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2024 Fiat 500e adds special models for fans of rose gold and sweet tunes

The 2024 500e is nearly here, and before its grand launch, Fiat revealed a pair of special editions that’ll be joining the lineup toward the end of the year. TheyÂ’re called the “Inspired By Beauty” and “Inspired By Music” models. Starting with the 500e Inspired By Beauty (seen in the photo gallery at the top), itÂ’s painted in an exclusive Rose Gold color you wonÂ’t be able to get on any other 500e. The shade is rather stunning, so itÂ’s safe to say the name matches its actual appearance. This model also gets body-color mirror caps and chrome molding to differentiate it from other models. Inside the Inspired By Beauty, Fiat treats you to beige “eco-leather” seats and a contrasting black dash also wrapped in eco-leather.  The Inspired By Beauty model adds new driver assistance features that other versions of the 500e donÂ’t have, including adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist. Thankfully, the second special model Fiat released today also has the above driver assistance features, too. 2024 Fiat 500e Inspired By Music front 3/4 View 23 Photos This one (directly above) is called Inspired By Music, so listen up, audiophiles. This model gets a JBL premium sound system consisting of seven speakers, an amplifier and a subwoofer. It has four unique sound modes in the infotainment system including My Music Room, My Recording Studio, Giuseppe Verdi Opera House Pisa and Open-air Arena. Each have their unique characteristics and are meant to represent the sound experience you might have in each location. Appearance-wise, the Inspired By Music wears a shiny coat of Piano Black (yes, another intentional music reference) paint and the same beige eco-leather color combo as you see in the Inspired By Beauty model. Both of these special models have the same starting price of $37,595, including the $1,595 destination charge. Fiat says you can expect them to hit dealerships in the third quarter of 2024, but theyÂ’re both available for ordering today. Related video:

2016: The year of the autonomous-car promise

About half of the news we covered this year related in some way to The Great Autonomous Future, or at least it seemed that way. If you listen to automakers, by 2020 everyone will be driving (riding?) around in self-driving cars. But what will they look like, how will we make the transition from driven to driverless, and how will laws and infrastructure adapt? We got very few answers to those questions, and instead were handed big promises, vague timelines, and a dose of misdirection by automakers. There has been a lot of talk, but we still don't know that much about these proposed vehicles, which are at least three years off. That's half a development cycle in this industry. We generally only start to get an idea of what a company will build about two years before it goes on sale. So instead of concrete information about autonomous cars, 2016 has brought us a lot of promises, many in the form of concept cars. They have popped up from just about every automaker accompanied by the CEO's pledge to deliver a Level 4 autonomous, all-electric model (usually a crossover) in a few years. It's very easy to say that a static design study sitting on a stage will be able to drive itself while projecting a movie on the windshield, but it's another thing entirely to make good on that promise. With a few exceptions, 2016 has been stuck in the promising stage. It's a strange thing, really; automakers are famous for responding with "we don't discuss future product" whenever we ask about models or variants known to be in the pipeline, yet when it comes to self-driving electric wondermobiles, companies have been falling all over themselves to let us know that theirs is coming soon, it'll be oh so great, and, hey, that makes them a mobility company now, not just an automaker. A lot of this is posturing and marketing, showing the public, shareholders, and the rest of the industry that "we're making one, too, we swear!" It has set off a domino effect – once a few companies make the guarantee, the rest feel forced to throw out a grandiose yet vague plan for an unknown future. And indeed there are usually scant details to go along with such announcements – an imprecise mileage estimate here, or a far-off, percentage-based goal there. Instead of useful discussion of future product, we get demonstrations of test mules, announcements of big R&D budgets and new test centers they'll fund, those futuristic concept cars, and, yeah, more promises.

Fiat Grande Panda is a compact hatchback with a serious attitude

Earlier in 2024, Fiat announced plans to turn the Panda — which has been one of its smallest and most affordable models since 1980 — into a full range of models. The first member of the extended Panda family is a compact, crossover-like hatchback called Grande Panda. Stretching to 157 inches long, the Grande Panda stands out with angular styling and a futuristic-looking front end. There's a tiny bit of retro hiding in that 22nd-century-like stare: The Fiat logo is offset to the side, like it was on the pre-facelift version of the original Panda. The black plastic cladding, the skid plate-like trim on the front bumper, and the roof rails give the hatchback a rugged look, while the rear lights create another visual link to the first-generation Panda. What's certain is that the Grande Panda looks like nothing else on European roads. We haven't seen the interior yet. We're told it seats five, and we hope the cabin will be at least as distinctive as the exterior. Technical specifications haven't been released. Fiat noted that it built the Grande Panda on a multi-energy platform to offer both hybrid and electric variants. Four-wheel-drive is a big part of the Panda's heritage, but we're guessing the Grande will settle for front-wheel-drive. Fiat will release more details about the Grande Panda in the coming months. The model will be sold in Europe, in the Middle East, and in Africa, but nothing suggests we'll see it in the United States. As for the current, third-generation Panda, it's sticking around for the time being. It was renamed Pandina in February 2024, and it's tentatively scheduled to remain on the market through 2027. It's old by car standards — it made its debut at the 2011 Frankfurt auto show. It remains one of the cheapest new cars in Europe and one of Fiat's best-sellers, however.