The Dacia Spring EV will arrive in the UK in revised form next year. We tried the current model to get a taste of the city car.
Verdict
Dacia’s first EV has lots of promise – and we can already see why thousands of customers across Europe have bought one as an everyday town car. But we must wait to see the updated version that’ll be offered to UK customers before deciding if the Spring really stacks up here. By the time it arrives, it’ll be up against lots of low-mileage used electric superminis at roughly the same price. We suspect a bit more of Dacia’s magic will be required to make the Spring feel-good value as well as cheap.
The next 18 months are going to see a huge shake-up in what we all consider an ‘affordable electric car’. And this is our first chance to try one of the vehicles that could lead the revolution: the Dacia Spring.
UK sales of the brand’s first EV are still a year away, and the car we’ll get will sport revised exterior looks and much-improved interior perceived quality compared with the French-spec left-hooker you see here.
But the basic technical stuff will be unchanged; there’s a single battery, with a capacity of 26.8kWh (usable), and a choice of two models: the Spring 45 and the Spring 65, named after their metric power outputs.
The Spring 45 has 44bhp (45PS) and 125Nm of torque, modest numbers that deliver a top speed of 78mph and a 0-62mph time of, wait for it, 19.1 seconds. The Spring 65 gains some more grunt, at 64bhp (65PS), and its acceleration figure is a more respectable 13.7 seconds.
Both versions have a range of 190 miles if you’re driving around town, and 143 miles (Spring 45) or 137 miles (the 65 we’re testing) on the combined cycle. Hooked up to a 7kW home wall box, the battery can be refilled from empty in just under five hours.
Dacia is remaining coy on UK pricing for now, but based on European numbers, the goal of less than £20,000 looks achievable.
The Spring’s overall length is 3,734mm, around six centimeters longer than a Hyundai i10, which it also trumps on boot space, at 290 liters. But within seconds of climbing in, you realize the Dacia’s budget origins. There’s no height adjustment on the driver’s seat and no adjustment at all on the steering wheel. The materials used throughout are rugged, robust, and pretty uninspiring. There are loads of blanked-off buttons on the steering wheel, and the flashes of copper trim barely scratch the surface of the myriad tones of dark grey.
