2021 Fiat 500 3+1 debuts – EV gains small third door

The latest Fiat 500 gets a third body style called the “3+1,” which joins the existing convertible that debuted in March, and the hardtop that arrived in June. Based on the hardtop, the 500 3+1 adds on a small suicide door on the passenger side to make it easier to load items or place children in the back seat, compared to its sibling that have just two doors.

The company says the 3+1 was designed for people who have families and want something with better accessibility, but don’t want to give up on the “cool interior space” that the 500 offers. It adds that the 3+1’s suicide door harks back to the first 500 of 1957, which featured rear-hinged doors, so there’s your throwback. For now, the 3+1 will be offered in left-hand-drive markets only for the moment.

With the third small door and no pillar impeding ingress and egress, practicality does go up, but the car gains an additional 30 kg of weight as a result – Fiat says this does not impact the car’s handling and electric consumption, with the size remaining unchanged as well. Like other cars with similar doors, you’ll need to open the front door before doing the same with the rear one to ensure occupants at the back are unable to open it accidentally.

Like the convertible and hardtop, the 3+1 will be offered in an exclusive La Prima trim level at launch, which includes two-tone 17-inch wheels, chrome exterior trim, eco-leather upholstery, “La Prima” badging, six-way adjustable front seats, an electrochromic rear-view mirror, a 360-degree around view monitor, automatic air-conditioning, a seven-inch TFT instrument cluster display and a 10.25-inch touchscreen infotainment system with DAB digital radio, Android Auto and Apply CarPlay.

There’s also a host of active safety and driver assists like adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, autonomous emergency braking (with pedestrian and cyclist detection, an automatic high beam function, an intelligent speed assistant and traffic sign recognition. For charging, it gets an onboard 11-kW AC charger and there’s also support for DC charging up to 85 kW.

In addition to the La Prima, the 3+1 can be ordered in Passion and Icon trims (this also applies to the cabriolet), with all three sporting a front-mounted electric motor rated at 118 PS (117 hp or 87 kW). Performance-wise, it’ll take nine seconds to complete the zero to 100 km/h sprint, 3.1 seconds to get from 0-50 km/h, and the top speed is 150 km/h.

The e-motor draws power from a 42-kWh lithium-ion battery that provides up to 320 km of range on the WLTP cycle. A CCS Combo Type 2 socket handles either AC or DC charging, with the former taking around six hours with a 7.4-kW wallbox, while the latter sees a 0-80% state of charge in just 30 minutes.

The hardtop is the only one that gets four trim levels to choose from, with the base Action joining the Passion, Icon and launch-exclusive La Prima. On the Action, there’s a less powerful e-motor that provides 95 PS (94 hp or 70 kW), and the battery has a smaller energy capacity of 24 kWh. The smaller battery can recharged via an 11-kW AC charger, or a 50-kW charger.

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