Dacia Spring review – Britain’s cheapest new EV

Verdict  – is the Dacia Spring a good car?

With a price tag of £15,000, the Dacia Spring appeals to an entirely new group of potential EV buyers and represents the first in a new wave of ultra-affordable small EVs. Along with its tempting price, they’ll no doubt also be impressed with its 140-mile range, a decent boot and 78mph top speed – stats the Citroen Ami can’t manage. They’ll also have to be prepared to make some compromises, which include a fairly basic interior and minimal safety tech to get it down to that price.

Dacia Spring models, specs and alternatives

While in recent years an electric car has been considered affordable if it comes in below £30,000, fast-forward to 2024 and 2025 and a lot more affordable EV models occupying the £20k price bracket are on their way – cars like the Hyundai Inster and Volkswagen ID.2all. Potentially the cheapest of all, is this, the Dacia Spring. Remarkably it starts from just below £15,000 for the entry-level version, with the top Extreme trim adding just £2,000.

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The Spring is a 3.7-metre-long city car, sitting between the Fiat 500 Electric and MINI Electric in terms of size. Given its size and budget billing, its diminutive 27kWh battery shouldn’t be such a big stumbling block for buyers, and its range of around 140 miles also isn’t too bad. The Hyundai Inster promises a 200-mile range, but it’s also likely to be more expensive to buy. Another advantage of its relatively small battery is that even a home wallbox can fully charge it in just five hours. This is how Renault expects the majority of owners to top-up their Spring, but the top version also gets 30kW DC charging to speed things up at public chargepoints. This is rather slow next to the latest EVs, but the small battery pack still keeps a 20-80% top-up down to 45 minutes.

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The Spring that’s arriving in the UK is essentially a heavy facelift of the left-hand drive model that’s already been sold to 150,000 customers across Europe. As a result, it gets a more up-to-date interior which feels nicely designed, even if it still uses mostly cheaper plastics and materials. The entry-level Expression has a 44bhp electric motor and makes do with a smartphone holder instead of a touchscreen, but still has air-conditioning and cruise control. The Extreme trim sees power increased to 64bhp, and it gets a 10-inch touchscreen with wireless Android Auto/Apple CarPlay and copper accents, so for just under £17,000 we think it makes sense to upgrade.

Given its position below the aforementioned rivals from Fiat and MINI in terms of price, the Dacia Spring should maintain its USP for some time. The Citroen Ami is even cheaper, but it’s classed as a quadricycle with a top speed of just 28mph. In contrast, the BYD Dolphin is larger, with a bigger battery and a higher price tag as a result. Instead, the Spring is likely to find itself on the shopping lists of buyers looking at used EVs like the Peugeot e-208 and Renault ZOE which are a few years old, but may well offer more features and a better range between charges.

Dacia Spring alternatives

• Fiat 500 Electric
• MINI Electric
• BYD Dolphin
• Honda e
• Citroen Ami

British buyers can buy the Dacia Spring with two power levels, but both come with the same 27kWh battery pack. This gives both cars a range of up to 190 miles if you stick to urban driving where the Spring is likely to spend most of its time.

But, measured to official WLTP standards, the range figure is 140 miles for both the Spring 45 and for the Spring 65 we’ve driven – figures that actually beat the pricey Honda e and the 124-mile range of the Mazda MX-30. Thanks to the fact the Spring weighs less than one tonne, it’s also pretty efficient, and we found it easy to manage 4 miles/kWh during testing. The only caveat being that progress is rather sedate if you try to eek out the car’s maximum range.

A small battery also pays dividends when it comes to charging. A standard 7kW home wallbox should be able to fully charge the Spring in around five hours, and even plugging into a three-pin plug socket is likely to fill the battery if left overnight. The Extreme trim level also adds 30kW DC charging to the Spring, making it capable of a 20-80% charge in around 45 minutes at a public charging station. Not sensationally fast, but quick enough to make the occasional longer journey doable while you take a coffee break.

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With small tyres and even drum-style rear brakes, the running and even repair costs for the Spring should certainly be minimal. That’s after free VED (road tax) until 2025 and minimal Benefit-in-Kind liability of 2% for company car choosers are taken into account, which should make the Spring one of the UK’s cheapest cars to run.

Insurance

While the Spring’s official insurance groups haven’t been announced yet, we’d hope they’d be just as affordable as the rest of the car, and somewhat lower than the group 17 of the Fiat 500 Electric.

It might have less power than most petrol superminis, but one important thing to remember is that the Spring’s instant torque and single forward gear mean it’s a doddle to drive around town, and its light weight means it can keep up with traffic pretty easily.

0-62mph and top speed

The Spring might not be a speed machine, but according to Dacia’s research, it really doesn’t need to be. It’s found that existing Spring owners tend to drive around 20 miles per day at an average speed of just 16mph. Given this fact, the 13.7-second 0-62mph acceleration figure of the more powerful 64bhp version we’ve tested doesn’t seem so important.

Its 78mph top speed is important, though, because it makes for an important distinction between the Spring and cheap EVs like the Citroen Ami that are technically classed as quadricycles. The latter class of EVs are limited to just 28mph, virtually restricting their usage to congested city centres. No such issue with the Spring; while it’s better suited to town use, there’s nothing to stop you from venturing onto a fast A-road, dual-carriageway or motorway when you need to.

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Squeeze the throttle pedal and acceleration is smooth and fairly punchy up to 30mph, and while it does start to tail off above this, it can certainly hit the national speed limit with a bit of patience. There’s also a ‘B’ mode for the motor, and flipping into this setting increases the energy recuperation when you lift off the accelerator. It can feel a bit sharp at first, but it’s easy to get used to the deceleration and avoid using the brake pedal almost entirely around town.

Higher speeds do expose a weakness of the Spring, though, which is its lack of refinement. Sound deadening has clearly been cut back to save weight and cost, and you’ll need to speak with a loud voice to be heard by your passenger at 60mph. The main issue is wind noise from around the door mirrors, but the electric motor is barely audible.

We weren’t overly impressed by the hard, scratchy plastics and rubber steering wheel of the pre-facelift and left-hand drive Spring we first tried, but the updated car has addressed many of our criticisms. 

It’s still no Bentley inside, but materials look better and there are some nice design touches, with highlights like copper accents in the Extreme trim. Sure, it’s still built to a budget, but the design feels more considered and modern than before.

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Infotainment and navigation

While it might be basic in its interior appointments, that’s not to say the Spring is completely lacking in technology. While the Expression trim makes do with a smartphone holder, the top-spec Spring Extreme we tried is fitted with a modern 10-inch touchscreen infotainment setup providing wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. This means you should get to enjoy some of your favourite smartphone-style apps and navigation, even in the cheapest EV the UK is likely to see. Everything works pretty well, and you can even schedule charging and preconditioning of the cabin via the screen or Dacia’s smartphone app.

Even in the Expression trim, you still get a seven-inch driver’s display, air-conditioning, remote central locking, electric front windows and cruise control. We’d recommend paying £2,000 more for the Extreme though, because along with its other benefits, you also get that central touchscreen, copper trim that lifts the cabin, and vehicle-to-grid charging. The latter essentially means you can use the car’s battery to power external items, and Renault estimates that cooking with an electric grille for an hour will use 13% of the battery

It might be shorter than a MINI Electric, but Dacia is big on practicality, so the Spring packs in five doors and a surprisingly generous boot. It’s not perfect, though, because those back doors aren’t especially wide-opening and there’s not lots of back seat space for adults. Headroom isn’t too bad, but both leg and kneeroom are pretty tight, so only small adults and kids will be happy in the back for longer trips. There are ISOFIX child seat mounting points, but we also suspect bulkier child seats could be a tight squeeze. Dacia also offers ‘YouClip’ accessories that can be attached in various spots around the cabin, from hooks to smartphone holders and cup holders.

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Boot space

Given this, its 308 litres of boot space may come as something of a surprise, and you can pack quite a bit into the Spring’s luggage compartment. Again, there are a few compromises, like the high lip to load items over and the lack of a dedicated space to store charging cables if you need to take them with you. That’s unless you opt for the optional £125 ‘frunk’ storage box under the bonnet. The boot itself is also a pretty basic space with no hooks for securing items, so it’s a shame the ‘YouClip’ accessories available for the cabin haven’t made it into the storage area.

Considering the Spring has never been sold in the UK, it’s no surprise there’s no reliability data available just yet. But, given the car's simplicity and relative lack of mechanical parts compared with a combustion-engined supermini, we’d hope any issues would be relatively easy to fix. 

Dacia itself didn’t perform too strongly in our 2023 Driver Power satisfaction survey, coming 26th out of the 32 manufacturers included. Around a quarter of owners of its petrol and diesel models told us they’d experienced a fault within the first year, and marked down handling, exterior styling and quality. Owners were more impressed with low running costs and value, where the maker came top.

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Safety

Perhaps the biggest concern for potential Spring owners will be safety because unless the UK car features an improvement here, the version already crash-tested by Euro NCAP in 2021 achieved just one out of five stars. This included a 49% score for adult occupant protection, 56% for child occupant protection, 39% for vulnerable road users and 32% in safety assist testing.

To meet the latest European safety standards, the facelifted Spring does get autonomous emergency braking that can detect vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcycles, along with traffic-sign recognition, lane keeping and lane change assist. There’s also driver attention monitoring and an emergency call button, so Dacia will be hoping that despite its low Euro NCAP score, the Spring should still prove safer than the second-hand superminis many buyers will be cross-shopping it against.