A few days ago, Fiat announced the first new update to a non-battery-electric Fiat 500 in, let’s see…the last refresh to a gasoline-powered Fiat 500 was in 2016 (that was just a facelift), so it’s been nine years if I’m being generous. This new updated version of the fun little city car is actually based on the 500e battery-electric car from 2020, making it one of the very few combustion-engined cars ever to have started out as a battery-EV platform, which is interesting (this was a result of a decrease in EV demand). But what everyone seems to be fixated on is the new Fiat’s speed, or lack of it. Just so you know, everyone is wrong.
Before I get into that, let’s dig into what this new 500 is: it’s a hybrid, with a 12-volt lithium-ion battery and a one-liter three-cylinder engine, which together make a modest but respectable – to me, at least – 65 horsepower (and 68 pound-feet of torque). It also has a six-speed manual transmission that sends that trim congregation of horses to the front wheels.
The electric motor is pretty modest here — a starter-motor making about 4.8 hp — but it does have regen capability. The car is expected to sell for € 19,400 to start, which is about $22,300 in American freedombucks, making this car pretty dirt cheap.
More importantly, it’s a manual hybrid car! How many of those are still around? I love it! Fiat was also nice enough to give some specs in their press release, covering some basic performance and fuel economy:
A top speed of 96 mph, 0-62 mph acceleration of 16.2 secs (17.3 secs for Convertible) and combined WLTP fuel consumption of 53 mpg (52 mpg for Convertible) make Fiat 500 Hybrid the perfect choice for efficient, urban motoring.
53 mpg seems pretty good, but what everyone seems to be fixated on are 0-100 kph (o-62 mph) times: 16.2 seconds and 17.3 for the convertible. Here in the Land of Free Refills, we generally use 0-60 times, so I’m gonna roughly guess this new hybrid 500 will be able to get to 60 in 16 seconds flat.
Most of the reporting about the new car seems to reference these acceleration numbers which are, by modern standards, perhaps a little, um, relaxed. Motor1 says the “The New Fiat 500 With a Gas Engine Is Never In a Hurry” and AutoEvolution calls it “painfully slow” and CarExpert is a little more reserved, saying “performance traded for affordability” while AutoBlog is unashamedly snarky, saying it “makes the Nissan Kicks look like a rocket.”
You know what? All of these chumps need to grow up. Going from 0 to 60 in 16 seconds is fine. Look at these babies:
Yeah this is kinda my point about the manual 500. 17.3 seconds might be fine in a small Italian town, but it’s almost dangerous in a situation where the speed limit is above 35. https://t.co/TbY01KqLiB
— Motor1 (@Motor1com) November 23, 2025
Ugh, I’m so sick of this narrative. “Almost dangerous?” Really? You know what “almost dangerous is?” Not dangerous. Sure, the new 500 isn’t fast – but it is nearly two seconds or so faster than a ’74 AMC Gremlin (17.7 seconds) and faster than a ’62 Triumph Vitesse 1600, and that name means “speed!” More importantly, just fine.
I say this as someone who has been driving cars with about 50 hp for decades and so far has never ended up dead as a result. I’ve been in more than my share of wrecks, but none have been because any of my slow cars were too slow. Sure, a car that goes to 60 in 5 seconds or so is fun, but that’s just not how people drive! Most people are not burying the pedal into the carpet every time they go on an on-ramp. They just aren’t.
Getting to 60 in 16 seconds is plenty for, like, 98% of the traffic situations you’ll encounter. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions where more speed is genuinely helpful, but you know what? You’d be fine with a 16-second-to-60 car. Again, I say this as someone who has done it. Over and over again. I daily-drove an old Beetle in LA, and it was fine, and now I daily-drive a Nissan Pao, which does 0-60 in the same 16-ish seconds as the new Fiat 500. It’s not a big deal.
Seroiusly, how quickly do you think the tens of thousands of semi trucks get to 60 mph? It’s nowhere near as quick as 16 seconds.
Besides, all the people whining about the new 500 being too slow, where the hell do you need to get to in such a rush? The Candyass Convention? Are you the Keynote Crier? Is that why you need to rush? You don’t want to be late to whine like a little baby in front of the adoring crowd? You better hurry! I hope you can get to a full mwile-a-mwinute in 5 seconds, little fellas!
I’m sorry. That’s not fair. I’m being mean. I think I’m just sick of this whole narrative that somehow you need a car that goes to 60 in former-no-joke-sportscar times just to be “safe.” It’s silly. 16 seconds to 60 will work; nobody is going to pool-cue you into orbit as you merge onto the highway if you have even a modicum of sense about how you drive.
I mean, maybe someone will, but that can happen no matter what you drive.
Point is, everyone complaining about how slow this is just needs to calm down. It’s fine. It’s a little hybrid manual city car that sells for $22 grand. The hell do you expect?
The problem is not that it’s slow (I drive a car with similar horsepower). But you really have to like the 500 to choose it instead of something else:
the Aygo X Hybrid is a full hybrid with about 115 HP,the Pandina has the same drivetrain as the 500, and it’s cheaper, lighter, and more practical (according to ADAC, you can fit 7 drink crates into a Panda/Pandina’s trunk, 2 into the 500e, 7 into the Golf 8, 8 into a Civic hatchback, 5 into the average Fiesta-sized cars),a Picanto is cheaper, and I bet it’s better equiped,a Sandero or C3 is cheaper and larger,a Swift is somewhat larger, somewhat faster, costs roughly the same, and has an ACC, keyless ignition and sat-nav in the base model,a KGM Tivoli has 160 HP, is bigger, can be bought for about 20 000 €.
Or, as some of might characterize this level of performance, aspirational.
As someone who regularly drives a Crosley with 26.5hp, I must envy the speedy Fiat driver in their Italian sports sedan. The Crosley does 0-60 in never, unless you’re going down a long, steep hill.
Crosley’s motto, printed right there on the hood ornaments, was “A Fine Car” I have often reflected that their use of fine was not definition A (“This is a fine wine!”), but definition B (“My soup is lukewarm and there’s a fly in it, but it’s fine, whatever”).
Life with low expectations is surprisingly satisfying.
I daily’d two OG Honda Insights back in the day, which had not much more pile under the hood. They both had manuals. It was more than fine – it was fun! Slow-car-fast is a great way to enjoy life and not get a speeding ticket.
it is a city car. That means never, ever going on an interstate.
Oh please sell it here. This is perfect for my bop around needs. Also it is the best retro copy of all of them. I’m looking g at you VW.
It is fine if you use the gears and read the traffic ahead. And the mpg is fine if you can use the gears. So floor it, then high gear, but look ahead and downshift early.
On the other hand, there are short onramps in Yurp also… and in a strange city, rush hour in the dark, rain/slush (Nordic winter), it can be scary and not so fine. Especially in a rental, when you are not familiar with it. So depends.
Edit. Also, the Euro trucks drive max 80, in practice 95 kph, so there are always more gaps and the slow lane is generally slow when there are trucks. So in many cases you can comfortably merge without ever accelerating to 100. Even though you should not… but usually it is not about the lack of power.
This probably isn’t coming to the US or Canada. In its natural environment of Turin or Rome where traffic is abysmal and parking nonexistent since those cities were built way before ball bearings existed, 16 seconds 0-60 is plenty fast. Of more importance would be the 0-30 and the 30-0 numbers. Not running over an Agnelli or a cardinal or a lovestruck youth is very necessary there. Besides, anyone with any sense would take the train to travel long distance. Small city car for cities where two big horses side by side created traffic issues.
The specs on this sound familiar. Throw in crank windows and we might have a deal. Plus, love the confident look of the headlights!
I totally agree. My cousin, who is the reason I got into cars, used to race a mini 850 (maybe 40hp with mods) and later a Suzuki Forsa with 50hp before upgrading to a 70hp Forsa Turbo. He did well with these cars, ran with Mustangs, and even took home a few trophies.
Yeah, we know what that means when it comes to reviews and first-looks around here.
I don’t expect to waste my money on it.
If there are 100,000 other people who will buy it, good on them and good on Fiat.
The hell YOU expect from car enthusiast commentariats?
I think it would be really interesting to track the acceleration of every car in America. What is the fastest 0-60 time an average driver will put down in day-to-day driving? I guess it’s hard to measure, because you hardly ever do that from a stop, but what’s the ~30-70 time people would do on an on ramp?
Yeah, my daily driver Geo Tracker apparently has a 13.5 second 0-60 time, and the number of times I’ve had to absolutely gun it, all the way up to 60 mph is very low. Maybe that’s just because I live in places where speed limits usually top out at about 80 kph, and people drive 95ish, though (<60 mph). Still, it is fun having excuses to at least almost gun it!
I am firmly with you here, Jason. Our family car for years was a 1.4 Golf Mk III. Acceleration and top speed were pretty much identical to the new 500. It was very far from being a fast car, and it never felt unsafe because of that. Of course, if one’s idea of a good car is one that downshifts hysterically as soon as come near the gas pedal (I am looking at you, Dodge Durango) to unleash gazillions of horsepower, then it might take some adjustment.
The big difference between semi trucks going 0-60 in 16 seconds, and Fiat 500’s going 0-60 in 16 seconds, is that semis are intimidating and other drivers give them room.
I know there are internet commenters who would make it sound like anything slower than 5 seconds to 60 is dangerous, and that’s obviously absurd. But this isn’t Europe or 1975; lots of places in the US have short on-ramps and inconsiderate drivers and the whole experience assumes that you can hit 60 in under 10 seconds in a pinch, even if you don’t do it often.
16 seconds is an eternity where I live. I can’t speak to driving a Beetle in LA or a Pao in… wherever you live… but I would not want to do it. Is it DANGEROUS? No, but it’s needlessly stressful.
Coming from a family with a few long-haul truck drivers I’m gonna have to say [citation needed]
A 16 or 17 second 0-60 time is only “dangerous” for people who don’t know how to drive.
Consider that the VW Type 1 Beetle people drove for decades had a 0-60 time of around 20 seconds for the later versions… and closer to 30 seconds for the early 25-30hp versions.
Automatic Chevettes and the early VW Rabbit/Golf diesels were also similarly slow.
“Seriously, how quickly do you think the tens of thousands of semi trucks get to 60 mph?”
Exactly!
“It’s unsafe to drive something that slow on the highway”
-People who probably do 32 on an on-ramp anyways
For some people, merging onto the freeway is a startlingly novel experience every time they do it.
That and drive thru menus. The number of people that I’m stuck behind that seem to have never been to a McDonald’s in their life is shocking.
Traffic safety engineers talk a lot about fluid dynamics and flows as representative of traffic. Differentials in speed disrupt flow and create unexpected dynamics. This Fiat could be fine in isolation, but on public roads, it’s atherosclerosis.
The car can do it just fine. But I see a whole lot of high-performance cars with low-performance drivers out there.
A Fit, priced comparably, took under 9 seconds to 60.
Ancient cars taking 16 seconds to 60 were fine when everyone was taking 16 seconds to 60. Now that every takes 10 seconds or less, the assumption from other motorists is that you can merge like them, and they don’t have the same patience or slowness as their parents did.
And if some jacksedan is driving dangerously and impatiently around you, you can’t gun it and get out of their way.
Both scenarios are why I drive quicker cars. Not fast, but quick.
Any car that’s well outside the bell curve of current car performance is hazardous, because it’s unpredictable (to others).
“And if some jacksedan is driving dangerously and impatiently around you, you can’t gun it and get out of their way.”
In my opinion, that Jacksedan can either pass me or suck it up and stay behind me. Why should I have to get out of their way just because they want to drive like assholes?
It can be driver inexperience, rather than impatience. I was once rear ended by a teenage driver in my ’88 Ranger when I was stopped at a red light trying to turn right onto a busy road. The other driver was stopped behind me, but gunned her engine when she saw a small gap in the traffic. When I got out to check for damage, she told me that she thought I was going to go because she would have. I had to explain to her that my Ranger was not capable of accelerating like her car.
Guess I’m gonna find out for myself. Just bought a ’79 Fairmont with the Thriftpower 6 which made 85 HP when new and was good for a 14 second 0-60 time.
Geez, I thought my car was slow and it takes 10 seconds to go from 0-60. And I think it’s fine. It’ll cruise comfortably at 75 all day and get over 40 mpg doing it. And here I am fantasizing about owning a modified Model T speedster that I would be happy if it topped out at 60, never mind the time it takes to get there…
My 2000 Ranger Electric will do it in around 17, within a couple seconds so it’s down to skill of the driver, if I ever catch eyes with the driver of one of these at a light, it’s on!
Has this even been announced for the US market? I’m assuming they won’t bother. But I agree it’s just fine for a city car. And fun it’s a manual hybrid, and it’s perfect for its job. Enthusiasts should be excited.
That’s my question too. A brand new car with great mpg for $22k, I might consider one just for the heck of it, and it’s adorable!
So sixteen seconds with your right foot pushed all the way to the floor? What does that do to the fuel economy? Also, what sort of speeds are you doing to achieve 53mpg??
Too many trade offs. Too many better options.