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Can you please sent me a p.o. box or something, I have something you used to have I would love if you can sign. I have tavarish so far and trying to get everyone from cartrek
Things EVngelists say: How about a bicycle? :) But seriously, electric bicycle will actually work (if not ideal), this EV has a risk of cutting out when you accelerate, or range dropping from 50 miles indicated down to 0 miles in the space of minutes, or as he showed in the video the dashboard occasionally lights up like a Christmas tree and everything stops. Those old batteries are a ticking time bomb. You may as well get a nice economical diesel if you're on a budget.
@@MrToxicoreo Ah, so when the battery fails then someone's insurance will pay to replace the car for you. Win-win! Well unless you're still in the car at the time of the accident, then not so much.
What we really need is more standardised batteries. Most of them seem to be made out of about eight sub modules so if those were standardised it would be far easier to swap one out. Ideally in the future it could be something your local tire centre could deal with.
How long have we had D, C, AA, AAA batteries? They are in so many household devices. The EV industry needs a standard format for batteries so they can easily and inexpensively replaced when cells go bad. Throwing away a perfectly good car because the batteries are no good and too expensive to replace is insane.
The miserable fact though, that actual range today is something of 25 miles on one charge, on perfect road in fine weather conditions. And only God will save you , if you try to drive in winter, out of the city
If you live a few miles from work and can charge it at home, it would be a perfect daily beater. Running costs should be low and if you get only a year out of it that's still less than the depreciation you would take on even a civic.
Even if you put the $7500 into it for the newer upgraded battery pack it would no doubt easily last another 10 years and therefore average out at $750/year plus minimal fuel & maintenance fees so it’s in no way ‘mechanically totalled’ and could once again be a great city car. The Wizard‘s not stupid that’s why he gave Hoovie $2K for it. He’s going to fix the original battery pack for cheap. Just saying!
@@yurypozdnyakov5177 My commute is like.. 6 miles... The trick with the short ranged "city cars" is that they had a small battery (and were cheap) but needed to be recharged every other day or so. Those packs are "good" for a specific number of charges and then they start degrading. The harder you "punch" (cycle) them the faster they degrade. The main "fault" is that the auto companies have refused to make them easy to drop and replace power packs. So getting a short range EV to high mileage won't happen. (most motorcycles used for local use have low mileage too) Tesla battery packs routinely get 160K+ on cars that were treated well. (normal versus "fast" charging -- and only charging when they were 40% or less. But one Uber driver who fast charged daily barely got 100K out of his. The new chemistries coming online can handle rabid discharge/recharge much better and more recharge cycles. Even MORE reason tom make packs more standard and swappable like engines. The fact is, most of the cars in the scrapyards never see 100K miles. The reason the Fiat-E exists is "CAFE" standards. They were only sold to offset the big profitable gas guzzlers.
These were actually highly overbuilt. The motor and battery pack is liquid cooled; far better than a leaf from ten years ago. The electronics were mostly Bosch and the battery Samsung. They are extremely fun.
Yep, this Fiat doesn't represent all EVs. And the cars/batteries 10 years ago in general weren't as good as the latest ones. You can expect that a modern EV battery will have very moderate battery degradation even after +250 thousand miles. ⚡
Wizard couldn't finish the V-12 Malibu. What makes you think he could do a Hayabusa conversion? You might've well said make a jet turbine conversion - it's all ridiculous. Like Wizard said - it's a learning tool at this point. Maybe he can get Richard Dunn to help with the battery balancing!
@@kook4u I cant believe some people are still willing to deal with the inconveniences of getting oil changes and driving to a gas station every week when we don’t have to anymore just so their car can make noise. Or believing that a clapped out Fiat they threw together to meet emissions standards that only had 80 miles of range new is a good representation of all EVs.
Good idea. He could take the doors off so it’s open like a golf cart. And put astroturf for the floor mats just like the Lincoln Towncar Jack Nicklaus edition.
I've owned a 2017 500e for almost 5 years now, 56k miles, paid about $12,000 all in and for my tiny commute every day it's been absolutely perfect! $0 in maintenance except for wearable items. I charge using a 110V outlet in the garage so I didn't have to retrofit a 220v. They have their range drawbacks but if you regularly drive small amount daily it makes so much sense. Any longer trips and we take my wife's gas powered SUV. 10/10 experience so far and I'll drive it until for the foreseeable future.
Agreed. I am on my 2nd one of these! Both same colors as Hoovie's/Wizard's. I went 5 years on the first one and was driving it 25 miles on weekdays. Had a few problems in the end like most cars, but it kept rollin. Only ever put tires and 12v batteries in it. Sold it for what I paid for it. Found another one for $6800 with 23k miles and couldn't pass it up. I have been driving it for 8 months with no issues. I'm in Tx. Range is down some but I have an EV6 GT for longer trips. I too only use a 110V outlet to charge. If you can handle being made fun of in it, it's a great value car.
And modern EV Batteries with a real BMS and Temperature control last at least 10 years, i guess in a few years there will be shops upgrading and repairing old batteries
Hoovie those Fiats were sold new with a range of 87 miles, don't believe the guess-o-meter, I've owned 3 of them and typically got around 70 miles (even if it displays over 100 miles). Try do a full range test to see what you get on a full charge driving below 50mph with light acceleration, there's a good chance your battery isn't bad.
Here in Australia there is a local company restoring the Mitsubishi i-MiEV they have developed replacement battery packs which give longer range then the ones from the factory when it was new, and its not as expensive as you'd think. This is the direction the VE market needs to head, affordable battery replacements so buyers can keep perfectly good EVs running for decades.
I have a 2014 Fiat 500e here with 85,000 miles or 135,000km battery still gets 80 - 90 miles of range so basically the original range (rated 84 new). Overall reliability has been good only the two rear wheel bearings needed replacement (a know issue for fiat 500) and that’s it. Only paid $8,000 for this vehicle with 47,000 miles. Definitely depends on the vehicle but like everything it all depends on your particular situation. But batteries can last and they do last a long time. Especially the Samsung cells of the fiat 500e. The 500e is such a great vehicle I love mine
yeah a lot of it is expectations, it's not like it would go hundreds even as new. 700 for something that goes enough to go to the shop and back wouldn't be that bad if the compulsory insurances and such fees would reflect that.
Yes, thank you for pointing out how crappy EVs actually are... Using AC on a hot day (or heat on a cold day), and flooring it a couple of times leaves you stranded.... Great technology!!!
Car A/C is pretty inefficient generally. On an ICE car the A/C unit could easily be pulling 5-10hp when it's on, which is why on a econobox with a weak engine you may actually notice the car is slower with A/C on.
For $700 If you had like a 10-20 mile commute to work ( NO TRAFFIC ), I would charge it everyday and drive it until it died. You can’t even buy a POS these days for that price. There a lot less reliable cars that people want 3k or more for, that won’t last that long.
This would be fine for our second car. I don't even know why I call it the "second car", it's the one my wife and I drive most. The pair of us don't drive 25 miles in a week, some weeks. Our other vehicle has got close to a 500 mile range for longer trips. $700 and a $2-$3 per week in electricity seems like pretty cheap motoring to me.
@@davidbrayshaw3529 Yeah, I work from home so I drive maybe 2-10 miles any given day depending on what my kids have going on. Weekends maybe 20-30, again, depending on what we're doing. I have a heated garage I can charge in. We take my wife's car for longer trips anyway. This would be just fine for me. I'm going to drive my beater caravan into the ground though.
Yeah. My cousin had one and she loved it. It was a California compliance car. $99 a month lease. Got her to work and back no problem and helped her save money for a year so she could get a nicer EV.
If you treat them like a mobile phone and try to not let them fall below 20%, ideally recharge at 30%, don't charge above 80% (unless you really need that range for a trip) and never use a fast charger, then you'll get the most out of the battery. When all is said and done, it's a throw-away electrical device, not a car that you can keep for decades and have a passion for.
@@boilerhousegarage Yep I love it. Heard this awhile back about NOT charging over 80% to help battery last. So just take 20% right off what the range is on the sticker.
390k on an '09 honda fit. one of the last good econobox cars. no cvt, no turbo, just a very simple engine and transmission. both are still original, doesn't use or leak a drop of everything.
@MrJwc1234 It's not getting junked. The Wizard bought it for $2K, and he said he's thinking about dropping the battery pack and replacing the bad cells.
Like you really know about Fiat ICE engines. If you dig a little bit you'll find great things about engine reliability on Fiat cars. The electrics are the problem, not the engine. But you can find fiat engines that are not good at all, as in any other brand. You should come to Europe and see with your eyes how many are running with no problems at all with a lot of miles on the clock. The examples shown on the internet are the exception, and don forget how many of them were sold. You should check as well the fiat panda and other models. Don't jump on conclusions by the exceptions. I don't know anything about American cars, but I know that the Chevrolets sold in Europe don't even compare. Don't forget that the Fiat group bought the Chrysler group for a reason. Advanced technology, in comparison. And it shows by some great models launched since the buy. No brand lost it's "soul" and Chrysler group advances, slowly but it advances. Also fiat owners, also owns Ferrari and Iveco group, that were responsible for the invention of all kind of diesel and gasoline systems, like common rail, and much more. So if we dig a bit, really Fiat won't disappoint anyone on the issue of ICE engineering and on the other way, they developed systems that will keep ICE engines alive for much longer than we think. I hope you agree with me when you read a little more about this brand. They are not as bad as some people make them, and on the other hand, great achievements were made by this group. One , just one, example, the Lancia Delta integrale, and It Is just one because I would have to write a book to tell you about all of them. Is not as bad as you think, and not as bad as some new BMW cars and Mercedes as well. Not all is as it seems. Sorry for my english and hope you don't take it bad. But above all, keep on being a car guy, no mater the brand you love most. 👍
@@armindoribeiro6286 No, the problem very much is that it's a Fiat. Toyotas and Hondas don't tend to have these kinds of problems with their hybrids and EV's. Even after 10 years.
I daily drive (or used to) a Fiat Elba, from 1991, 1.6L engine and 405k km on the odometer. Reliable? Welp, the head gasket gave up last week, perhaps its third one under my ownership. Lovely driving experience though 😅😅
We own 2 diesels 1.9 cdti fiat engines in 2007 opels....one has 400k km, the other has 270k km...both engines run more than fine. Fiat does make good ICE engines
"this car is junk its dead" *procedes to slam pedal and squeal tires* "it still pulls really hard" I didn't know completely dead cars ran let alone 'pulled really hard'
Most of these terribly degrading batteries aren't because of the battery but because of people not knowing how to use them properly. Fully charging and discharging a battery will kill a battery way faster than you would think.
It's worth mentioning that the EV's with air cooled batteries are the ones that see the greatest amount of degradation and battery failures (Nissan Leaf, Kia Soul EV, Fiat 500e, etc.). The Nissan Leaf is the only other EV in the US that is still sold with air cooled batteries, and it will be discontinued soon. Air cooling may reduce weight, price and complexity, but it reduces reliability. That's the same reason no one sells cars with air cooled engines anymore!
The Leaf also historically had no conditioning system for the battery to warm it up too, so it was even weaker and more damaged in cold climates in addition to being damaged by excessive heat that the air cooling system couldn't handle. I'd be shocked if the 500e was able to properly heat the battery for cold climates as well.
Yeah, but in this video the car is shown to have some sort of liquid cooling system, multiple expansion tanks under the hood. So, I assume this is not one of those, unless that coolant is for something else?
@@dsfsdfdsfsdf9806 Coolant is for the inverter and other electrical components under the hood. Hybrids have a separate liquid cooling system for these components as well.
These degraded EVs are perfect for retirement communities. The 25 miles left of range is more than enough for driving around small neighborhood. Compared to a golf cart, these are an absolute bargain
I live on the edge of a town with a number of seniors. I see them with various solutions. Some have Corollas, some have Smart Cars (remember those?). Some are still driving the 90s Crown Victoria they bought new. I think this little Fiat would be perfect for a lot of them as long as they have a place to plug it in. They're not making road trips.
If he bought it for $700. I would say that's still a bad day for the original owner no? The biggest cost issue on EV's today is that they depreciate A LOT. the used market for them is bad. I don't think this is a forever problem, but it's still a problem for the avg car buyer WHEN they go to trade in their 4 year old EV. come to find that it's worth much less than they were used it.
I have a 2015 500e. That range is called the “guess o meter”. If you drive it aggressively(which is fun), it thinks you will continue to do so and the range will do that. Use the percentage more than that. If you had the ac on, it drops 8 miles, then shut it off it goes up 8 miles. There’s nothing wrong with it. IT IS AN AWESOME DEAL!
Actually for a lot of EVs it doesn't even TRY to calculate the range based on your driving habits. Some of them just tell you the hard-coded EPA range based on the state of charge which you will never achieve in the real world. Which is very intentionally misleading because it always makes the range number look better when it is fully charged and most people will never notice if it never lives up to that.
@@bubba99009Yep. When I got my Tesla in 2016, with an EPA range of 267 miles, I got a surprise when I did my first road trip of 250 miles, only to find that required 2 charging stops! I always managed to meet the EPA range with gas cars I had before it.
@@bubba99009 "for a lot of evs" ok, which lot of EVs have you owned or are you pulling that factoid out of your ass? EVs calculate estimated range off of your previous week or 2 of driving habits, much like a modern ICE does. They're not going to give you purposely, intentionally inaccurate information because that would put your ass on the side of the road, which isn't good or safe. You also probably shouldn't be driving your car down to the last couple miles of range, gas or electric because in both cases it's bad for your car. Driving a gas car down below 1/4 of a tank can damage the fuel pump by picking up shit in the bottom of the tank or inadequate cooling of the tank pump by it being exposed and out of the surface of the gasoline in the tank.
No. This is NOT the future of electric cars. This was a California compliance car that they just slapped together as an afterthought to lower their overall emissions.
Electric cars aren't the future. Some new propulsion system will replace them in the next 15 yrs. Didn't work in the early 1900s not going to work now.
My family was given one of these as the owner couldn’t take it with him when he moved abroad. It has 30k on it now and if I really try I can get 86 miles of range, which is 2 more than it was originally rated for(under more realistic conditions it’ll do 75). The range computer was always wonky, as in the summer it’ll say it’s good to go 120+ miles. It’s great for taking into the city, and we just replaced the original pads and rotors after 10 years only because they were so warped. I wish I could have convinced my parents to swap the battery while they were on clearance for $1k
I have one of these it's a boss. I get around 100 miles zooming around town under 50 mph. It has no maintenance, drives like a go kart and have about 50k miles on it. Smooth and quiet and everyone that drives it just loves it.
Yeah, this video was more about hyperbole than a real world quest to keep it on the road for an economical sum. Perhaps The Wizard will take this path for video content.
Is it, though? It's still going to be an old degraded battery that could fail any time. Age is killer for these things, this example itself shows that. It doesn't even have close to 100k on it and the battery is failing.
@@JoshJones-37334 I don't care if people buy electric cars, I'd buy one if I still drove enough to have a car and it was practical. I just don't like the idea of someone spending 4k on a battery pack that just dies in a year or two because they didn't understand how they work. I spent 4k on a whole car about 10 years ago and it lasted me 6 years before I gave it away and it's probably still on the road.
So the car was $30000 new and it costs $7500 for a new and upgraded battery that was better than the original? Doesn't seem too bad to get another 10 years out of it, even paying $700 for the car gives you an EV with a new battery for $8200.
Unfortunately. You can't get new batteries. Only refurbished with a mixture of old and new cells. So I wouldn't count on another 10 years before swapping again.
The "new" or refurbished whatever battery packs in the still only had about 100 mile range. Unless your in a decent sized city like it seems alot in these comments are most people.do that much a day. I average 70 miles a day and a 500 mile round trip every weekend.
proper way to diagnose this car is to charge it to 100% and then drive it until it goes into turtle mode ( almost empty ), and see how many miles you will get out of it. I bet you can daily drive this thing for another 5 years and probably get at least 60 miles of range.
Wrong! So many wrong statements! You check the miles per kw without the AC on. Then, charge up and use a ChargePoint charger, so you know its capacity. In my 2017 500e, I get 5 miles per kw and filled over 17 kw, so about 90 miles of distance.
@@gregyohngy There are multiple ways to determine remaining capacity, yours will work as will Praise's. But I hope we can all agree that starting at ~75% SOC and romping on it for 5 miles while watching the guessometer is absolutely not the way to do it! LOL!
I do not will not ever own a gas powered vehicle ever again. I enjoy reliability. With 4% of cars on roads evs, why aren't 4% of broken down on the side of the roads evs. Or 4% of black spots on roads from gas fires caused by evs. The media would go nuts if that were the case.
Says its DEAD, yet it's squealing tires around a corner.... Lots of city dwelling folks and people with short commutes would LOVE to have a cheap runabout like this. I welcome the future of dirt cheap EVs with short range.
It pretty much is dead. Look at anything battery powered. The battery is more than half gone in terms of usability. At some random point the car won't move at all. You don't know when that is but it is probably soon. You would be driving and always wondering if this is the last time, or when is it going to randomly die. The battery is still degrading, not going to stop. It already lost so much that losing more is a bigger lose than before.
Agree. Seems absolutely insane to junk it. At the very least and as a last resort, you could even get an used 'good' battery and sell it for easy profit.
@@SmOgER10 After getting that battery installed and the battery itself (which most likely isn't going to be cheap no matter how used it is) I doubt you're going to have any hope of making profit.
@@jacobrzeszewski6527 Sure, I don't disagree with that, but it doesn't change the fact that you are very unlikely to be able to turn a profit on it as that other commenter suggested.
That's mostly because Tesla have much bigger batteries to begin with. Not a fair comparison. For a tiny car like this FIAT, this battery probably had to be charged to 100% every single time to have any range comfort, hence the degradation. I don't believe they forecasted for it to last more than it already has
Wow, hearing them say this is a junkyard car is kinda disheartening. My daily commute is 3.2 miles. This car would only need to be charged once a week; this is FAR from a junkyard car and there is absolutely someone who could utilize it
Not sure why you believe it's extremely time consuming to replace all the cells. Prius battery kits have been available for years for $1,500 and it takes about 4 hours to replace all the cells. In fact old Prius with dead batteries are great flips now because of it.
@jetskiliferboatguy8140 Priuses have a much smaller and a way more accessible battery. These are skateboard chasse cars if I'm not wrong. It is way harder to swap those out.
here in australia, toyota australia would change the pack out of a certain model year out of good faith. now its great cuz theres used pruises out there with brand new packs for cheap
@@bragadeeshbalakrishnan nah, the battery unbolts from the bottom. Fiat put very little effort in on this car , to the point that it still has exhaust hangers welded to the body. There isn’t really a skid plate either, because it was cheaper to just raise the rear up
Seems reasonable to me, 10 years old - how long did you expect it would go? If it was a total loss - which it isn't - it has loss less than depreciation on an average US barge. I am not a fan of EV or Fiat.
Have you tried doing the battery calibration? There is a thread in the Fiat 500 Owners forum to perform it. Also, they sell individual packs for this car. Electrified Garage can likely find the dead cell(s) and replace them.
Came here looking for this exact suggestion. We had to do this on my ‘17 500e after replacing the 12V and it’s been doing amazing. Absolutely adore my lil car.
I owned this almost exact car (but had orange accents) for 3 years in Las Vegas. For what I needed it was perfect. Never a problem. Started with ~25k miles. Put on 30k while I owned it. Bought off lease from California for $8k, traded back in for $4.5k when I moved.
We have a '14 Fiat 500e now at 130,000 miles on it. It has been in the AZ heat the whole time. Ours now has about 40miles of range with out using AC or heater. It will go 25miles if using AC or heat. We will drive it until it bricks itself. We hope to get 2 more years out of it. It was a great purchase we bought it in 2017 with 9500 miles for $10k. It was a lease end car. The gas for 130,000 miles at 35mpg would cost $13,000. It adds very little to my electric bill.
So the story is - how to turn $10,000 into $700 in 7 years. So much for those gas savings. I imagine your insurance alone was higher enough to offset any fuel savings. You could have bought a really nice used Toyota for that same $10,000 and it would probably still be worth close to $10,000 and the lower insurance alone would have saved you a fortune.
@@markmonroe7330 The insurance on the Toyota would probably be quite a bit more than a depreciated to hell Fiat. Even a corolla with 100K miles on it here goes for $19K all day, $23 if it's a hybrid. Even my 2024 Model 3 insurance is $20 less a month than for my 2022 Corolla for some god awful reason. Don't even talk about Kia's because the one rotting in my yard right now cost 3X higher per month than the Tesla, getting into car payments territory with that thing.
@markmonroe7330 any 10k car woild loose the same or similar value. The insurance is again same or similar. So the gas savings is massive. If you can live with the short range and charging times.
@@bzeldin82Hate to say it, but you are entirely wrong on this one. A 3-5 year old Toyota bought in 2017 that is taken care of, hasn’t lost hardly any value since then. Plus, EV insurance is always higher, some to times significantly higher. Do some homework. Virtually no savings, if any, when you do a fully comprehensive analysis from your first day until when you sell it.
@@markmonroe7330 - No, the story is that the car paid for itself with gas savings, plus you're not spewing burned hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and they're quiet and fun to drive.
I had a '13 500e that also experienced battery degradation. Somewhere between 25-40% depending on how it was calculated. By the end I as no longer able to go the 52 miles round trip to work at 55mph. It even left me stranded once when it dropped from 15% SOC to 0% instantly. Despite that, grins per mile were off the charts and I do miss it. Please don't think 500e battery degradation is representative of all EVs. The 500e was an early EV, battery chemistry and charge profiles have come a long way since. It was also a compliance car that Fiat didn't want to build in the first place; they weren't motivated to make it last 200k miles. Finally, it does not have a user settable SOC charge limit, therefore it likely spent cumulative years plugged in at 100% SOC. That's torture for NMC chemistry.
Yep, the Fiat doesn't represent all EVs. And the cars/batteries 10 years ago in general weren't as good as the latest ones. You can expect that a modern EV battery will have very moderate battery degradation even after +250 thousand miles. ⚡
@@Malthus Where’s the proof? Tesla Model S came out in 2012 in small quantities - and a lot of their stuff was outsource. Tesla Model 3 and Bolt came out in 2017. LFP batteries were coming around 2020. How on earth do you have an estimate of 10 years - especially in the rapid growth of battery technology we are seeing?
To a large extent, the battery degradation is simply due to the smallish battery pack. Relatively larger number of charge/discharge cycles for a given number of miles. My Model 3 with 92k miles has only a few percent degradation. Also, the industry is shifting towards using LFP battery chemistry for shorter range cars. LFP degrades at a slower rate than the more energy-dense nickel-based battery packs.
I have said it for years Wizard treats hoovie like a regular off the street customer as opposed to the guy that took a guy named David and made him the wizard
Based on the 3 years I spent with a Fiat 500e lease I don't know if that one actually has all that much battery degradation... Yes, it's advertised to have 88 miles of range from a 100% full battery and the guess-o-meter will show about that initially but at anything resembling highway speeds that's just not gonna happen. My commute averaged 75 mph and I'd get roughly 50-60 miles total out of it at those speeds. Drive it nice and slow and/or in gentle city driving while being careful to get all regenerative braking vs using the service brakes and you'd easily get those 88 miles or more.
Hoovie, Hoovie, Hoovie, Fiats have always been unreliable piles of auto parts! There are plenty of more than ten year old Teslas, Toyota plug ins and hybrids with excess of 200 K that have lost about 10% of range! Give us a break!
I have a 2003 Pontiac Vibe (Matrix), I bought it brand new here in Toronto Canada. It now has over 1 million Kilometers and still driving strong, its my daily driver. AC no longer works, weather stripping from the driver side door is failing so I cannot open the window without it getting stuck to go back up, I believe it needs a tie rod but she still drives. The only thing that works is the heater which is good for Canadian winters. It cost me absolutely nothing to continue driving it, I pay like 90$ Canadian a month for Insurance, its a Corolla engine so it's fairly cheap on Gas also. I plan to drive it till it is completely dead which it shows no signs of. They don't make em like this anymore.
I have one of these in orange. 1 replace the 12v battery. 2. used batteries are $2-3k. These currently sell for $7-12k running. That would make it one of your better Hooptys. 1 may fix it, if not 2 definitely will.
Keep in mind that if you hard accelerate EV's their calculated range will drop much faster. I had a 2014 Fiat 500e wit about 45k miles on it when I sold it 4 years ago and the battery degredation was normal - not like the one shown here.
Gasoline fiat 500s are useless too, I’m a recovery driver and I’m picking them up constantly. The manuals have issues with clutch hydraulics and clutches. The autos just give up with living 🤣
Yo that shit would be perfect for the 3rd car we need. Kid's job is 2 miles away, not even able to warm up a real engine, but too risky to walk or bikeride.
I made an entire thread about this on Reddit once and was swiftly banned from the community for bringing it up. Most passenger cars today can last 250,000+ miles with good service before an engine or transmission needs to be replaced. EVs only last ten years and very few if any “EV adopters” are going to want to put $20k into a ten-year old car.
Nonsense. The battery warranty on my EV is 10 years. No OEM in their right mind is going to have a 10 year warranty on a battery that last 10 years. There is alway a margin built in and real life data is showing an easy 15 to 20 year life span. There are many Teslas on the road today that have exceeded 250,000 miles.
🚨I have a 500e and it sat for a while left with a dead battery. I pulled the battery out and charged every cell individually, but one of the cells got overheated and caught on fire. It completely got destroyed. Thankfully I kept the battery outside of garage for the safety reasons, but hey Wizard if you’re reading this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be SUPER careful with that battery pack.
@@thedopplereffect00I'm guessing it was done with a bench power supply. Best thing is to set the voltage and set it low but balance all of the cells. Put it back in the car and charge it properly.
@@thedopplereffect00 oh yeh I'm not saying good chargers don't exist I'm just saying that I'm guessing the op did it with a bench power supply. I believe that is how aging wheels has done his in the past if you watch his videos in a similar manner.
You don't know if this car was parked for extended periods of time at 0 or 100% SoC, that KILLS batteries. Actually a lot of Tesla exceeded 400k on their original battery packs, so "not all EVs are junk after 10 years".
"A lot' is an exaggeration at best.There are a few documented claims of vehicles 250k-400k but the battery packs only last about half that. Also , Teslas are not exactly in the same price range as your average Fiat or similar average vehicle , so using Tesla as the standard is not very accurate.
@kasmanien the Model 3 is cheaper than many ICE vehicles on the road. I don't understand why people always think Teslas are expensive. Hell I could have gotten the Model 3 for $3K less than I got my Prius and I have the lowest spec with way less features. The XLE is more competitive but would have been yet another $2K.
My 2008 Prius is still going with its original Nimh battery. That’s a 16 year old Hybrid with a 0.8kWh battery. There’s no telling how that particular 500e has been treated over the last 10 years. Running the battery flat to turtle mode will damage it too - as will regular fast charging to 100%.
You put a new battery in and you have a new car if it was taken care of. The depreciation only happens because the lifespan of a car drops. New battery brings it back to 100%.
@@jeffsparks4209 That doesn't include the labor. Or the other things that will go wrong with it. And it's still a Fiat 500, one of the worst cars you can own. I think I'd rather have a PT Cruiser. Or a golf cart.
I have to agree with Insider EV here hoovies, this video is not much more than engagement bait based on misinformation (if you lack the knowledge), or straight up lies (if you are aware of what you're doing, which I hope is not the case)
I started watching Hoovie when he bought a Prius 2nd Gen and replaced the battery. I rebuilt the battery pack myself on mine and later just bought a Toyota factory replacement battery for $2K and now I'm back to putting more miles on my 290K 2007 Prius. I'll give you $800 for it.
I saw the follow up video and he was able to fix the power module for $1,200. So, even better. He claimed you could get a used working version of the car around $5,000. It's more like $7,000. Either way a whole new battery pack would have greatly extended the life of the vehicle. And with a brand new battery pack, you could sell the car for a lot more because it would come with a new warranty.
15-20k for a new battery and install...yet you could buy a New Camery with that cash and it will be more reliable and go to easy 200k miles without breaking a sweat...😂
I'm still driving my 2015 volt. No issues, and I found a guy in florida that will replace the 14kw battery for 5k if I ever do need another battery. Considering changing the battery in your electric car is like changing the engine, after 10 years and 120k miles, considering I pay next to nothing for gas, my car has been an amazing deal.
Places are replacing battery cells, full replacements are becoming less common. Also, if you have an EV from the very beginning of mass-market, you are gambling anyways. Cars built today are now far more easier to fix and use much better battery chemistry.
It's a shame there isn't any push to try and standardise battery pack modules like we do with household batteries. Would make them a lot easier to fix.
@@drunkenhobo8020 I had assumed when EVs became the standard means of transport they would have quickly detachable battery packs and you would swap out a flat one for a charged one.
Yeh... I have nothing against EVs from a technology perspective, but the whole 'environmentally friendly' thing is a crock of excrement. -The most environmentally damaging part of any car is making it, especially EV batteries... then if the whole thing is junk after only 10 years! -Add to that the electricity has to come from somewhere... ever heard of coal-fired power stations? More will be needed if we all go electric. -Then there are the financial and environmental costs of new infrastructure - EVs are currently not a menace because there aren't that many. -Oh, and battery fires... incredibly dangerous because they often happen without warning, burn very hot, and are nearly impossible to put out. Want to help the environment? -Drive less, using a smaller and more fuel-efficient car -Keep it well serviced and don't buy another until it's worn out beyond economic repair -Unless there is a really compelling reason, don't buy a new car. Really want to help the environment? -Stop flying so much - it's absolutely the worst thing you can do -Think about all your energy wastage at home, and all the crap you buy for no good reason -Recycling is another crock of excrement the way 'we' generally do it - much better not to make waste -Look after what you have, repair what is broken, and buy only what you actually need. Hey, none of this has to be miserable - I've been driving cars my whole life that are far better than I could ever afford if I bought new. Better yet, all the money I've saved over the years by not wasting my hard-earned cash on the consumer merry-go-round is money I've been able to spend on things that actually mean something to me, making for a better life.
I love my EV, not because I’m worried about the environment, it’s too late for that. I drive it because it’s not only a better driving experience, but it’s zero maintenance. According to the insurance industry your gas car is 50% more likely to catch on fire than my gas car. As a matter of fact, I’d rather charge my car in my garage than let you park whatever your daily driver is in it.
@evatrics5902 the average ICE is three times the age of the average EV and has significantly higher miles. Fire risk per mile driven with comparable age is the only honest way to compare the two and EVs aren't old enough for that yet. And most ICE fires are caused by arson after use on a crime, collision damage, or improper maintenance. They don't just catch on fire for no reason. But they are easy to put out and stay out when they do catch fire. EVs are the opposite. Self ignite without external forces, hard to extinguish, and belch out toxic fumes and toxic runoff.
I currently drive a 2000 olds bravada. More reliable than anything built in the last 10 years. Heated seats still work, sunroof still works, AWD still works, ac still works, 240,000 miles, and doesn't burn oil, runs perfect..... Bought a parts truck with low miles, rolled over for 800$ tons of low mileage factory parts have saved me thousands. highly recommend.
@@Noah_EICE fires are caused primarily by fuel leaks landing on electrical connections or hot exhaust, or in some cases electrical shorts. EV fires are caused by punctured battery packs or bad battery designs. I was looking at two recent garage fires in the news. One was a diesel pick up and the other was a hybrid with a fuel leak. Google car fires and see if an EV’s come up.
I agree with most of your comment. But I feel that you didn't touch on all bases regarding EVs and your comment is inclined toward emphasizing the negatives. There are also many environmental benefits regarding electric cars, from which I will name a few: 1. No tailpipe emissions. EVs do not emit any hot gases or small particulates when the engine is running. This is especially important in cities, where it's proven that air quality is low because of ICE cars, especially diesel ones, causing many health problems to people. 2. Less noise. An electric engine is quieter when running. Noise pollution is something many people forget about, although it's a very important issue, affecting our lives daily. 3. Less money spent on maintenance. EVs have fewer parts which are needed to be serviced regularly. There's no oil, no filters, no sparkplugs, no fuel pump, no exhaust, no cambelts, pulleys, etc. Producing all of these parts is also contributing to pollution, but most people forget that. 4. Energy mix. Few countries (if any) in the world have their electricity produced from 100% coal. For example, in my country, Romania (which is not considered a developed country), at the time that I'm writing this comment, only 15% of the electricity is produced by burning coal and 22% of the electricity is produced by burning natural gas and oil. So the rest of 63% of electricity is clean energy. Which is much better than burning oil directly in an inefficient ICE car.
BUILD A BATTERY! The components inside are not that expensive! For $3-4k in cells, you could put a decent pack back together and get that car driving for another 8-10 years.
@@mritchie85 I’ve been doing it since the 80’s building battery packs for rc cars and still do with Lipos that are much more dangerous. Same rules apply.
It's crazy how driving faster and braking more aggressively will destroy the range of a car. My last car got less than 7 MPG. It had a 1.6L and only weighed 2400 lbs. It must have been degradation of the fuel tank, as it couldn't possibly have been the time at the track exceeding 130 MPH. I'm never going to buy a compact economy ICE car again after that experience!
It’s designed for urban use, not driving fast on wide open roads. Unfortunately, in densely built urban environments charging can be a problem since people have to keep their cars on the road.
I have a 2016 Fiat 500e. I’m the third owner of it. 45k mileage. Had it for around 2 years. No problems. Maybe the battery is not balanced out your white one. They are in a series of modules similar to the BMW i3. There is a RUclips video showing how someone fixed theirs. The car new had only 84 miles of range, not 120 miles as you said. It’s only a 24kwH battery pack (22 usable). The BMS mileage number changes based on the driver’s habits in driving and outside temperature. For example, I have seen as much as 110 seen there. That looked kind of dirty in there! Yikes. I hope the Car Wizard can fix it! It is such a fun commuting car! Mine does have the sunroof and in electric orange with white highlights. The original price was 43k. I think the Fiat-Chrysler former CEO (RIP) said they were losing 20k on each 500e. Yes, the resistance heater and colder temps takes range off the car - expected. Remember, these were the first generations of electric cars! I differ you explaining about a 10 year span on electric cars. Batteries are evolving incredibly fast. Look at the cycles on LFP battieries. Wow. Solid State batteries may be coming. Who knows? And I don’t know your replies on Tesla batteries is not fully accurate. First, are you talking about the 1860 batteries? 2170 batteries? LFP batteries? Which model of Tesla? Too vague and broad. The data would differ what you said. That’s all I would say. However, I bet it’s way different having an electric vehicle in KS than the West Coast - for example. And, I never had an ICE car ever at 200k. That’s a lot of repairs and costs. Just saying. Hope the Wizard can do his magic! Great video!
@@usa-ev I think he’s looking too much at the BMS mileage and not what it’s reporting, imo. How many miles per kW? It’s available on the screen to see. I look at that plus the percentage on the side. And it’s a 24KwH battery. It’s thermal managed and only be charged on level 2. If there’s a problem, I hope the Wizard can fix it. I love this car!
@@usa-ev One last thought. Tyler said batteries have been shown (paraphrasing) that they last only 10 years. I would like to know where his stats are coming from. The Model S came around 2012 in small quantities. The mass produced thermal managed battery EVs (like the Bolt and 3) came in 2017. As I said before, we are in the infancy of EVs. Auto companies are becoming more vertically integrated (big 3 is taking a while to get there). I think Tyler should be a bit more accurate what he says. If Tyler was talking about software - that’s a totally different story to discuss and have good discourse on. 👍🏻
I'm old enough to remember that back in the 90's I said I would never own a mobile phone. They were too expensive, too heavy, the batteries didn't last very long and the range was limited to just around big cities. So if I was right about all the limitations of a 90's phone why would I now not give up my mobile phone if you gave me a free land line? Was it that land lines have got worse or was it that mobile phones have got better? I think Tyler could usefully learn from my mistake.
@@boilerhousegarage And there's the issue. Of course you'll get people who think an EV is stupid just like you'll get people who think a car that can do 250mph is stupid, but the real reason people don't like EV's is because of the government trying to force them. Take away all incentives and coercion, and no-one will care that they exist alongside ICE vehicles (also Tesla asshats and EVangelists do a great job in turning people off EV's).
@@deanchur Yes, I wouldn't object to them at all if not for the said economic coercion. Although I'm confident that without the cap-and-trade system, battery cars would never leave the prototype stage or a limited production run done as an engineering exercise.
From lessons learned from earlier cars, battery chemistry has been improving sharply. Thermal management of battery packs has improved mightily as well. And pack size and battery density have increased so much that much more degradation is now required before the pack’s capacity is no longer adequate. The new generation of LFP battery packs are expected to last about 5x longer than the (already much improved) packs they’re replacing. Modern battery packs are expected to last past the life of the vehicle, and to have a second life in stationary energy storage (such as in a building) after the car reaches ends of life. There are lots of things about the longevity of modern cars that I’m concerned about, but battery packs are not on that list. :-) Your conclusion that this old car can be assumed to be the experience of newer and much more advanced cars isn't logical.
Crappy battery design is the cause. The simple truth is, batteries have the highest retail markup. Typically it’s at upwards of 5000% between the manufacture and retail. That means a battery that cost 5 cents to make typically retails for $2.50.
Our 2013 leaf with 60k still reliably gets 60 miles range and has great utility and low cost as a local trip car. The battery replacement market will evolve to make it economical to swap in replacement batteries but newer chemistry will also offer better longevity and less degradation.
I have a 2013 e with 69k and it will still do 75 miles range around town and 60 freeway. When new it was 90+ and 75 freeway so it has degraded but still good enough for average commuting. Drawing a conclusion from a single data point is not going to give you any real information. Just like with gas cars, neglect on the part of the owner can destroy a car early, just the like the other wounded cars you specialize in buying.
Alex Jones would say that EVs and overly complicated newer ICE vehicles are an N.W.O. plot to abolish private transportation for the masses by making it too expensive to drive in order to force the people into accepting 300 sq. ft. apartments in walkable cities.
I have a 500 pop and a 500e. I purchased my 2016 E for 10k with just over 12k miles. I drive mine about 55 miles per day. The replacement battery pack is about 7k plus labor. Buy cheap and buy smart.
A lot of these battery issues could be from bad treatment. Always hammering it, or even simple things like always using fast charging, leaving the battery low for long periods. It’s like blaming a Corolla for someone never changing the oil in ten years.
Yeah a car with that low of miles after a decade. How many times did that battery die? Did it sit plugged in at 100% for months at a time? Both wreck the battery
I have a 1991 Toyota Corolla Alltrac I bought as second owner in 2015, currently 296k miles and it just keeps going. Anything that has broken on it, I've fixed myself. It's a great car.
Just found your channel. Been a car guy and in the business 51 years. I really enjoy watching your experiences buying vehicles that I would never touch. Very entertaining. This is one of the best automotive channels on RUclips.
Wizard is buying the 500E to see if he can coax some life out of the battery. I bought it with the "Service propulsion system" error disclosed, and a full charge showing, but it showed up with bricked. Easily jumped back to life and charged, but showed a battery control module fault and it appears to have a severely degraded battery. Currently a very happy Cadillac Lyriq EV owner, but the depreciation is monstrous, and I don't expect them to last much past 10 years based on what I've experienced and seen at auctions and firsthand with other cars. Apparently, this video might be the "dumbest" and "laziest" EV video ever, according to inside EVs, and given my tagline, I should probably be proud of that? insideevs.com/news/728910/tyler-hoover-fiat-500e/
This is one of the worst videos for misinformation you’ve done in a while. I agree with inside EVs. If you drive something aggressively, shock the range goes down faster!
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ECars are bullsh[t. nobody wants them
The Fiat will look nice in the background in Wizards shop next to the Citroën.
Can’t watch another EV video. If I drove this POS, I’d definitely make sure my life insurance was up to date.
Can you please sent me a p.o. box or something, I have something you used to have I would love if you can sign.
I have tavarish so far and trying to get everyone from cartrek
Do you wanna win get a Prius prime!
I have a 12 mile commute round trip each day. I would drive this until it completely bricked itself even with the current battery issues for $700.
Things EVngelists say: How about a bicycle? :)
But seriously, electric bicycle will actually work (if not ideal), this EV has a risk of cutting out when you accelerate, or range dropping from 50 miles indicated down to 0 miles in the space of minutes, or as he showed in the video the dashboard occasionally lights up like a Christmas tree and everything stops. Those old batteries are a ticking time bomb. You may as well get a nice economical diesel if you're on a budget.
Seriously, it kind of makes me want to try and find one.
@@DigiDriftZone roughly 10 of the 12 miles is on a 55mph highway, and over a bridge with no bike lane.
Womp womp
Same $700 for that clean of a daily hell if it last 2 months it paid for
@@MrToxicoreo Ah, so when the battery fails then someone's insurance will pay to replace the car for you. Win-win! Well unless you're still in the car at the time of the accident, then not so much.
USE IT AS A GOLF KART AROUND THE FARM. CHEAPER THAN A GOLF KART AND HAS AC
Thats a good one
and the softies wont be mad at him if he destroys it because its an ev lol
But a bigger pain if you forget to charge it.
UPVOTE!
My thoughts exactly! That’s a perfect use for it
How did you buy an ev for $700? I just paid $3000 for a literal golf cart 😂
My ram has 50k miles and needs a new steering control module and it will cost 1300 bucks to replace it lol. 700 isn't so bad.
These EV fiats are cheap and easy to find.
An EV + Fiat = depreciation of bananas
@@JosephSamsor Where and how! The internet says they are like 2 to 3 grand minimum!
Because it's a Fiat and an electric one. An EV from a maker that is known to struggle with electrical work kind of does that to the price.
We need a standardized universal battery testing system for used EV car inspections
Yes. Develop some open source firmware in the BMS and it could read off the voltage of every cell.
What we really need is more standardised batteries. Most of them seem to be made out of about eight sub modules so if those were standardised it would be far easier to swap one out. Ideally in the future it could be something your local tire centre could deal with.
There is, it's called a range test. Considering Tyler never drove it to 0 then recharged it properly, we'll never know.
How long have we had D, C, AA, AAA batteries? They are in so many household devices. The EV industry needs a standard format for batteries so they can easily and inexpensively replaced when cells go bad. Throwing away a perfectly good car because the batteries are no good and too expensive to replace is insane.
@@jamesmcclure3953 There already is standardized EV cells. The problem is different shape Modules.
$700 for a car with a range that covers 98% of my trips, doesn't sound all that miserable to me.
The miserable fact though, that actual range today is something of 25 miles on one charge, on perfect road in fine weather conditions. And only God will save you , if you try to drive in winter, out of the city
Not much more than a decent e-scooter would cost but you get all the conveniences of a car that can go on the highway
If you live a few miles from work and can charge it at home, it would be a perfect daily beater. Running costs should be low and if you get only a year out of it that's still less than the depreciation you would take on even a civic.
Even if you put the $7500 into it for the newer upgraded battery pack it would no doubt easily last another 10 years and therefore average out at $750/year plus minimal fuel & maintenance fees so it’s in no way ‘mechanically totalled’ and could once again be a great city car. The Wizard‘s not stupid that’s why he gave Hoovie $2K for it. He’s going to fix the original battery pack for cheap. Just saying!
@@yurypozdnyakov5177 My commute is like.. 6 miles...
The trick with the short ranged "city cars" is that they had a small battery (and were cheap) but needed to be recharged every other day or so. Those packs are "good" for a specific number of charges and then they start degrading. The harder you "punch" (cycle) them the faster they degrade. The main "fault" is that the auto companies have refused to make them easy to drop and replace power packs. So getting a short range EV to high mileage won't happen. (most motorcycles used for local use have low mileage too)
Tesla battery packs routinely get 160K+ on cars that were treated well. (normal versus "fast" charging -- and only charging when they were 40% or less. But one Uber driver who fast charged daily barely got 100K out of his.
The new chemistries coming online can handle rabid discharge/recharge much better and more recharge cycles. Even MORE reason tom make packs more standard and swappable like engines.
The fact is, most of the cars in the scrapyards never see 100K miles. The reason the Fiat-E exists is "CAFE" standards. They were only sold to offset the big profitable gas guzzlers.
These were actually highly overbuilt. The motor and battery pack is liquid cooled; far better than a leaf from ten years ago. The electronics were mostly Bosch and the battery Samsung. They are extremely fun.
Ours has been great. The one shown appears to be fine.
@@usa-ev Yes "fine" as in loses 15 miles range in 5 miles...the cope with people and their EVs is real.
Samsung from 10 years ago hey? I see no way that could go wrong.
Yep, this Fiat doesn't represent all EVs. And the cars/batteries 10 years ago in general weren't as good as the latest ones. You can expect that a modern EV battery will have very moderate battery degradation even after +250 thousand miles. ⚡
@@mattipeltola4934 yes ev’s were ordered by the government therefore they must be good! Enter the march of the penguins.
Needs a Hayabusa conversion
That would be awesome😮
YES YES YES!!!!
👏👌
Hes not rich rebuilds he wouldnt do that lol
Wizard couldn't finish the V-12 Malibu. What makes you think he could do a Hayabusa conversion? You might've well said make a jet turbine conversion - it's all ridiculous.
Like Wizard said - it's a learning tool at this point. Maybe he can get Richard Dunn to help with the battery balancing!
Considering that most Americans won't walk 5-mins to a local shop or diner, I'd say this is a perfect little daily runaround.
I know what’s wrong with it! It aint got no gas in it!
ya got any biscuits in there?
😂😂😊
@@kook4u I cant believe some people are still willing to deal with the inconveniences of getting oil changes and driving to a gas station every week when we don’t have to anymore just so their car can make noise. Or believing that a clapped out Fiat they threw together to meet emissions standards that only had 80 miles of range new is a good representation of all EVs.
@@craigcampbell1843 just gotta deal with a 95% purchase loss and battery sensors that can total the car at any moment of use randomly.
What'cha doin' with that lawn mower blade Karl?
Use it for a golf cart around the farm!
My thought exactly. Of gift it to an old lady who only needs to drive to the supermarket and doctor 10 miles away max.
Or a parts car.
Good idea. He could take the doors off so it’s open like a golf cart. And put astroturf for the floor mats just like the Lincoln Towncar Jack Nicklaus edition.
Not a bad idea! Better than sending it to the junkyard.
I've seen people take the Smart cars and lift them and use them a ranch beater
I've owned a 2017 500e for almost 5 years now, 56k miles, paid about $12,000 all in and for my tiny commute every day it's been absolutely perfect! $0 in maintenance except for wearable items. I charge using a 110V outlet in the garage so I didn't have to retrofit a 220v. They have their range drawbacks but if you regularly drive small amount daily it makes so much sense. Any longer trips and we take my wife's gas powered SUV. 10/10 experience so far and I'll drive it until for the foreseeable future.
Agreed. I am on my 2nd one of these! Both same colors as Hoovie's/Wizard's. I went 5 years on the first one and was driving it 25 miles on weekdays. Had a few problems in the end like most cars, but it kept rollin. Only ever put tires and 12v batteries in it. Sold it for what I paid for it. Found another one for $6800 with 23k miles and couldn't pass it up. I have been driving it for 8 months with no issues. I'm in Tx. Range is down some but I have an EV6 GT for longer trips. I too only use a 110V outlet to charge. If you can handle being made fun of in it, it's a great value car.
Yeah! They're awesome!
That’s great!
If it’s such a tiny commute why not just get a bicycle? And if the weather is bad get a bus?
@@Adam-ox6zy Because people enjoy driving.
Tyler thinks that paying thousands of dollars to replace a bad battery is dumb but paying thousands of dollars to replace a bad engine is reasonable.
if engine passes 200K and was replaced its fine but when ev battery is only 40k and is bad its a big problem
That’s also bad. We were able to build engines that last 500k+ but now all we build are gas powered or electric vacuum cleaners.
@@KingofTrashWisdom i guess not much we can do
And modern EV Batteries with a real BMS and Temperature control last at least 10 years, i guess in a few years there will be shops upgrading and repairing old batteries
Depends on the vehicle tbf, if its a vintage car with value its worth outting an engine in
If its a rotten shed worth 500 its not worth it
Hoovie those Fiats were sold new with a range of 87 miles, don't believe the guess-o-meter, I've owned 3 of them and typically got around 70 miles (even if it displays over 100 miles). Try do a full range test to see what you get on a full charge driving below 50mph with light acceleration, there's a good chance your battery isn't bad.
Yep, looked fine.
Uh, did you watch the video? He traded it to The Wizard in lieu of bill payments.
He probably knows that but the rage clicks he gets on this video are worth lying
Need the Teslabjorn collab 😂
Drive below 50 mph?! That is below the speed limit even in the USA. Much less the 140kph(84mph) speed limit I regularly drive where I live.
Here in Australia there is a local company restoring the Mitsubishi i-MiEV they have developed replacement battery packs which give longer range then the ones from the factory when it was new, and its not as expensive as you'd think. This is the direction the VE market needs to head, affordable battery replacements so buyers can keep perfectly good EVs running for decades.
Is the Australian government okay with it? In my country you wouldn't get to insured it if it is custom mod
@@ayol1011 No reason there can't be a certification process for high voltage or car batteries.
More money to be made for the manufacturers if they keep having problems
@lancer1993 thats great in theory but sadly the enviromental impact of battery production and inability to recycle them is still a big no
They rebuild nissan leaf batteries too. They simply use modern batteries with higher energy densities than what was available a decade ago.
I have a 2014 Fiat 500e here with 85,000 miles or 135,000km battery still gets 80 - 90 miles of range so basically the original range (rated 84 new). Overall reliability has been good only the two rear wheel bearings needed replacement (a know issue for fiat 500) and that’s it.
Only paid $8,000 for this vehicle with 47,000 miles. Definitely depends on the vehicle but like everything it all depends on your particular situation. But batteries can last and they do last a long time. Especially the Samsung cells of the fiat 500e. The 500e is such a great vehicle I love mine
Hello Fiat corporate
@@bradmoore9756I’m not lying my friend lol I literally drive it daily
yeah a lot of it is expectations, it's not like it would go hundreds even as new.
700 for something that goes enough to go to the shop and back wouldn't be that bad if the compulsory insurances and such fees would reflect that.
@@Vivra_Verra____ I wonder if his was fast charged often.
You likely charge yours at home overnight, is that correct?
@@lasskinn474 yeah I would buy that as a runaround car and keep basic insurance on it.
After multiple instances of Hoovie remarking how hard the car "pulls", he can't figure out why the range is less than displayed? Gee, I wonder.
Yeah, and the AC will draw a lot of power too. Modern heat pump ACs are better in that sense.
Yes, thank you for pointing out how crappy EVs actually are...
Using AC on a hot day (or heat on a cold day), and flooring it a couple of times leaves you stranded....
Great technology!!!
Car A/C is pretty inefficient generally. On an ICE car the A/C unit could easily be pulling 5-10hp when it's on, which is why on a econobox with a weak engine you may actually notice the car is slower with A/C on.
@@nerd1000ify I always had to flick the aircon off when I went to pass someone in my old econoshitbox, or even up some steep hills, I don't miss it...
For $700 If you had like a 10-20 mile commute to work ( NO TRAFFIC ), I would charge it everyday and drive it until it died. You can’t even buy a POS these days for that price. There a lot less reliable cars that people want 3k or more for, that won’t last that long.
This would be fine for our second car. I don't even know why I call it the "second car", it's the one my wife and I drive most. The pair of us don't drive 25 miles in a week, some weeks.
Our other vehicle has got close to a 500 mile range for longer trips. $700 and a $2-$3 per week in electricity seems like pretty cheap motoring to me.
@@davidbrayshaw3529 Yeah, I work from home so I drive maybe 2-10 miles any given day depending on what my kids have going on. Weekends maybe 20-30, again, depending on what we're doing. I have a heated garage I can charge in. We take my wife's car for longer trips anyway. This would be just fine for me. I'm going to drive my beater caravan into the ground though.
If that car was in Cuba, a taxi driver would have a 35 year old diesel motor in that thing by the end of the week.
briandrake9467 And he would drive it for the next 400K miles.
And complain why his island has a dead economy while depending on oil but not producing any.
A boat diesel.
Not by choice but by necessity
For sure 🤣
My friend has one of these and if you beat on it everyday it will last a bit longer, he still gets 75 miles at 70k miles
What year is it? Mileage has nothing to do with it. Age of battery does.
Yeah. My cousin had one and she loved it. It was a California compliance car. $99 a month lease. Got her to work and back no problem and helped her save money for a year so she could get a nicer EV.
If you treat them like a mobile phone and try to not let them fall below 20%, ideally recharge at 30%, don't charge above 80% (unless you really need that range for a trip) and never use a fast charger, then you'll get the most out of the battery. When all is said and done, it's a throw-away electrical device, not a car that you can keep for decades and have a passion for.
@@boilerhousegarage Yep I love it. Heard this awhile back about NOT charging over 80% to help battery last. So just take 20% right off what the range is on the sticker.
@@courtney5796it does have the range if you charge it to 100%. I've only charged mine to 100% 3 times since I Had it and only gone under 20% once.
390k on an '09 honda fit. one of the last good econobox cars. no cvt, no turbo, just a very simple engine and transmission. both are still original, doesn't use or leak a drop of everything.
Sounds as boring as banana bread. But at least you get from point A to point B reliably.
@@MiscellaneousTruth Boring as banana bread better then refrozen high quality ice cream that MIGHT make you sick!
No don't junk it. I live in the city of Richmond and I drive like 2 miles here and there and parking is a nightmare!! Give it to me I can use it!!
@MrJwc1234 It's not getting junked. The Wizard bought it for $2K, and he said he's thinking about dropping the battery pack and replacing the bad cells.
Throw it in the trash!
Thank goodness no one judges ICE vehicles by the long term reliability of Fiat ICE vehicles.
Like you really know about Fiat ICE engines. If you dig a little bit you'll find great things about engine reliability on Fiat cars. The electrics are the problem, not the engine. But you can find fiat engines that are not good at all, as in any other brand. You should come to Europe and see with your eyes how many are running with no problems at all with a lot of miles on the clock. The examples shown on the internet are the exception, and don forget how many of them were sold.
You should check as well the fiat panda and other models.
Don't jump on conclusions by the exceptions. I don't know anything about American cars, but I know that the Chevrolets sold in Europe don't even compare.
Don't forget that the Fiat group bought the Chrysler group for a reason. Advanced technology, in comparison. And it shows by some great models launched since the buy. No brand lost it's "soul" and Chrysler group advances, slowly but it advances.
Also fiat owners, also owns Ferrari and Iveco group, that were responsible for the invention of all kind of diesel and gasoline systems, like common rail, and much more.
So if we dig a bit, really Fiat won't disappoint anyone on the issue of ICE engineering and on the other way, they developed systems that will keep ICE engines alive for much longer than we think.
I hope you agree with me when you read a little more about this brand. They are not as bad as some people make them, and on the other hand, great achievements were made by this group. One , just one, example, the Lancia Delta integrale, and It Is just one because I would have to write a book to tell you about all of them.
Is not as bad as you think, and not as bad as some new BMW cars and Mercedes as well.
Not all is as it seems.
Sorry for my english and hope you don't take it bad.
But above all, keep on being a car guy, no mater the brand you love most.
👍
@@armindoribeiro6286 No, the problem very much is that it's a Fiat. Toyotas and Hondas don't tend to have these kinds of problems with their hybrids and EV's. Even after 10 years.
@@eddieredmann3 I agree, but I was just answering to the judgement of Fiat ICE vehicles.
I daily drive (or used to) a Fiat Elba, from 1991, 1.6L engine and 405k km on the odometer. Reliable? Welp, the head gasket gave up last week, perhaps its third one under my ownership. Lovely driving experience though 😅😅
We own 2 diesels 1.9 cdti fiat engines in 2007 opels....one has 400k km, the other has 270k km...both engines run more than fine. Fiat does make good ICE engines
"this car is junk its dead" *procedes to slam pedal and squeal tires* "it still pulls really hard"
I didn't know completely dead cars ran let alone 'pulled really hard'
Yall stupid. No one wants a car that can't reliably get you from point A to B.
Exactly 😂
Most of these terribly degrading batteries aren't because of the battery but because of people not knowing how to use them properly. Fully charging and discharging a battery will kill a battery way faster than you would think.
An issue ice vehicles don't have, ice might have other issues but battery baying isn't one
The 500e was a compliance car, even the Fiat CEO is on record telling people not to buy it
Yup they were all leases. I had one for a year before going to a Tesla
Wasn't it also something absurd like $38,000? They really didn't want to sell it.
I guess the Mazda CX-30ev was also. The CX30ev was garbage that Mazda seemed to want nothing to do with.
@@RobertNES816yep. As soon as the CX-90 PHEV came out they dropped the MX-30 as fast as they could.
yeah, now you want odd? Go find one of the Toyota RAV4 EV with the Tesla drivetrain.
It's worth mentioning that the EV's with air cooled batteries are the ones that see the greatest amount of degradation and battery failures (Nissan Leaf, Kia Soul EV, Fiat 500e, etc.). The Nissan Leaf is the only other EV in the US that is still sold with air cooled batteries, and it will be discontinued soon. Air cooling may reduce weight, price and complexity, but it reduces reliability. That's the same reason no one sells cars with air cooled engines anymore!
The Leaf also historically had no conditioning system for the battery to warm it up too, so it was even weaker and more damaged in cold climates in addition to being damaged by excessive heat that the air cooling system couldn't handle. I'd be shocked if the 500e was able to properly heat the battery for cold climates as well.
Yeah, but in this video the car is shown to have some sort of liquid cooling system, multiple expansion tanks under the hood. So, I assume this is not one of those, unless that coolant is for something else?
My 911 air cooled is still going fine….
@@dsfsdfdsfsdf9806 Coolant is for the inverter and other electrical components under the hood. Hybrids have a separate liquid cooling system for these components as well.
The 500e has coolant cooled batteries
These degraded EVs are perfect for retirement communities. The 25 miles left of range is more than enough for driving around small neighborhood. Compared to a golf cart, these are an absolute bargain
No comparison safety wise.
Better than a golf cart
BUt that 25 mile range will be 5 mile range in 2 years ,when battery fall below 70% its degrading much faster
I live on the edge of a town with a number of seniors. I see them with various solutions. Some have Corollas, some have Smart Cars (remember those?). Some are still driving the 90s Crown Victoria they bought new. I think this little Fiat would be perfect for a lot of them as long as they have a place to plug it in. They're not making road trips.
I see he changed the title. Perhaps it should read ‘The Dumbest & Laziest anti EV take …. In all of RUclips’😂😂
If he bought it for $700. I would say that's still a bad day for the original owner no? The biggest cost issue on EV's today is that they depreciate A LOT. the used market for them is bad. I don't think this is a forever problem, but it's still a problem for the avg car buyer WHEN they go to trade in their 4 year old EV. come to find that it's worth much less than they were used it.
@@cabobs2000 It is sponsored by an life insurance company, but it should have been sponsored by Exxon!
I have a 2015 500e. That range is called the “guess o meter”. If you drive it aggressively(which is fun), it thinks you will continue to do so and the range will do that. Use the percentage more than that. If you had the ac on, it drops 8 miles, then shut it off it goes up 8 miles. There’s nothing wrong with it. IT IS AN AWESOME DEAL!
Exactly! Could have told that story, but instead chose to fabricate a dead battery.
Actually for a lot of EVs it doesn't even TRY to calculate the range based on your driving habits. Some of them just tell you the hard-coded EPA range based on the state of charge which you will never achieve in the real world. Which is very intentionally misleading because it always makes the range number look better when it is fully charged and most people will never notice if it never lives up to that.
@@bubba99009 KG is stating how this particular model works, and I can confirm his statements are accurate. We both own this model.
@@bubba99009Yep. When I got my Tesla in 2016, with an EPA range of 267 miles, I got a surprise when I did my first road trip of 250 miles, only to find that required 2 charging stops! I always managed to meet the EPA range with gas cars I had before it.
@@bubba99009 "for a lot of evs" ok, which lot of EVs have you owned or are you pulling that factoid out of your ass? EVs calculate estimated range off of your previous week or 2 of driving habits, much like a modern ICE does. They're not going to give you purposely, intentionally inaccurate information because that would put your ass on the side of the road, which isn't good or safe. You also probably shouldn't be driving your car down to the last couple miles of range, gas or electric because in both cases it's bad for your car. Driving a gas car down below 1/4 of a tank can damage the fuel pump by picking up shit in the bottom of the tank or inadequate cooling of the tank pump by it being exposed and out of the surface of the gasoline in the tank.
No. This is NOT the future of electric cars. This was a California compliance car that they just slapped together as an afterthought to lower their overall emissions.
Electric cars aren't the future. Some new propulsion system will replace them in the next 15 yrs. Didn't work in the early 1900s not going to work now.
Poorly built is poorly built, no matter what the propulsion system is.
@@danu65 exactly. As someone else said and as Tyler said in this video, it’s a Fiat. The gas ones are junk after ten years too.
@@danu65 aka a Fiat is a Fiat.
Did the Fiat dealer tell the customer they just slapped it together and it won't make 50k miles?
My family was given one of these as the owner couldn’t take it with him when he moved abroad. It has 30k on it now and if I really try I can get 86 miles of range, which is 2 more than it was originally rated for(under more realistic conditions it’ll do 75). The range computer was always wonky, as in the summer it’ll say it’s good to go 120+ miles. It’s great for taking into the city, and we just replaced the original pads and rotors after 10 years only because they were so warped. I wish I could have convinced my parents to swap the battery while they were on clearance for $1k
I have one of these it's a boss. I get around 100 miles zooming around town under 50 mph. It has no maintenance, drives like a go kart and have about 50k miles on it. Smooth and quiet and everyone that drives it just loves it.
To be frank, a replacement battery for the 500e ( swapped from a not quite as degraded vehicle ) is $2000-4000. VERY worth it.
Yeah, this video was more about hyperbole than a real world quest to keep it on the road for an economical sum. Perhaps The Wizard will take this path for video content.
Is it, though? It's still going to be an old degraded battery that could fail any time. Age is killer for these things, this example itself shows that. It doesn't even have close to 100k on it and the battery is failing.
@@BriBCG age is a killer. Full stop. lol that you had to autofire hate at this comment section.
Your wife’s boyfriend drives a Tesla doesn’t he?
@@JoshJones-37334 I don't care if people buy electric cars, I'd buy one if I still drove enough to have a car and it was practical. I just don't like the idea of someone spending 4k on a battery pack that just dies in a year or two because they didn't understand how they work.
I spent 4k on a whole car about 10 years ago and it lasted me 6 years before I gave it away and it's probably still on the road.
@@JoshJones-37334 Oh, and no, I don't like seeing people getting screwed, you weren't too far off ;)
So the car was $30000 new and it costs $7500 for a new and upgraded battery that was better than the original? Doesn't seem too bad to get another 10 years out of it, even paying $700 for the car gives you an EV with a new battery for $8200.
Unfortunately. You can't get new batteries. Only refurbished with a mixture of old and new cells. So I wouldn't count on another 10 years before swapping again.
I almost bought one when it's org owner lease was up for 9 grand. only 4 to 6 years old I forget. It was orange. I regret not getting it.
They were actually $50k new but fiat knew nobody would buy them at that price so they took a loss on every car
The "new" or refurbished whatever battery packs in the still only had about 100 mile range. Unless your in a decent sized city like it seems alot in these comments are most people.do that much a day. I average 70 miles a day and a 500 mile round trip every weekend.
@@TheRealMrRoyal Yeah I wouldn't spend over 7k for 100 miles.
proper way to diagnose this car is to charge it to 100% and then drive it until it goes into turtle mode ( almost empty ), and see how many miles you will get out of it. I bet you can daily drive this thing for another 5 years and probably get at least 60 miles of range.
Yeah, battery charge barely dropped at all.
Wrong! So many wrong statements!
You check the miles per kw without the AC on. Then, charge up and use a ChargePoint charger, so you know its capacity.
In my 2017 500e, I get 5 miles per kw and filled over 17 kw, so about 90 miles of distance.
@@gregyohngy There are multiple ways to determine remaining capacity, yours will work as will Praise's. But I hope we can all agree that starting at ~75% SOC and romping on it for 5 miles while watching the guessometer is absolutely not the way to do it! LOL!
I do not will not ever own a gas powered vehicle ever again. I enjoy reliability. With 4% of cars on roads evs, why aren't 4% of broken down on the side of the roads evs. Or 4% of black spots on roads from gas fires caused by evs. The media would go nuts if that were the case.
Says its DEAD, yet it's squealing tires around a corner.... Lots of city dwelling folks and people with short commutes would LOVE to have a cheap runabout like this. I welcome the future of dirt cheap EVs with short range.
Good! One will NOT serve my needs, but I certainly hope you benefit!
E-waste here we come! 🤦♂
you just hope you can make it to the breaking yard om its final charge with these e-waste mobiles
For something that’s ‘dead’ it’s very, very not dead.
It pretty much is dead. Look at anything battery powered. The battery is more than half gone in terms of usability. At some random point the car won't move at all. You don't know when that is but it is probably soon. You would be driving and always wondering if this is the last time, or when is it going to randomly die. The battery is still degrading, not going to stop. It already lost so much that losing more is a bigger lose than before.
I can't stress this enough. That car is not totaled.
Agree. Seems absolutely insane to junk it. At the very least and as a last resort, you could even get an used 'good' battery and sell it for easy profit.
@@SmOgER10 After getting that battery installed and the battery itself (which most likely isn't going to be cheap no matter how used it is) I doubt you're going to have any hope of making profit.
@BriBCG No car should be looked at as "profitable". It's transportation first and foremost. And value is entirely dependent on the owners needs.
@@jacobrzeszewski6527 Sure, I don't disagree with that, but it doesn't change the fact that you are very unlikely to be able to turn a profit on it as that other commenter suggested.
@@jacobrzeszewski6527What if you sell vehicles for a living?
My almost 10 year old Tesla model s is at 8% degradation. You see junked fiats of every age. I don’t think this is the future of evs
It's a feature of anything Stellantis makes not of EVs
@@york2600 hence the possible bankruptcy looming
That's mostly because Tesla have much bigger batteries to begin with. Not a fair comparison. For a tiny car like this FIAT, this battery probably had to be charged to 100% every single time to have any range comfort, hence the degradation. I don't believe they forecasted for it to last more than it already has
@@SmOgER10 It is completely fair because dumbass hoovie made the comment that this was the fate of all EVs in 10 years,
Yeah because Teslas are such finely crafted vehicles with absolutely no manufacturing defects and all the software works as promised. /s
Wow, hearing them say this is a junkyard car is kinda disheartening. My daily commute is 3.2 miles. This car would only need to be charged once a week; this is FAR from a junkyard car and there is absolutely someone who could utilize it
Not sure why you believe it's extremely time consuming to replace all the cells. Prius battery kits have been available for years for $1,500 and it takes about 4 hours to replace all the cells. In fact old Prius with dead batteries are great flips now because of it.
@jetskiliferboatguy8140 Priuses have a much smaller and a way more accessible battery. These are skateboard chasse cars if I'm not wrong. It is way harder to swap those out.
He wasn’t saying the Prius was a lengthy process he was saying a full ev battery pack is a lengthy process
here in australia, toyota australia would change the pack out of a certain model year out of good faith. now its great cuz theres used pruises out there with brand new packs for cheap
@@bragadeeshbalakrishnan nah, the battery unbolts from the bottom. Fiat put very little effort in on this car , to the point that it still has exhaust hangers welded to the body. There isn’t really a skid plate either, because it was cheaper to just raise the rear up
@@fredericoespinoza that's Toyota for you
Pointing at a ten year old car saying "this is the future of electric cars"
Right. 10-year-old technology with less than 100 hundred miles of range new.
there are bad ev cars just like there are bad ice cars.
Yes, and have they fixed these problems yet?
Is the battery even cooled? Nissan Leafs weren’t…and their batteries died super wuickly
Seems reasonable to me, 10 years old - how long did you expect it would go? If it was a total loss - which it isn't - it has loss less than depreciation on an average US barge. I am not a fan of EV or Fiat.
Have you tried doing the battery calibration? There is a thread in the Fiat 500 Owners forum to perform it.
Also, they sell individual packs for this car. Electrified Garage can likely find the dead cell(s) and replace them.
Came here looking for this exact suggestion. We had to do this on my ‘17 500e after replacing the 12V and it’s been doing amazing. Absolutely adore my lil car.
I owned this almost exact car (but had orange accents) for 3 years in Las Vegas. For what I needed it was perfect. Never a problem.
Started with ~25k miles. Put on 30k while I owned it. Bought off lease from California for $8k, traded back in for $4.5k when I moved.
We have a '14 Fiat 500e now at 130,000 miles on it. It has been in the AZ heat the whole time. Ours now has about 40miles of range with out using AC or heater. It will go 25miles if using AC or heat. We will drive it until it bricks itself. We hope to get 2 more years out of it. It was a great purchase we bought it in 2017 with 9500 miles for $10k. It was a lease end car. The gas for 130,000 miles at 35mpg would cost $13,000. It adds very little to my electric bill.
So the story is - how to turn $10,000 into $700 in 7 years. So much for those gas savings. I imagine your insurance alone was higher enough to offset any fuel savings. You could have bought a really nice used Toyota for that same $10,000 and it would probably still be worth close to $10,000 and the lower insurance alone would have saved you a fortune.
@@markmonroe7330 The insurance on the Toyota would probably be quite a bit more than a depreciated to hell Fiat. Even a corolla with 100K miles on it here goes for $19K all day, $23 if it's a hybrid. Even my 2024 Model 3 insurance is $20 less a month than for my 2022 Corolla for some god awful reason. Don't even talk about Kia's because the one rotting in my yard right now cost 3X higher per month than the Tesla, getting into car payments territory with that thing.
@markmonroe7330 any 10k car woild loose the same or similar value. The insurance is again same or similar. So the gas savings is massive. If you can live with the short range and charging times.
@@bzeldin82Hate to say it, but you are entirely wrong on this one. A 3-5 year old Toyota bought in 2017 that is taken care of, hasn’t lost hardly any value since then. Plus, EV insurance is always higher, some to times significantly higher. Do some homework. Virtually no savings, if any, when you do a fully comprehensive analysis from your first day until when you sell it.
@@markmonroe7330 - No, the story is that the car paid for itself with gas savings, plus you're not spewing burned hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and they're quiet and fun to drive.
For $700 it makes for a great golf buggy.
I had a '13 500e that also experienced battery degradation. Somewhere between 25-40% depending on how it was calculated. By the end I as no longer able to go the 52 miles round trip to work at 55mph. It even left me stranded once when it dropped from 15% SOC to 0% instantly.
Despite that, grins per mile were off the charts and I do miss it.
Please don't think 500e battery degradation is representative of all EVs. The 500e was an early EV, battery chemistry and charge profiles have come a long way since. It was also a compliance car that Fiat didn't want to build in the first place; they weren't motivated to make it last 200k miles. Finally, it does not have a user settable SOC charge limit, therefore it likely spent cumulative years plugged in at 100% SOC. That's torture for NMC chemistry.
I don't think any modern Fiat was meant to make it to 290k miles haha
Except all EVs will eventually have battery degradation...and 10 years seems about right.
Yep, the Fiat doesn't represent all EVs. And the cars/batteries 10 years ago in general weren't as good as the latest ones. You can expect that a modern EV battery will have very moderate battery degradation even after +250 thousand miles. ⚡
@@Malthus Where’s the proof? Tesla Model S came out in 2012 in small quantities - and a lot of their stuff was outsource. Tesla Model 3 and Bolt came out in 2017. LFP batteries were coming around 2020. How on earth do you have an estimate of 10 years - especially in the rapid growth of battery technology we are seeing?
To a large extent, the battery degradation is simply due to the smallish battery pack. Relatively larger number of charge/discharge cycles for a given number of miles. My Model 3 with 92k miles has only a few percent degradation. Also, the industry is shifting towards using LFP battery chemistry for shorter range cars. LFP degrades at a slower rate than the more energy-dense nickel-based battery packs.
It's astonishing how much better the Car Ninja is treating you on the bills compared to The Wizard.
Wizard is failing, he lost his top mechanic after saying he'd stop working on domestic vehicles.
Wizard does it for fun. It's his camera act, he isn't being a prick or anything.
@@volvo09 I'm not talking personality. I'm talking the actual numbers on the pieces of paper.
Wizard wants to retire soon 😅!
I have said it for years Wizard treats hoovie like a regular off the street customer as opposed to the guy that took a guy named David and made him the wizard
Based on the 3 years I spent with a Fiat 500e lease I don't know if that one actually has all that much battery degradation... Yes, it's advertised to have 88 miles of range from a 100% full battery and the guess-o-meter will show about that initially but at anything resembling highway speeds that's just not gonna happen. My commute averaged 75 mph and I'd get roughly 50-60 miles total out of it at those speeds. Drive it nice and slow and/or in gentle city driving while being careful to get all regenerative braking vs using the service brakes and you'd easily get those 88 miles or more.
Agreed
Hoovie, Hoovie, Hoovie, Fiats have always been unreliable piles of auto parts! There are plenty of more than ten year old Teslas, Toyota plug ins and hybrids with excess of 200 K that have lost about 10% of range! Give us a break!
there are teslas used as taxis in the uk at over 500k with all original parts still.. check the Fully charged show.
Fix
It
Again
Tony
Poor quality isn’t limited to their EVs either.
I have a 2003 Pontiac Vibe (Matrix), I bought it brand new here in Toronto Canada. It now has over 1 million Kilometers and still driving strong, its my daily driver. AC no longer works, weather stripping from the driver side door is failing so I cannot open the window without it getting stuck to go back up, I believe it needs a tie rod but she still drives.
The only thing that works is the heater which is good for Canadian winters.
It cost me absolutely nothing to continue driving it, I pay like 90$ Canadian a month for Insurance, its a Corolla engine so it's fairly cheap on Gas also.
I plan to drive it till it is completely dead which it shows no signs of.
They don't make em like this anymore.
I have one of these in orange. 1 replace the 12v battery. 2. used batteries are $2-3k. These currently sell for $7-12k running. That would make it one of your better Hooptys. 1 may fix it, if not 2 definitely will.
Exactly. This is so misleading
Why does Ninja and Wizard always get big smiles when they take a sest behind the desk when Tyler shows up?
Because you're watching a show focused on entertaining you, and that's entertaining..
Keep in mind that if you hard accelerate EV's their calculated range will drop much faster. I had a 2014 Fiat 500e wit about 45k miles on it when I sold it 4 years ago and the battery degredation was normal - not like the one shown here.
Gasoline fiat 500s are useless too, I’m a recovery driver and I’m picking them up constantly. The manuals have issues with clutch hydraulics and clutches. The autos just give up with living 🤣
Yo that shit would be perfect for the 3rd car we need. Kid's job is 2 miles away, not even able to warm up a real engine, but too risky to walk or bikeride.
Sucks that its.too risky cause 2 miles isnt much
@@melikecomedy Yah but the road is just too busy and nobody pays attention to try walking or biking. Also it would be even worse in the winter.
FIAT: Fix It Again, Tyler Hoover
FIATH* - pronounced with a lisp.
I made an entire thread about this on Reddit once and was swiftly banned from the community for bringing it up.
Most passenger cars today can last 250,000+ miles with good service before an engine or transmission needs to be replaced.
EVs only last ten years and very few if any “EV adopters” are going to want to put $20k into a ten-year old car.
Nonsense. The battery warranty on my EV is 10 years. No OEM in their right mind is going to have a 10 year warranty on a battery that last 10 years. There is alway a margin built in and real life data is showing an easy 15 to 20 year life span. There are many Teslas on the road today that have exceeded 250,000 miles.
@@muskrat3291The used car market for EVs says otherwise 🤷♂️.
Depreciation on EVs is insanely bad, worse than basically every ICE auto manufacturer.
🚨I have a 500e and it sat for a while left with a dead battery. I pulled the battery out and charged every cell individually, but one of the cells got overheated and caught on fire. It completely got destroyed. Thankfully I kept the battery outside of garage for the safety reasons, but hey Wizard if you’re reading this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be SUPER careful with that battery pack.
Why didn't your charger have thermal safety shut off? That's super dangerous
@@thedopplereffect00I'm guessing it was done with a bench power supply. Best thing is to set the voltage and set it low but balance all of the cells. Put it back in the car and charge it properly.
@@HA05GER a good charger will have thermal sensors on the terminals. This is why you hear about EV scooter fires all the time in NY
@@thedopplereffect00 oh yeh I'm not saying good chargers don't exist I'm just saying that I'm guessing the op did it with a bench power supply. I believe that is how aging wheels has done his in the past if you watch his videos in a similar manner.
You don't know if this car was parked for extended periods of time at 0 or 100% SoC, that KILLS batteries.
Actually a lot of Tesla exceeded 400k on their original battery packs, so "not all EVs are junk after 10 years".
"A lot' is an exaggeration at best.There are a few documented claims of vehicles 250k-400k but the battery packs only last about half that. Also , Teslas are not exactly in the same price range as your average Fiat or similar average vehicle , so using Tesla as the standard is not very accurate.
@kasmanien the Model 3 is cheaper than many ICE vehicles on the road. I don't understand why people always think Teslas are expensive. Hell I could have gotten the Model 3 for $3K less than I got my Prius and I have the lowest spec with way less features. The XLE is more competitive but would have been yet another $2K.
My 2008 Prius is still going with its original Nimh battery. That’s a 16 year old Hybrid with a 0.8kWh battery. There’s no telling how that particular 500e has been treated over the last 10 years. Running the battery flat to turtle mode will damage it too - as will regular fast charging to 100%.
Elon is not going to notice you dude.
You put a new battery in and you have a new car if it was taken care of. The depreciation only happens because the lifespan of a car drops. New battery brings it back to 100%.
A refurb battery is $7500 (not installed), and you'll still have a crap car. Sounds like a terrible investment to me.
No you have 10 y/o Fiat. With very little value whatever
@@ldnwholesale8552 You have a car you can drive for 10 years. That's value. $750/year for a car is pretty good.
@@jeffsparks4209 That doesn't include the labor. Or the other things that will go wrong with it. And it's still a Fiat 500, one of the worst cars you can own. I think I'd rather have a PT Cruiser. Or a golf cart.
I have to agree with Insider EV here hoovies, this video is not much more than engagement bait based on misinformation (if you lack the knowledge), or straight up lies (if you are aware of what you're doing, which I hope is not the case)
This video is testament to why I want to start driving a 1972 Dodge Dart...
I’m keeping my 2005 TT. Had it for 18 years, still a delight to own.
The Dart is ugly and slow, but it’ll most definitely get you there.
@@robertfrank886 Beauty is the eye of the beholder. But I would rather look at a Dart than a pimple with wheels.
VW replaced the battery pack on my e-Golf under the 8 year warranty at 85,000 miles which doubled the life of the car.
Same I just bought a 2013 Volt with the battery replaced in 2021 so it is basically a brand new car
Yup I had one of those. Best EV I've ever had 🙌🏿
I started watching Hoovie when he bought a Prius 2nd Gen and replaced the battery. I rebuilt the battery pack myself on mine and later just bought a Toyota factory replacement battery for $2K and now I'm back to putting more miles on my 290K 2007 Prius.
I'll give you $800 for it.
Did you watch the video? He has $1700 into it and he's already traded it to The Wizard.
Replace the battery pack. It's $7,500 plus labor. You can't buy a small car even with a gas engine for less than $20,000.
I saw the follow up video and he was able to fix the power module for $1,200. So, even better. He claimed you could get a used working version of the car around $5,000. It's more like $7,000. Either way a whole new battery pack would have greatly extended the life of the vehicle. And with a brand new battery pack, you could sell the car for a lot more because it would come with a new warranty.
For $700, I would take the doors off and use this as my neighborhoods nicest golf cart!
Why would you take the door off?
@@thedopplereffect00 golf cart
to be fair a regular fiat 500 is also junk after 10 years
You're a furry
a fiat 500 is junk brand new
Everyone I know that has one actually loves these Fiat 500e's. Today it can probably have the battery upgraded.
It doesn't look like Stellantis is putting much effort into supporting them.
We love ours!
15-20k for a new battery and install...yet you could buy a New Camery with that cash and it will be more reliable and go to easy 200k miles without breaking a sweat...😂
I'm still driving my 2015 volt. No issues, and I found a guy in florida that will replace the 14kw battery for 5k if I ever do need another battery. Considering changing the battery in your electric car is like changing the engine, after 10 years and 120k miles, considering I pay next to nothing for gas, my car has been an amazing deal.
It’s the same as the Spark EV; they no longer make the battery pack and they are mechanically totaled.
Places are replacing battery cells, full replacements are becoming less common. Also, if you have an EV from the very beginning of mass-market, you are gambling anyways. Cars built today are now far more easier to fix and use much better battery chemistry.
Greentec Auto makes a replacement battery with new cells and a new warranty.
It's a shame there isn't any push to try and standardise battery pack modules like we do with household batteries. Would make them a lot easier to fix.
@@drunkenhobo8020 Probably going to happen eventually to make recycling easier
@@drunkenhobo8020 I had assumed when EVs became the standard means of transport they would have quickly detachable battery packs and you would swap out a flat one for a charged one.
Yeh... I have nothing against EVs from a technology perspective, but the whole 'environmentally friendly' thing is a crock of excrement.
-The most environmentally damaging part of any car is making it, especially EV batteries... then if the whole thing is junk after only 10 years!
-Add to that the electricity has to come from somewhere... ever heard of coal-fired power stations? More will be needed if we all go electric.
-Then there are the financial and environmental costs of new infrastructure - EVs are currently not a menace because there aren't that many.
-Oh, and battery fires... incredibly dangerous because they often happen without warning, burn very hot, and are nearly impossible to put out.
Want to help the environment?
-Drive less, using a smaller and more fuel-efficient car
-Keep it well serviced and don't buy another until it's worn out beyond economic repair
-Unless there is a really compelling reason, don't buy a new car.
Really want to help the environment?
-Stop flying so much - it's absolutely the worst thing you can do
-Think about all your energy wastage at home, and all the crap you buy for no good reason
-Recycling is another crock of excrement the way 'we' generally do it - much better not to make waste
-Look after what you have, repair what is broken, and buy only what you actually need.
Hey, none of this has to be miserable - I've been driving cars my whole life that are far better than I could ever afford if I bought new. Better yet, all the money I've saved over the years by not wasting my hard-earned cash on the consumer merry-go-round is money I've been able to spend on things that actually mean something to me, making for a better life.
I love my EV, not because I’m worried about the environment, it’s too late for that. I drive it because it’s not only a better driving experience, but it’s zero maintenance. According to the insurance industry your gas car is 50% more likely to catch on fire than my gas car. As a matter of fact, I’d rather charge my car in my garage than let you park whatever your daily driver is in it.
@evatrics5902 the average ICE is three times the age of the average EV and has significantly higher miles. Fire risk per mile driven with comparable age is the only honest way to compare the two and EVs aren't old enough for that yet. And most ICE fires are caused by arson after use on a crime, collision damage, or improper maintenance. They don't just catch on fire for no reason. But they are easy to put out and stay out when they do catch fire. EVs are the opposite. Self ignite without external forces, hard to extinguish, and belch out toxic fumes and toxic runoff.
I currently drive a 2000 olds bravada.
More reliable than anything built in the last 10 years.
Heated seats still work, sunroof still works, AWD still works, ac still works, 240,000 miles, and doesn't burn oil, runs perfect..... Bought a parts truck with low miles, rolled over for 800$ tons of low mileage factory parts have saved me thousands. highly recommend.
@@Noah_EICE fires are caused primarily by fuel leaks landing on electrical connections or hot exhaust, or in some cases electrical shorts. EV fires are caused by punctured battery packs or bad battery designs. I was looking at two recent garage fires in the news. One was a diesel pick up and the other was a hybrid with a fuel leak. Google car fires and see if an EV’s come up.
I agree with most of your comment. But I feel that you didn't touch on all bases regarding EVs and your comment is inclined toward emphasizing the negatives. There are also many environmental benefits regarding electric cars, from which I will name a few:
1. No tailpipe emissions. EVs do not emit any hot gases or small particulates when the engine is running. This is especially important in cities, where it's proven that air quality is low because of ICE cars, especially diesel ones, causing many health problems to people.
2. Less noise. An electric engine is quieter when running. Noise pollution is something many people forget about, although it's a very important issue, affecting our lives daily.
3. Less money spent on maintenance. EVs have fewer parts which are needed to be serviced regularly. There's no oil, no filters, no sparkplugs, no fuel pump, no exhaust, no cambelts, pulleys, etc. Producing all of these parts is also contributing to pollution, but most people forget that.
4. Energy mix. Few countries (if any) in the world have their electricity produced from 100% coal. For example, in my country, Romania (which is not considered a developed country), at the time that I'm writing this comment, only 15% of the electricity is produced by burning coal and 22% of the electricity is produced by burning natural gas and oil. So the rest of 63% of electricity is clean energy. Which is much better than burning oil directly in an inefficient ICE car.
BUILD A BATTERY! The components inside are not that expensive! For $3-4k in cells, you could put a decent pack back together and get that car driving for another 8-10 years.
Exactly. What is wrong with people?
What could possibly go wrong with building your own battery.
@@mritchie85 I’ve been doing it since the 80’s building battery packs for rc cars and still do with Lipos that are much more dangerous. Same rules apply.
It's crazy how driving faster and braking more aggressively will destroy the range of a car. My last car got less than 7 MPG. It had a 1.6L and only weighed 2400 lbs. It must have been degradation of the fuel tank, as it couldn't possibly have been the time at the track exceeding 130 MPH. I'm never going to buy a compact economy ICE car again after that experience!
What car was it? Care to name it after you’re done sucking every man in your charging station
It’s designed for urban use, not driving fast on wide open roads. Unfortunately, in densely built urban environments charging can be a problem since people have to keep their cars on the road.
I have a 2016 Fiat 500e. I’m the third owner of it. 45k mileage. Had it for around 2 years. No problems. Maybe the battery is not balanced out your white one. They are in a series of modules similar to the BMW i3. There is a RUclips video showing how someone fixed theirs. The car new had only 84 miles of range, not 120 miles as you said. It’s only a 24kwH battery pack (22 usable). The BMS mileage number changes based on the driver’s habits in driving and outside temperature. For example, I have seen as much as 110 seen there. That looked kind of dirty in there! Yikes. I hope the Car Wizard can fix it! It is such a fun commuting car! Mine does have the sunroof and in electric orange with white highlights. The original price was 43k. I think the Fiat-Chrysler former CEO (RIP) said they were losing 20k on each 500e. Yes, the resistance heater and colder temps takes range off the car - expected. Remember, these were the first generations of electric cars!
I differ you explaining about a 10 year span on electric cars. Batteries are evolving incredibly fast. Look at the cycles on LFP battieries. Wow. Solid State batteries may be coming. Who knows? And I don’t know your replies on Tesla batteries is not fully accurate. First, are you talking about the 1860 batteries? 2170 batteries? LFP batteries? Which model of Tesla? Too vague and broad. The data would differ what you said. That’s all I would say. However, I bet it’s way different having an electric vehicle in KS than the West Coast - for example. And, I never had an ICE car ever at 200k. That’s a lot of repairs and costs. Just saying.
Hope the Wizard can do his magic! Great video!
We have one too! Battery percentage barely dropped on that test drive. Seemed just fine to me.
@@usa-ev I think he’s looking too much at the BMS mileage and not what it’s reporting, imo. How many miles per kW? It’s available on the screen to see. I look at that plus the percentage on the side. And it’s a 24KwH battery. It’s thermal managed and only be charged on level 2. If there’s a problem, I hope the Wizard can fix it. I love this car!
@@jpnw3272 💯
@@usa-ev One last thought. Tyler said batteries have been shown (paraphrasing) that they last only 10 years. I would like to know where his stats are coming from. The Model S came around 2012 in small quantities. The mass produced thermal managed battery EVs (like the Bolt and 3) came in 2017. As I said before, we are in the infancy of EVs. Auto companies are becoming more vertically integrated (big 3 is taking a while to get there). I think Tyler should be a bit more accurate what he says. If Tyler was talking about software - that’s a totally different story to discuss and have good discourse on. 👍🏻
I'm old enough to remember that back in the 90's I said I would never own a mobile phone. They were too expensive, too heavy, the batteries didn't last very long and the range was limited to just around big cities. So if I was right about all the limitations of a 90's phone why would I now not give up my mobile phone if you gave me a free land line? Was it that land lines have got worse or was it that mobile phones have got better? I think Tyler could usefully learn from my mistake.
Did governments implement banning the use of phone lines by a certain date and force them to subsidise the production of mobile phones?
@@boilerhousegarage And there's the issue. Of course you'll get people who think an EV is stupid just like you'll get people who think a car that can do 250mph is stupid, but the real reason people don't like EV's is because of the government trying to force them. Take away all incentives and coercion, and no-one will care that they exist alongside ICE vehicles (also Tesla asshats and EVangelists do a great job in turning people off EV's).
@@deanchur Yes, I wouldn't object to them at all if not for the said economic coercion. Although I'm confident that without the cap-and-trade system, battery cars would never leave the prototype stage or a limited production run done as an engineering exercise.
In Germany 700 usd is a middle of the range bicycle. You still got a great deal.
Somebody in London is still driving an 2016 Tesla model s with 450,000 miles on it. It have its issues but it’s still running.
In Germany we have a Tesla Model S with a million miles on the clock! Still running and driving.
@@jaybokay6444 but not on the same battery pack!
From lessons learned from earlier cars, battery chemistry has been improving sharply. Thermal management of battery packs has improved mightily as well. And pack size and battery density have increased so much that much more degradation is now required before the pack’s capacity is no longer adequate. The new generation of LFP battery packs are expected to last about 5x longer than the (already much improved) packs they’re replacing.
Modern battery packs are expected to last past the life of the vehicle, and to have a second life in stationary energy storage (such as in a building) after the car reaches ends of life.
There are lots of things about the longevity of modern cars that I’m concerned about, but battery packs are not on that list. :-)
Your conclusion that this old car can be assumed to be the experience of newer and much more advanced cars isn't logical.
Crappy battery design is the cause. The simple truth is, batteries have the highest retail markup. Typically it’s at upwards of 5000% between the manufacture and retail.
That means a battery that cost 5 cents to make typically retails for $2.50.
Why do they have the highest markup?
Our 2013 leaf with 60k still reliably gets 60 miles range and has great utility and low cost as a local trip car. The battery replacement market will evolve to make it economical to swap in replacement batteries but newer chemistry will also offer better longevity and less degradation.
I donl't know, 43,000 miles on a Fiat is pretty impressive. That may be a brand record.
Wait. You bought a car that only has a range of 65 miles then claimed it was ruined because it only has a range of 65 miles. That is kinda stupid.
I have a 2013 e with 69k and it will still do 75 miles range around town and 60 freeway. When new it was 90+ and 75 freeway so it has degraded but still good enough for average commuting. Drawing a conclusion from a single data point is not going to give you any real information. Just like with gas cars, neglect on the part of the owner can destroy a car early, just the like the other wounded cars you specialize in buying.
1:37 me watching this knowing my 200k mile 30 y/o bmw is more reliable than almost all 10 year old EVs like sure I guess
10 year old ones true; the industry was in it's infancy back then. Buy a 5 year old ev and it comfortably outlasts ice
Alex Jones is breathing heavy watching this video 😂
This car turned the friggn' frogs gay!
Alex Jones would say that EVs and overly complicated newer ICE vehicles are an N.W.O. plot to abolish private transportation for the masses by making it too expensive to drive in order to force the people into accepting 300 sq. ft. apartments in walkable cities.
@@jblyon2 😂
Hoovie pulling up to wizard's shop is like a scene from midnight club dub city lol
Lmafo…ICE cars 10 years old don’t die like that. EVs are a throw away car. Maybe If they cost 10k, then I’d buy one.
I have a 500 pop and a 500e. I purchased my 2016 E for 10k with just over 12k miles. I drive mine about 55 miles per day. The replacement battery pack is about 7k plus labor. Buy cheap and buy smart.
Just hoarde these things for their engines and controllers, once we get/invent better batteries, this will have value.
When do we get a range/tow test video? This is what I’m specifically coming to this channel for.
A lot of these battery issues could be from bad treatment. Always hammering it, or even simple things like always using fast charging, leaving the battery low for long periods. It’s like blaming a Corolla for someone never changing the oil in ten years.
Yeah a car with that low of miles after a decade. How many times did that battery die? Did it sit plugged in at 100% for months at a time? Both wreck the battery
500e is level 2 charging only...no DC fast charging.
I have a 1991 Toyota Corolla Alltrac I bought as second owner in 2015, currently 296k miles and it just keeps going. Anything that has broken on it, I've fixed myself. It's a great car.
Tyler, put a steel skid plate in the Porsche, otherwise it will always be a problem
I was amazed it wasn't done in the first place!
Just found your channel. Been a car guy and in the business 51 years. I really enjoy watching your experiences buying vehicles that I would never touch. Very entertaining. This is one of the best automotive channels on RUclips.
Wizard is buying the 500E to see if he can coax some life out of the battery. I bought it with the "Service propulsion system" error disclosed, and a full charge showing, but it showed up with bricked. Easily jumped back to life and charged, but showed a battery control module fault and it appears to have a severely degraded battery. Currently a very happy Cadillac Lyriq EV owner, but the depreciation is monstrous, and I don't expect them to last much past 10 years based on what I've experienced and seen at auctions and firsthand with other cars. Apparently, this video might be the "dumbest" and "laziest" EV video ever, according to inside EVs, and given my tagline, I should probably be proud of that? insideevs.com/news/728910/tyler-hoover-fiat-500e/
EVs aren't there yet.
It is pretty dumb and lazy to generalize about a whole generation of cars based on anecdotal evidence of a FIAT (gas or electric powered).
Perfect for the “The Truman Show” - Hoovie version … 7:56 to about the 10:00 mark, lots of truth being let loose here
Lol he's screwing you 😅 every mechanic knows these cars are super easy to fix
This is one of the worst videos for misinformation you’ve done in a while. I agree with inside EVs. If you drive something aggressively, shock the range goes down faster!