YOU have to feel sorry for Dacia’s rivals sometimes. Giants like Volkswagen and Ford are scrabbling like crazy to make the numbers work on an electric car that costs £20,000 – and along come the Romanians with one at £15k. 3 The Dacia Spring is not just the cheapest EV out there, it's one of the most affordable cars you can buy 3 The Spring weighs less than a ton, which is unheard of for an EV 3 The interior has lots of clever materials that do a good job of disguising the car’s budget nature Even the top-spec version comes in at less than a tenner a day on finance.
The new Dacia Spring is so clever, in fact, that it’s a wonder nobody else has come up with the same recipe. It’s small, for starters – think of it as a pure-electric rival to the likes of the Kia Picanto. Its battery is pretty tiny, at just 26.
8kWh – less than a third of a Tesla Model 3’s capacity. But these factors keep the baby Dacia’s weight down to less than a ton, which is unheard of for an EV. And this, in turn, means up to 140 miles of range, which is probably enough for a lot of people.
The Spring has been on sale in continental Europe for a few years, but its arrival in the UK coincides with a major overhaul. There’s plenty of plastic body cladding, a few clever stickers (designed to be easier to repair and replace after car-park scrapes) and, if you go for the range- topping Extreme version , 15in wheels. Most read in Motors SMASH HORROR Two cops among four in hospital after three-.