“Abarth is officially giving up the internal combustion engine,” said Gaetano Thorel, head of Fiat and Abarth in Europe. This means that after 75 years, the Italian carmaker will become an all-electric brand.
This is no surprise as Abarth started phasing out its models with combustion engines a year ago and replacing them with all-electric ones, and in 2023 we saw the introduction of the first all-electric models based on the Fiat 500 e and Fiat 600 e. It seems that the company wants to take advantage of the growing popularity of small city cars.
Cars with combustion engines have become expensive to maintain, so Abarth wants to focus on simpler options, which means rejecting hybrid models as well.
In an interview with Autocar, Thorel said: “Is it fair if we can offer customers an electric hot hatch that behaves in the same way, offers the same level of enjoyment and equivalent performance? All at the same price? I think it’s better to offer electric cars.”
He also mentioned another piece of information that is not in favor of the users of cars with a combustion engine: “If you produce a hot hatch with a combustion engine that emits 180 g/km and you are in Italy, every year you have to pay between 1,000 and 2,000 euros in road tax.”
It seems that Abarth has no intention of producing its own models in the future either, because they want to stay true to the original idea of their founder Carlo Abarth, who focused on reworking existing models into powerful sports cars.
Source: Autocar
