Dacia’s dinky little Spring electric car made a valiant effort at being not only the cheapest electric car on sale in Ireland but also actually the cheapest car of all for a time.
Sadly for the Spring, it was hamstrung by a cabin as small as its battery and an attitude to corners that could best be described as unenthusiastic.
It also had the poor fortune to arrive at basically the same time as the Hyundai Inster, which was (and is) slightly more expensive but also on a different planet in terms of sophistication and usability.
Quietly, the Spring was withdrawn from sale in Ireland when it was clear customers were staying away.
Now though, the Spring is back. Or at least it will be by next July, in time for 272 registrations, and it’s considerably more sophisticated than it used to be.
Primarily, that’s thanks to sharing a platform, batteries, etc with the new Renault Twingo, which arrives here in January or February next year.
The Spring doesn’t look as adorably cute as the Twingo, but it is pleasantly chunky, and it has some notably neat design details on the outside.
Yes, those really are 15-inch wheels, and no, they’re not alloy (even the optional 16-inch rims are made of steel), so you don’t have to worry about scraping them against a kerb.
You don’t have to worry about parking scrapes and dings in general, actually, as the bumpers’ front and rear are made of simple, unpainted black plastic.
Meanwhile, the LED lights, front and rear, have a neat trick – they look like two-element lights, but actually only the upper part has bulbs; the lower part is merely a reflector that catches the light from above, giving you twice the lights for half the cost. A very Dacia touch.
Underneath the neat bodywork is a 27.5kWh battery, using the more rugged and robust LFP (lithium-iron phosphate) chemistry, which means you don’t have to be so concerned about repeatedly charging it to 100 per cent.
That powers an 80hp electric motor, down by 20hp compared to the old Spring, but performance has barely suffered.
It gives a 0-100km/h time of 12.1 seconds. Of likely more importance to owners is a claimed efficiency rating of 12.7kWh/100km which gives the Spring a WLTP range of 250km – not spectacularly long-legged, but as anyone who previously drove the likes of a Volkswagen e-Up will know, that’s surprisingly usable.
Helping the Spring’s case is the fact that in Ireland, the (optional in Europe) charging pack will come as standard, meaning you get 11kW AC charging and 50kW DC charging, which means you can potentially charge from 15 to 80 per cent battery in 28 minutes.
Thanks to vehicle-to-load (V2L) tech, it’ll also charge other electric devices for you, or even potentially power your home in the event of a power cut (suitable home charging infrastructure allowing).
This Spring is 15cm longer and 18cm wider than the previous model, which is a real relief as it means that, in the front, you’re no longer constantly banging elbows and shoulders with your passenger. The seats up front are comfortable, much more so than before, and if the dash is largely made of cheap black plastic, it doesn’t feel too low-rent.
There’s a nice soft-touch panel across the top of the dash, and plenty of storage – as much as 20 litres – in the doors, down between the front seats, in and above the glovebox, and in the “Pelican” centre console, so called because it mimics the open beak of that bird. Frankly, real pelican beaks are a bit deeper, but at least this one gets a nice non-slip rubber coating. I don’t that that comes as standard with the actual bird.
Space in the back is also much improved, and there’s just about enough room for four adults to get comfortable. The Spring does without the Twingo’s sliding rear seats, something you also get in the rival Hyundai Inster.
The boot, at 337 litres, is bigger than before, but less adaptable than the adjustable boot space of the Twingo or Inster. Then again, the Spring outdoes both of those cars by having a “frunk” storage area under that stubby bonnet – it holds 18 litres, enough for a neatly coiled charging cable or two.
Back at the rear, the boot gets underfloor storage and two handy lift-out floor panels that allow you to divide up the space as you see fit. There are also two large hooks for shopping bags moulded into the sides, and if you fold the back seats flat, there’s 1,283 litres of total storage space.
Significantly for Dacia, this Spring is built in Europe, in Slovenia to be exact. The old Spring was made in China, and this meant that in many countries – France, notably – it didn’t qualify for the full whack of government incentives and supports.
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That ought not to be an issue this time around, which means that elsewhere in Europe, Spring prices are set to start from less than €17,000. In Ireland? We simply won’t know for a while yet, and Dacia Ireland’s official line is merely that pricing will be “competitive”.
It’s likely that the more expensive Journey model – set to be priced below €20,000 in Europe – will be the bigger seller in our market.
How big a seller overall within the Dacia line-up it will be remains to be seen. Until now, Dacia has moved cautiously when it comes to electric cars, the previous Spring being its only all-battery model. The brand’s dedication to affordability didn’t quite chime with EV ownership.
That is changing, and changing fast. According to Dacia’s chief executive, Katrin Adt, the market for small electric cars such as this Spring is “like the bottle of tomato sauce that you’re smacking for a long time to get the sauce to come out, and then suddenly it comes out quickly, and you can’t get it back into the bottle”.
Dacia is planning to launch four electric vehicles between now and 2030, of which the Spring is the first. “We have a war in the Middle East, which is causing a major change in consumer habits,” Adt told The Irish Times.
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“So we have some markets that are now shifting very quickly towards electric. I think that we have a very robust roadmap to electrification, but now the question is, do we need to be quicker than we thought at first? Also, can we offer something which is in the genes and in the DNA of our brand, which is always to offer affordable and smart mobility?”
While the talk is of electric sales accelerating from here on in, Adt is also keen to sound a note of caution, remembering the initial surge in EV sales in 2020 and 2021, which tailed off quickly afterward.
“Will it sustain like that? You never know,” ADT said. “So we are very vigilant to what is happening around us. We are sticking to our plan, and we are working hard on that plan because 2030 is only around the corner.”