Dacia, the Romanian brand owned by Renault, makes a virtue of its no frills approach to car production and a unique selling point of its pricing structure. It's planning the same strategy for its new small urban electric car.
The Dacia Spring should be in Ireland by around this time next year, but it’s already been on sale in Europe for the past two years. The car planned for 2024 will be an updated version of the current car but it’s expected the essentials will remain the same - a modest 44 horse power output from a modest 28.6 kWh battery. The rate claimed by Dacia is around 230 kilometres.
Dacia points out that the car is the only one of the top 20 electric cars being sold in Europe that weighs less than tonne. Battery weight is one of the main challenges of current electric car production.
It’s a small, lightweight and compact car with SUV-like styling. The dimensions equate roughly to those of a Volkswagen UP, so you are looking at a four-seater essentially. It’s based on a car made by Renault in China called the Kwid and is 3.7 metres long.
It is currently on sale in France at about €18,000, we don’t have a firm idea of what it will cost in Ireland but an educated guess would suggest under €25,000. VW is also planning a small car in and around the same price bracket.
The Spring is old mostly as a second car in Europe - 120,000 have already ben sold. Research by Dacia, based on current ownership, suggests 68 per cent of people who have bought the car drive less than 30 km a day. The company’s CEO, Denis Le Vot, has indicated to Autocar Magazine that the battery could be made even smaller for the new model to reflect those driving habits. That would make an appreciable difference.
The newer version due here should have newer lights, wheel designs and trim levels.
Dacia is also planning to introduce another version of the Spring, with a higher 65 horse power output and a range, it says, of between 220 km and 305 km.
