Fiat is officially bringing the all-electric 500e to the U.S., a country that isn’t exactly known for loving either Fiats, two-door subcompacts or low-range electric vehicles. The new 500e happens to be all those things, but Fiat apparently did enough market research to believe it can successfully sell enough of them here to avoid losing its shirt again. On paper, it looks like an uphill battle, but according to Fiat, the new 500e does come with one massive advantage over its predecessor: It won’t lose thousands of dollars on every single one it sells.
Yes, as InsideEvs reports, Fiat reportedly lost $14,000 on every first-generation 500e that it sold. So from a business perspective, it was actually a good thing that so few people bought them. This time around, though, in addition to being developed from the ground up to be an EV instead of using a modified internal combustion car to start, it was also developed to be profitable. We hear that’s an important thing when you’re running a business (unless we’re talking about a brown, manual, diesel station wagon, which is different for reasons, and every automaker should sell one regardless of how much money it loses).
“You know, actually we’re cash-positive on this product. Other competitors that we’ve looked into that play in this price range, are loss leaders. We actually will make money on each unit sold,” head of Fiat North America Aamir Ahmed told InsideEVs. That’s good news for Fiat, but at the same time clearly signals that buyers aren’t likely to see the kinds of discounts that made the previous 500e almost scarily cheap to buy.
So if you were hoping for the return of the $49 per month lease, you’re probably going to be out of luck. “I don’t even know how we’d even do that again,” Achmed told InsideEVs. “Considering the pricing, the banks, and everything else — I feel confident that the 500e is right where it is supposed to be.” Apparently, that means a base price of $32,500.