http://triblive.com/business/headlines/10004050-74/car-charge-drive Electric Fiat fun, not flawless Feb. 19, 2016 BRAD BERGHOLDT
Question: I remember a couple of years back, you bought an electric Fiat. I was wondering if you are still liking the car. How do you get along with the limited range? As electric cars get better and cheaper, I might consider one. Answer: Yes, it's been two and a half years since I signed a really affordable lease on a Fiat 500e. I got a chance during a Western Automotive Journalists event to drive most of the electric vehicles available at the time. All were interesting, but I found the Fiat to be, by far, the most fun to drive. Doing some math on the way home, it occurred to me that the lease payment was less than I was spending on gas for my SUV commuter. A $2,500 rebate from California clinched the deal. My typical commute is 21 miles each way, making a round trip with various errands possible within the car's 95-mile range. But evening outings of any distance are not possible as I'm not able to get a sufficient charge in a short amount of time. With research and planning, it's possible to leverage public charging stations to extend the day's travels. However, the availability of stations is still spotty, and I often don't want to hang out at the stations long enough to recoup significant electrons. I love this car but I'll return it when the lease is up. Performance, fit and finish are great, but it had one really bad breakdown and has some quirks I wouldn't want to be stuck with as an owner. About a year ago, at 19,000 miles, the car abruptly stopped and made terrible noises. It sounded like there was a big wrench in the gears when trying to move. Fortunately, this occurred about 100 feet from my residence. I figured I'd try driving it one more time before calling a tow truck and darned if it didn't drive perfectly back to the dealer. The needed repairs were significant and would have broken the bank if the car was not under warranty. More recently, the car went through a phase with power cutting abruptly, although briefly, during acceleration, perhaps once per week. Then it returned to normal before I could make time to bring it in. Freaky telematics and sometimes quirky charge acceptance are the other occasional bugs. The Bluetooth forgets my phone, dials wrong numbers and hangs up on me when I call the lady-voice bad names. I've needed to take the other car to work twice when the charge timer overslept. And sometimes when parking, if you don't move quickly to plug it in, it won't accept the charge. I've enjoyed a better than published 131 mpg equivalent average and drive about 95 miles per charge. Squirting away from stoplights and carving corners scrubbed the tread from the tires in only 20,000 miles. It's hard to drive this car like an adult. And as tiny as it is on the outside, it has schlepped building materials (10-foot two-by-fours, concrete, you name it) and grande Costco runs without a fuss. I'm really hoping the cheap lease deals are still around so I can get another 500e in October. Hopefully FCA has worked out a few of the bugs with three years of experience. Brad Bergholdt is an automotive technology instructor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, Calif. Readers may send him email at [email protected]; he cannot make personal replies. [© triblive.com] For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-His-500e-Electric-Fiat-fun-was-good-but-not-flawless-tp4680627.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
