston, Texas, to discuss their perspective on the changing auto retail industry and how challenges facing single-point dealers influenced their decision to sell their dealership.
200,000-unit target
From January to April, Fiat sold 12,288 units of the 500e in the EU plus U.K. and EFTA countries, compared with 17,363 in the same period last year, according to figures from Dataforce. Sales of the combustion-engine 500 fell to 32,504 from 40,750.
Tavares is set to meet Italian union representatives on Monday in Turin and is expected to announce the project to add the mild hybrid version of the 500.
A Stellantis spokesman said that the company was considering the project but had not made a final decision.
The move to convert a car designed to be electric-only to internal combustion would be highly unusual.
A big reason Fiat is poised to make the move is because the previous gasoline-powered 500 can no longer be sold in Europe. The minicar was not homologated to meet new safety and cybersecurity regulations that the European Union mandated for new vehicle registrations. The new rules take effect July 7.
Current 500 heads for North Africa
Although sales in Europe will be halted, the current 500 will live on. Its production lines will be moved to Stellantis’ factory in Tafraoui-Orano, Algeria. Fiat will continue selling it in Africa and the Middle East.
Adding a gasoline version of the 500e to Mirafiori could ease unions’ fears about declining volumes of the 500e, as well as help satisfy the Italian government’s goal of maintaining the country’s auto production at no less than 1 million per year. Stellantis is the only volume manufacturer in Italy.
Fiat has reacted to sluggish sales of the 500e since the start of this year by cutting one of two shifts at Mirafiori in mid-February and used systematic temporary layoffs in March, April and May.
Last year, Fiat sold more than 104,000 gasoline 500s and more than 62,000 500es in Europe, according to figures from Dataforce.
1.0-liter base engine
Production of a mild-hybrid variant, powered by the 1.0-liter, 70-hp FireFly gasoline engine used by the ICE 500 and Fiat’s other minicar, the Panda, could start no earlier than late 2025 or early 2026, industry sources told ANE.
That would leave a gap in Fiat’s 500 lineup, with the outgoing gasoline model starting at 17,700 euros in Italy, while the 500e starts at 29,950 euros.
Italian unions worry that lagging demand in Europe for the 500e could lead Fiat to reduce output at Mirafiori to 40,000 to 50,000 from the 100,000 planned for this year, even though the model will also be exported to the U.S.
The 500e, launched in 2020 as the New 500, had a promising start, with production reaching 77,500 in 2022. Fiat had hoped output would reach 90,000 last year, but after demand fell in the second half of the year, production was flat at 77,260.
