The What Van? Road Test: Fiat Professional E-Ducato (2021)

Date: Friday, November 12, 2021

 

Detail Engine

Powertrain 

Delivering 280Nm of torque, E-Ducato’s electric motor is sustained by a lithium-ion battery pack that sits under the cargo bed. The charging point is next to the passenger door, beneath a flap that would normally conceal the diesel filler point.

The van comes with a mode three charging cable. If one of the battery modules drops out for any reason, then the others automatically pick up the slack so E-Ducato can continue its journey; a unique feature so far as electric light commercials are concerned, contends Fiat Professional.

Driving

You get the ball rolling by turning the key while ensuring your foot is on the brake pedal and the shift lever is in neutral position. Then you push said lever to ‘D’ for Drive if you want to go forwards, and ‘R’ for reverse if you want to go backwards.

Drivers can choose from three different driving modes by flicking a switch on the dashboard. 

They are Normal (which is self-explanatory); Eco, which limits accelerator response and turns the air-conditioning off to reduce energy consumption; and Power, which delivers a bit more punch if you are tackling hilly terrain while heavily-laden. 

A fourth mode – Turtle – kicks in if the battery becomes seriously depleted. The driver is warned and performance significantly reduced to extend the remaining range as far as possible.

While Eco mode may lengthen your range, it undoubtedly slows your progress even when you are lightly-laden on level terrain. 

Becoming irritated by our lack of forward momentum, we switched to Normal. That meant we were making better, though not outstanding time – 122hp isn’t an enormous amount of horsepower for a van of this size - without our range suffering unduly.
What certainly affects your range is climbing steep hills, especially if you engage Power mode. We tackled several demanding inclines in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean and saw our projected range fall at an alarming rate.

The figure improved, however, when we turned around and went down those hills with the regeneration system engaged using the shift lever. 

It started pumping juice back into the battery surprisingly rapidly while at the same time acting as a retarder, keeping our descent under control so that there was no need to touch the brake pedal. Indeed it was so effective that we occasionally had to dab the accelerator to maintain our progress, undoing some of the good work the regeneration technology had done.

Regeneration probably shows to its best advantage in stop/start urban traffic, when you are constantly lifting your foot off the gas pedal. It undoubtedly means you can travel just that little bit further between recharges, and is good news for brake life too because there is less need to rely on the service brakes in order to slow down. On the face of it replacing a diesel engine with the restrained purring of an electric motor should make the cab interior a lot quieter. 

In reality however, it means that all the other sources of noise on a light commercial – the creaks from the body and the suspension, the slap of the tyres on the road surface – become much more obvious to everyone in and around the vehicle. Therefore, from the driver’s viewpoint, journeys cannot be described as silent.

E-Ducato’s ride is mediocre when lightly-laden, but improves the more weight you put in the back. Its handling is for the most part sure-footed and dependable, but somewhat spoiled by its over-assisted power steering, which needs to tighten up more at speed.



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