All generations and engines together · 3,951 MOT tests in the 2025 data
Not enough recent tests to rate this city car. Watch suspension. Not enough recent MOT data to call this one yet.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
The 500e runs a conventional 12V battery alongside the big traction pack, and it does the same job as in any petrol car: waking up the electronics before the main battery takes over. Owners report cars that won't wake up, throw random warning lights, or need a jump start after standing for a week or two, separate from anything wrong with the main EV battery. It is a cheap fix next to the rest of the car, usually £100-200 for a replacement 12V battery, but it catches people out because they assume an EV can't have a flat battery problem.
A repeated owner complaint is the central touchscreen freezing, sat-nav maps not loading, or Bluetooth and Apple CarPlay dropping out mid-drive. It is not tied to a specific mileage, it just turns up at random, and most reports say a dealer software update sorts it rather than any new hardware being fitted. Annoying more than expensive, but worth checking works properly before you buy since a car with an outdated software version is more likely to be affected.
Fiat issued a recall on a batch of 500e cars over a missing or under-torqued nut on the negative terminal of the high-voltage battery, a genuine safety fault rather than folklore. The dealer fix is a check and re-torque or nut fitment, done free under recall. Anyone buying a used 500e should check the recall has actually been carried out rather than just flagged.
A separate recall covers a possible fault with a front half-shaft on affected 500e cars, which if left unaddressed could fail and affect drive to a front wheel. Fiat's fix is inspection and replacement of the affected part at no cost to the owner under the recall. As with the battery terminal recall, check the car's recall status rather than assuming a used car has already had the work done.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 3,951 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Same segment (City cars), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.