Next-Gen Fiat 500 Could Employ 48V Hybrid Tech

Having celebrated its 11th birthday this year since it was revamped as the modern city car we know it, the Fiat 500 needs to be replaced to remain competitive.

Expected to maintain a retro design while employing a radical hybrid tech, its successor is already on the table over at FCA, writes AutoExpress, but it’s believed that it won’t launch before 2019.

Adding the new hybrid tech means that the city car will wave goodbye to the 1.3-liter MultiJet diesel in favor of a 48-volt hybrid system, as part of the parent company’s plans of reducing carbon dioxide emissions across their entire vehicle range.

“We will have to play with a variety of solutions. There are very few things that are certain in this market – apart from one, and that is that small displacement diesels are dead. I think everything else if fair play, so we’ll experiment“, FCA chief Sergio Marchionne told the British publication.

The 48-volt systems are seen as the right approach, from a cost-effective point of view, as adding full hybrids into a car such as the Fiat 500 could kill it.

“We still make a very large number of small cars like the Panda and Fiat 500. Putting full hybrids into a car in that segment is going to kill you. We need to find other solutions, and that’s why I think we need to embrace 48-volt systems in a more realistic way“, Marchionne added.

If this is FCA’s solution, then expect the new Fiat 500 to be more expensive over its predecessor, while becoming faster and cheaper to run.