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By Jonathan Crouch

Fiat's Grande Panda Electric confirms that small, affordable EV small hatches needn't be boring. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 39

Fiat's Grande Panda Electric aims to combine all the attributes you'd look for in an EV supermini at the price of a smaller EV citycar. And delivers its Stellantis 'Smart Car' engineering with a welcome touch of dolce vita.

Backgroundword count: 122

You might think there's nothing we haven't seen before when it comes to small electric compact hatchbacks. But you'd be wrong. For a start, this Fiat Grande Panda Electric looks and feels very different to anything else in its market segment. And has something we haven't seen before on any EV - an integrated charge cable. You don't have to have this Fiat in this electric form - there are also combustion models too. But the Turin maker designed the Grande Panda around EV motion and hopes you'll consider this full-battery variant first. It aims to offer the best of both worlds for customers needing a trendy EV supermini - for the price of an EV citycar. Let's take a closer look.

Driving Experienceword count: 299

Like many small Stellantis Group models, the Grande Panda was originally envisaged as an EV-only product, then hurriedly reconfigured in later development so as also to be able to include a combustion hybrid offering too. The EV version we tried is the one Fiat most wants to sell you, with a battery smaller than the one in the only slightly larger 600e model because the Grande Panda sits on different architecture. The Smart Car Stellantis platform (shared with the Citroen C3) is designed in EV form for use with a 44kWh battery, which in this case offers a range of 199 miles and is paired with a 113hp motor. It's a simplistic driving experience - no drive modes or brake regen settings. Expect 62mph in around 11s en route to 98mph. As that sprint figure suggests, this isn't the perkiest motor you're going to come across in a small EV, but it's all you really need for city use. In town, the ride, though not quite as supple as a similarly-engineered Citroen e-C3, deals well with tarmac tears, pot holes and speed humps. Rather surprisingly, you do without the really tight turning circle you might hope for from this class of car - it's an unexceptional 10.9 metres. In almost every other respect though, helped by the boxy shape's glassy frontwards visibility, this is a great urban drive companion. Beyond the city limits, things aren't quite so great - but you might be expecting that in a cheap runabout. The ride's not quite so good at higher speeds but body roll is better kept in check around tighter bends than the high square-sided shape suggests that it might be. It's not as fun a driving experience as in a rival Renault 5, but the steering's well-weighted and quite precise.

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