Why the FCA strategy for the 500e may be the best in urban cars?

This BEV arrives late. The advantage of being the first to bring a new technology to the market is to build a business case and to become an isolated leader. The advantage of being late is to learn with others' experiences. When nobody takes a noticeable advantage of arriving early, than is better to arrive late.

BEV still makes more sense for urban cars... with acceptable range. Under 200 km of WLTP range is too short for urban dwellers that drive their cars also in suburban routes, which are the majority. In the future this situation will change with further development of charging infrastructure.

Thanks to 85 kW of charging power the Fiat 500e may announce 50 km of range in 5 minutes of charging, which is a powerful marketing statement.

A luxury city car is best positioned to absorb the high costs of a battery pack and emotional BEVs are still a rare proposition, specially in A segment.

FCA created an an all new car for the BEV version, kept the petrol variants on the ancient platform and maintained the same successful styling on both cars. This allowed FCA to better integrate the BEV powertrain and to keep the offer of an affordable range of petrol versions.

FCA is a specialist in city cars and the 500 is its most successful product. Crafting its electrification strategy around the 500 may not be enough for FCA to avoid emissions fines in 2020 but is the best they could have done and prepares the company for a better integration with PSA Group.

Ricardo Oliveira

World Shopper Conference 2020

www.world-shopper.com/conference

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