Fiat is the latest automaker to announce that it wants to rid its range of fuel burning vehicles in Europe and it has set itself a very ambitious target for when it wants to achieve that - just five years from now, in 2027. The news came during parent company Stellantis’ 2021 financial report, which also outlined electrification plans for the group’s 15 brands.
Stellantis, now the world’s sixth largest automaker, announced that it would launch a new Fiat-badged EV in 2022 or 2023, which would bring the number of electric passenger cars in its lineup to 2 - the yet unnamed model and the 500e. Across the entire group, there are currently a total of 19 EVs on offer and there are additional electrification plans for all the brands under its umbrella.
The new Fiat EV is very likely a production version of the Centoventi study, a stylish urban crossover concept that debuted at the 2019 Geneva motor show. It’s quite a compact vehicle, measuring around 144.9 inches (3.68 meters) in length, and the best way to describe it as a futuristic battery powered equivalent of today’s Panda model.
At the time of the Centoventi’s unveiling, it was stated that it previews the next generation Panda, so we could speculate that the Panda will be reborn fully electric when the new model arrives. We could expand on that even further and suggest that the electric Panda will most likely ride on a Stellantis platform, STLA Small, which is basically an evolution of the PSA EMP1 platform (that underpins a whole slew of ICE and EV models, including the Peugeot e-208).
We will have to wait and see what Stellantis has planned for Fiat after the launch of the electric Panda. It has not announced how many models will make up Fiat’s fully electric 2027 lineup.
