Dacia Spring (2024 - ) Electric review

Starting at £14,995 and rising to £17,645 with creature comforts, this is a cheap electric car to buy. If you have off-street parking and home charging running it will be even cheaper, with negligible costs given the small battery can do a full charge overnight on your off-peak tariff. Benefit In Kind taxation if you use it as a company car stays at 2 per cent for another year, then rises slowly, making it still the cheapest tax you can pay for years to come. VED/’road tax’ is free in year one, too, and there will be few servicing and maintenance costs with such a simple car. Insurance too, although higher for electric-car owners, will be cheap, given the no-frills nature of the Spring. However, read on to see if this actually equates to value for money…

We don’t yet know because this is brand new, but Dacia is part of the Renault family, with much of the tech, parts and components shared between these two global players. We’re willing to bet you won’t have much trouble from the Spring. There’s a seven-year warranty if you service it at an official dealer (three if not), and the battery is covered for eight years, as is par for the course with electric cars.

Like most cheap, basic cars, the Spring doesn’t feel very safe. It rolls round corners like it’s straight out of the 70s, taking us back to the Citroën Dolly of a previous era while the brakes and steering don’t tell you what they’re doing with any great consistency. The Extreme 65 version comes with emergency braking, hill start, lane keeping assistance (as annoying as ever) and driver attention warning but it also inherits the Euro NCAP one-star rating carried over from its existing presence in the European market. Ouch.

Some reviewers have criticised the Spring for letting too much tyre and wind noise into the cabin but we reckon you get what you pay for and, given the price, it didn’t bother us too much. We were too busy being impressed by the leg- and headroom in the rear, which is fine for two tall adults and the deep boot. And if there’s one thing to be said for squishy suspension it’s that the car rocks you to sleep nicely. Except this one also thuds jarringly over ridges in the road. Hmm. We very much like the jaunty white trim and commodious storage in the doors, with plenty of room for the largest drinks bottles. There’s one storage tray between the front seats, but it’s a big one.

Surprisingly for the price, you get a reversing camera plus front and rear parking sensors and heated wing mirrors. The sensors aren’t needed, given this is a short and narrow car, but they’re nice to have. You also get electric rear windows on Extreme trim (there’s fancy!) but just the one windscreen wiper. There’s Renault’s impeccable touch-screen with access to DAB and your phone screen, and the volume and channel controls are on the chunky stalk behind the steering wheel. That system is a big bonus in the Spring, elevating the experience considerably. If you get the Extreme trim, you also get a vehicle-to-load adapter. We’re still not sure is worth it, but means you can charge things from your car or power your hedge trimmer off it. It might prove to be the answer to a question no one is ever going to ask.

Do not go for the Spring 45 version unless it’s for your 17-year-old who you don’t trust with anything more powerful than a hair dryer. The 65 version isn’t half bad, though, with the advantage of all-power-at-once sending it off the start line with a kick. Acceleration soon dribbles away, however, as does the range. Officially the Spring has a maximum reach of 140 miles, which means barely over 100 in real life. It is efficient though, on account of being stripped away to resemble the aftermath of a nuclear accident inside, and having the smallest wheels in Christendom. So, you’ll get efficient miles, but not many of them. The issue is that the whole car feels very tinny, insubstantial and wallows around on the road. Its range will also immediately discount it for many. The more we think about it, the more this is the ideal car for young, inexperienced drivers whose ambitions regarding performance and range will be capped not by yelling parents but by the whisper of the Spring’s battery giving out.