Things aren’t looking great for Stellantis. Sales for the company’s Dodge and Jeep brands in America are cratering, and its overseas brands aren’t doing much better. Adding to the bad news, Stellantis announced today it will extend its suspension of production for the all-electric Fiat 500 until November 1 over low demand.
The company originally stopped production of the 500 on September 12, planning to idle the car’s Mirafiori, Italy plant for four weeks. Now, that stoppage has been extended by another three weeks.
The decision, Reuters reports, comes alongside a statement given to trade unions claiming the electric car market in Europe is “in deep trouble.”
(Fiat never seems to learn they keep creating these cars with such limited range.)
The lack of demand makes sense, at least for the US. The 500e gets just 149 miles of range and starts at $34,095.
Tell me you don’t want to sell EVs without telling me you don’t want to sell EVs.
It’s almost like, and hear me out, making EVs that are both expensive AND have very little range is a dumb idea. Make it cheap, small, and low range? Awesome, perfect little city car. Make it expensive but bigger and high range? Sure, at least it adds utility to justify the price.
Exactly. I was at our state fair and looked at a lot of evs. Not a single one was under 35k.
the electric car market in Europe is “in deep trouble.”
Stellantis doesn’t really have any attractive offerings IMO, among all their popular European brands Peugeot, Citroen, FIAT and Opel, they don’t have a single model in the top 20 here!!
All these brands used to be very popular in Denmark, but EV has passed 50%, and everything Stelantis EV simply sucks, they have too little range and are too expensive. AFAIK every Stelantis of the 4 above brands are based on the same platform, and the same battery, and it’s simply not good enough.But it’s not just Stelantis, even Toyota is out of top 10, their best seller is a petrol/benzin car at #12. The worlds biggest automaker only has 2 models in top 20, And none among EV top 10.
What’s really out is hybrids, the top selling hybrid only sell half of the lowest on the top 20!
It’s way too expensive
This is what I have noticed with almost all of the micro commuter cars. They cost more than a Civic; often significantly more. If they were half the price of a Civic I bet people would be all over them.
Yeah, I’d happily pay money for this car, but not 35k. The cost is a joke.
It is nuts, this car is in the same price range as cars that have over a 100 mile range advantage.
You have to be completely out of your mind to drop a minimum of 35k on this car
I would like to continue getting small cars after my Yaris and Leaf die. Our 2015 Leaf is still kicking but range has always been an issue. That said, for getting around the city core, nothing beats it aside from public transportation.
It is a shame that such cars are either too expensive or outclassed by range. This new fiat would more than double my range as it is.
