Dacia Spring - the cheapest EV on the market
With the Spring, Dacia has once again proved that it knows exactly what it wants and sets itself clear goals. It offers cars stripped of everything that is not essential for everyday use. As a result, the Romanian brand manages to package its vehicles so cleverly that people often ask: "how on earth can it be so affordable?". And so, when Dacia launched its first EV, it made sure it would be.... the cheapest on the market.
A Dacia is technologically advanced components served up in a simple package, which is what the whole car becomes. Is that a contradiction? Not entirely. Dacia's technology draws on the experience of the Renault-Nissan group and makes uncompromising use of modules found in its French and Japanese siblings. This creates economies of scale that benefit all the sister brands, but Dacia most of all, because for Dacia price is what counts.
Who the Dacia Spring is for
So what is the Dacia Spring like? This car is meant to serve specific purposes - I doubt anyone planning its launch imagined a potential customer wanting to take it on holiday to Croatia with luggage and the whole family. It has a well-defined target audience. It is the ideal car for car-sharing fleets, and it will do well in the urban jungle, where electric cars enjoy the most privileges and combustion vehicles face the most restrictions. Personally, I think the Dacia Spring's popularity will reach beyond rental fleets. It will work well as a second or third car for an affluent family living just outside the city. Most likely a family that is just beginning its flirtation with ecology or is already well into it: solar panels on the roof, a heat pump, rainwater harvesting and vegetables bought at the Saturday market. The Dacia could be ideal for popping out for a bit of shopping, dropping the younger daughter off at school and picking the older one up from the suburban train stop. It will also prove itself in companies as a so-called "pool car", the one whose keys are kept by the receptionist and which is used by everyone heading (down the bus lane, naturally!) to a meeting or to deal with official business, parking in the city centre (for free).
Dacia is not the only company that sees opportunity in electric mobility over short urban distances. The same vision was shared with me by Hideo Tsurumaki, president of FOMM, whom I met 3 years ago at a motor show in Bangkok. You understand the company's philosophy once you decode its name. FOMM stands for "first one mile mobility", in other words "a car for the first mile". In practice, that means getting to the suburban train, a metro station, a car-sharing point or a park-and-ride car park. Ever more congested cities may well drive demand for vehicles like these: small, simple, often bringing a smile to your face, handy and green.
Price and its Renault City K-ZE origins
As I mentioned, the Dacia Spring is cheap. That is, it is cheap for an electric car, because a price of PLN 76,900 is not objectively low. Even so, that price puts the car well below the other smallest EVs on the market - the Smart EQ Fortwo, Forfour, Volkswagen e-up! and Skoda Citigo iV are all considerably more expensive. When thinking about the car's price and range, it is worth looking back at the not-so-distant past. The Mitsubishi i-MiEV, launched 10 years ago, cost PLN 160,000 and offered a real-world range of just under 100 km. Manufacturers promised that zero-emission cars would get cheaper, and the Dacia shows that this is indeed happening.
The car is an adaptation of the Renault City K-ZE, a micro-crossover created for the Chinese market by a joint venture between Renault and Dongfeng. The interior is very simply finished, but surprisingly spacious for a vehicle 3.73 m long, because you sit high and upright, as on a chair, rather than with your legs stretched out, as on a sofa. The 45 hp electric motor (125Nm) drives the front wheels. The tyres are very narrow, but that is a trick we have known since the BMW i3 first appeared. Despite my serious misgivings, the "Made in China" Green-Max 165/70R14 tyres offer surprisingly good lateral grip when you take corners more briskly.
Range, equipment and Traficar car-sharing
According to WLTP figures, the Dacia Spring offers a range of 230 km on a single charge, thanks to a 28.3 kWh battery mounted under the floor. It turned out that with the Romanian car it is fairly easy to "beat" the homologated figures; during my test a fully charged battery showed a range of 251km.
The version I tested had manual air conditioning, a reversing camera and parking sensors, electric windows, airbags, central locking and five wide-opening doors. On the other hand, wherever money could be saved, it was saved with ruthless consistency. Examples? The window switches sit on the centre console, the side windows are flat, the plastics are hard and the seats are upholstered in leatherette. The leatherette upholstery has its upsides - it allows the interior to be disinfected quickly when the car passes from hand to hand, which may matter in today's uncertain times. The car has a traditional floor-mounted handbrake, and the steering column cannot be adjusted. There are only two driving modes: "D" for forward and "R" for reverse (although there is also an "eco" mode, which can extend the range by around 10%). The package of savings is rounded off by a single front windscreen wiper.
I mentioned that we will come across the Dacia Spring in city car-sharing fleets. The car is joining "Traficar", the largest and oldest Polish car-sharing company, which offers more than 2000 cars in cities such as Kraków, Warsaw, the Tricity, Poznań, Wrocław and the Silesian Agglomeration. Every kilometre driven in a Dacia Spring will cost PLN 1.50, with no extra per-minute charges. This way Traficar users will not save money by recklessly cutting their journey time, which makes the roads safer. If a user needs a car for longer, however, they can take advantage of a special daily rate, and the rental price includes full insurance and electricity.
Acceleration, charging and regenerative braking
The 45 hp motor is enough to flow calmly with city traffic, but the manufacturer has managed to "choke" its acceleration down to the level of a small petrol runabout. EVs are usually masters of acceleration, leaving other cars far behind when pulling away from the lights. The Dacia is not like that. Although it needs a full 19 seconds to get from 0 to 100km/h, it takes just under 6 seconds to reach 50 km/h.
The boot holds 290 l, which is a decent result for a car of this size. The car I was given came with two cables, one for charging from a household socket and a Type 2. Despite the small battery capacity, the car was also fitted with a CCS connector for DC charging. The Dacia Spring's charging sockets are hidden under a flap in the grille, which you open with a small lever under the steering wheel.
The Dacia Spring is just as quiet as other EVs, although up to 30 km/h you can clearly hear the car "whining" - the sound is there to alert pedestrians to a car that moves almost silently. The regenerative braking has no adjustable levels, but lightly brushing the brake pedal as you approach a red light ensures that the motor does the braking and the energy flows back into the battery.
Test summary
As the cheapest EV on the market, the Dacia Spring has its strengths and weaknesses. The latter stem directly from the drive to keep the price down. Yet the advantages outweigh them. A neat, practical five-door runabout with sufficient urban range, a well-shaped boot and some creature comforts (air conditioning, electric windows, multimedia) is a very interesting proposition for zero-emission mobility in ever-expanding cities.
