New Dacia Spring: prices, specs and full details revealed
The all-electric Dacia Spring starts from under £15,000, so it’s Britain’s cheapest EV
Dacia has its sights set on the UK electric car market as it has now launched the Spring, an EV with a price far below any of its rivals. It starts from £14,995, which means it’s one of the cheapest new cars around and by far the most affordable electric car on the market. The Dacia Spring’s release date has been and gone so it’s available to order now.
It’s not an all-new model for Dacia, as the Spring has actually been on sale since 2021 in some countries; over 140,000 of them have been built so far. Now is the first time it’s been available for UK customers, and the brand is also pushing affordable finance deals for the car that start from under £170 a month with a modest £2,325 deposit.
There are three trims: Expression, Expression 65 and Extreme 65. The 65 in the names refers to the electric motor that comes with them: while the entry-level car has 44bhp, the higher-spec ones have 64bhp.
All versions come with a seven-inch touchscreen display, cruise control, parking sensors, air conditioning and 15-inch wheels. Additionally, electric windows all round, a ten-inch screen with nav, smartphone connectivity and a two-way charger are on the top-spec model as well.
What is the Dacia Spring?
The Dacia Spring is a small city car, with a sub-supermini overall length of 3.72 metres – only a centimetre or so longer than a Hyundai i10. It uses a small 26.8kWh battery and all versions are said to achieve 137 miles of range in official tests.
The dinky electric motors mean this city car isn’t exactly built for performance. The 44bhp version goes from 0-62mph in 19 seconds, while the higher-spec car does the sprint in 13.7 seconds.
Read on below for everything you need to know about the new Dacia Spring electric car, including specs, interior space and charging details.
New Dacia Spring specifications
The version of the Spring that we get in the UK is new for us, but it’s an improvement over the older European model that was already on sale. It gets a new exterior look, as well as an entirely new dashboard architecture, complete with a seven-inch digital instrument panel on all versions. Expression models will make do with a smartphone holder instead of a central infotainment display – a typical Dacia feature – but Extreme 65 (expected to account for more than six in 10 Springs sold in the UK) gets a 10-inch touchscreen featuring over-the-air updates and live navigation, plus Android and Apple phone connectivity.
Materials get an upgrade too, with higher-grade fabrics on the seats, more textured plastics on the door inlays, and flashes of white plastic to help lift the area around the rocker gear selector. Having been shown around a car in a Paris studio, we’d suggest the new Spring feels more in tune with the finishes and materials of the Sandero than the unashamedly cheap-feeling original. Even the steering wheel, which now adjusts for height (but not reach), is lifted from the new Duster. There’s still no height adjustment on the driver’s seat, however.
Practicality and boot space
The new Spring also gets YouClip, Dacia’s innovative accessory system. The firm will sell items like cup-holders, a torch and a small rucksack, that then be fixed to any of three points located on the dashboard and lower centre console.
Sticking to the same platform means that rear space will continue to be at a premium, but the boot is more akin to that of a supermini than a city car, with 308 litres of capacity with the rear seats in place. It can expand to 1,004 litres with them folded down. There are no side hooks, though, and there’s a substantial lip to lift items over when loading. Dacia will offer a user-fixable ‘frunk’ as an accessory, potentially freeing up an additional 30 litres of space that could be used for cable storage – handy, given that the charging port is in the centre of the car’s nose.
Dacia has also announced a two-seat cargo version of the Spring, incidentally, complete with a 1,085-litre load bay. But the UK division is still deciding whether or not to sell it here.
Battery and charging
Speaking of charging, the Spring can be refilled from 20 per cent in 11 hours when hooked up to a domestic three-pin plug, while a 7kW wallbox will take around four hours. DC charging will be offered as an option; it operates it up to 30 kW, allowing the car to get from 20 to 80 per cent in 45 minutes. The car also supports vehicle-to-load tech; a supplied adaptor (in Extreme versions only) allows you to connect a regular three-pin plug and power items like an electric grill, kettle or lamp.
Expression trim brings air conditioning, 14 or 15-inch wheels (depending on motor spec), electric front windows, rear parking sensors, a speed limiter and cruise control. Extreme features those 15-inch wheels but adds powered mirror adjustment, electric rear windows, a pair of USB-C ports at the base of the centre console, and copper flourishes in the cabin.
Q&A With David Durrand, Dacia Design Director
Q: This is obviously a more significant facelift than normal. Did you enjoy the opportunities that gave you?
A: Yes, there was more we could do here, but that also brought challenges. There are many things we looked at where doing them would have taken us away from the Dacia philosophy. We had to remain true to that, but I think we’ve done it.
Q: Can you give us an example?
A: Well, we decided to put a graphic in the C-pillar. We stamped the indent for this into the panel itself, but then we’ve used a sticker there instead of a plastic part. That would have introduced more complexity into the build process, with fixing points and so forth. We have the same effect now, but in a much more cost effective way.
Q: Can you explain the graphics at the front and rear of the car?
A: It’s just an abstract, really. From a distance, you look at it and think it could be a top-down city view, maybe a map. But in fact it is just a graphic that we came up with, that showcases an urban environment without being specific. The important thing is that because these are also stickers, they are easy to replace. Instead of having to swap a plastic bumper if you get a scuff in a car park, you can buy the sticker and you have something that looks like new again.
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