Swiss Clean Drive asked Creaholic to conceptualise, construct and implement an electrical drive for a Hybrid Fiat 500 to transform it into a ‘plug-in parallel hybrid’ car.

Plug-in enables the car to be charged with the standard electrical grid. 'Parallel' describes the car’s two separate drives which can work in parallel:
1) The combustion engine with gear box and front wheels.
2) The electric motor with gear box and rear wheel drive.
Compared with other similar cars the Fiat Swiss Clean Drive has a much bigger battery (3.5 kWh) which enables it to drive up to 20 km in electric mode.

Approximately 80% of car usage in Switzerland accounts for distances of less than 20 km. The Hybrid enables the driver make up to 80 % of their trips using the electric mode. For longer distances, the driver can switch mode and use the combustion engine.

The key challenge for our team was speed – during a four month period, we created the entire drive including the electric motor to the rear wheels as well as the positioning of the batteries, the DC-AC converter and charger. The result was the transformation of a normal Fiat 500 into a ‘plug-in parallel hybrid’ prototype which will be made into a small series.