Fiat Grande Panda Car Review

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…the Fiat Grande Panda marks a return for the historic name to the Italian brand. The all-electric version of the small crossover is based on the same underpinnings as the Citroen eC3 which means a 113hp motor with a 44kWh battery and an official range of 199 miles.

Three trim levels are available:

Pop
Icon
La Prima

Standard equipment on the Pop includes 16-inch steel wheels, aircon, rear parking sensors, powered door mirrors, cruise control with speed limiter, auto high beam, 10-inch infotainment screen, 2x USB sockets and wireless Apple CarPlay and Andriod Auto.

Icon adds 16-inch alloys, privacy glass, front armrest and split-fold rear seats.

La Prima adds 17-inch alloys, bamboo storage box, climate control, auto wipers, front parking sensors and rearview camera, heated front seats, power-fold door mirrors, satnav, wireless charging and an extra USB socket.

Is The Fiat Grande Panda Suitable For My Fleet

Supermini’s aren’t for every fleet, but the Grande Panda is more crossover than most and the all-electric version wins on company car tax too. There’s a decent sized boot and okay room in the back seats for two adults. It also charges at a maximum of 100kW, which is decent for the sector. Unfortunately, the real world range isn’t great at only just above 130 miles.

Leasing A Fiat Grande Panda

Gateway2lease is offering the Fiat Grande Panda Icon for £370 a month on a 3+36 contract with 10,000 miles a year. Forecast maintenance costs come in at a very competitive £25 per month, according to Gensen Reports. Class 1A NIC comes in at £12 month.

Driving A Fiat Grande Panda

The Grande Panda’s driving experience is better than our efficiency figures suggest. Our test car managed just 3.0 miles/kWh overall, well behind rivals such as the Geely EX2 and Kia EV2, both of which returned 4.6 miles/kWh in our testing.

Fiat quotes a WLTP range of 199 miles from the 43.8kWh battery, but our real-world figure suggests around 132 miles is a more realistic expectation. To achieve the claimed range, you’d need to average more than 4.5 miles/kWh – around 50% better than we managed.

Even more surprisingly, efficiency improved slightly to 3.4 miles/kWh at a steady 65mph on the motorway, but fell back to 3.0 miles/kWh when our test included a mixture of town and motorway driving. And this was in warm weather, with relatively gentle driving.

At least the Grande Panda is easy to drive. Visibility is good and the straight-edged design makes it easy to judge where the corners are, which is particularly useful when parking. Performance is adequate rather than exciting, but the instant response from the electric motor makes pulling into gaps in traffic straightforward.

The steering is light without feeling overly assisted, while the suspension is compliant without becoming sloppy. There’s noticeable body roll through corners, but it’s progressive and gives you a useful sense of what the car is doing. The brakes are similarly well judged, with two levels of regenerative braking: almost none, or some.

There were, however, a few niggles with our test car. The car suffered occasional minor electrical oddities, including a door mirror that failed to unfold automatically on some occasions. The gear selector could also be inconsistent, sometimes selecting drive or reverse immediately and sometimes remaining in neutral until it received another input.

The speed-sign recognition system was particularly disappointing, frequently displaying incorrect limits. It was especially prone to reading a 70mph national-speed-limit dual carriageway as a 60mph road.

Fiat’s approach to charging is more innovative. There’s a conventional charging socket towards the rear, but also a permanently attached cable that pulls out from the front of the car. It’s a clever idea, particularly for drivers who regularly charge at home, although putting the curly cable back into its housing requires considerably more wrestling than you might expect. That’s manageable when it’s clean and dry, but less appealing when it’s wet and covered in road grime.

One feature that fleet drivers will appreciate is how easy it is to disable the driver assistance systems. A long press of two buttons switches off the ADAS functions, rather than forcing you through a succession of touchscreen menus.

The interior follows the same cheap-and-cheerful philosophy as the exterior. There are some appealing design touches, although the bamboo storage box on the dashboard of our test car was already showing signs of wear at less than 2,000 miles. It’s useful, but doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in long-term durability.

FleetandLeasing.com Verdict On The Fiat Grande Panda

A charming small car that’s simple to use, but nowhere near the efficiency a small car should be delivering.