Dacia Spring review

Dacia says the Spring is the greenest electric car on sale, owing to the fact that as well as emitting no tailpipe gases, it’s a small car with a small frontal area and carries very few added kilos and extras where they’re not needed. Remarkably for an EV, it comes in at under a tonne. An organisation called Green NCAP gave it five stars. 

The other NCAP, the one you will have heard of, feels differently about it, giving it a one-star safety rating that Dacia has reacted to with a shrug of its shoulders and a reminder that it meets all mandatory regulations and that buyers don’t care. The latest Spring still hasn't been tested under NCAP regulations, but it'll likely be a similarly low rating. 

That said, it has been given lane keeping and speed limit assistance to comply with the EU's new General Safety Regulations, plus a button to easily switch them in and out.

The Spring’s motor and inverter sit under the bonnet, where there’s room for an optional cable storage box.

Both the 45 and 65 Springs come equipped with a 26.8kWh battery, positioned beneath the rear seats. It can charge on three-pin or 7kW AC power and up to 30kW on DC power. It gives a 140-mile official range with either motor, thanks to an energy consumption of 4.6mpkWh. 

This kind of range is something that a combustion city car like the Kia Picanto would laugh at, of course, but Dacia is finding that buyers take four trips on average a day, measuring just 23 miles in total, and with 75% of them charging from home, it’s the very definition of a runabout.

Apparently, more than half of current buyers are rural and have a Spring as their only car. We suspect it will be more of an urban or second car in the UK, but Dacia insists an increasing number of buyers in Europe are starting to use the Spring as their primary method of transport.