Electric vehicles are usually more expensive than combustion cars, but that isn’t true for the Dacia Spring. It’s Europe’s cheapest fully-fledged electric car, which costs about the same as a similar-sized gas-powered city car. It’s even cheaper when you factor in government incentives. With its new redesign, though, Dacia is hoping to attract buyers with more than just a low price.
The redesigned Spring is still the same car underneath, with roots that trace back to the Renault Kwid sold in India and South America. However, while the pre-refresh model still looked a lot like the original Kwid, the revised 2024 model has a fresh face. The new design makes it look a lot more modern and aligns it with the rest of the Dacia lineup.
It still has two-tier headlight clusters, but with its redesigned LED daytime running lights that flow into the faux grille, it almost looks like it has a full-width light bar. While the basic shape remains largely unchanged from the side, the rear fascia has been completely redesigned to align with the front.
All-new body but the same car underneath
Dacia has given the Spring a major visual and technology overhaul, but it has the same weedy motor, small battery pack and tiny interior as the last version. This allowed the Romanian manufacturer to keep the price down, so we expect the new Spring to sell well.
New colors like the Brick Red and Beige Safari on the car in the gallery further help to enhance its visual appeal, as do the new 15-inch alloy wheels that you get on the Expression and Extreme trims. The base Essential model also gets redesigned 14-inch hubcaps. Dacia has done a great job giving the exterior a makeover without having to change any of the hard points, which would have necessitated a far more expensive reengineering of the vehicle.
Inside, the change is more dramatic. Nothing in the revamped Spring’s interior reminds you of the pre-refresh model. The dashboard is completely new, and the old part-analog gauge cluster is a thing of the past, replaced by a 7-inch display that comes standard on all trims.
The Essential and Expression trims don’t come with an infotainment screen, just a place to put your smartphone atop the dash. The Extreme variant gets a 10-inch screen that looks giant in the Spring’s narrow cabin. It runs an Android Automotive-based operating system and supports wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.
The seats were one of the weak points of the pre-refresh model, but they are all new for 2024. Combined with the newly added height-adjustable steering wheel, they should make driving the Spring more comfortable. Also gone is the old-fashioned transmission lever, replaced by a much smaller and more modern-looking selector.
Space in the trunk has increased to 10.9 cubic feet (308 liters), which can be expanded to 35.5 cu-ft (1,004 liters) with the rear seat folded. Surprisingly for an EV of this size, the Spring has a frunk. It’s not big at 1.2 cu-ft (35 liters), but you can store small items like the charging cable.
What I remember from my drive of the first Dacia Spring back in 2021 was that the seat wasn’t very comfortable or supportive. The driving position was too high, and the steering wheel was placed too low—it felt like I could steer it with my knees, and I couldn’t get used to it even after spending a week with the car.
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Another thing I remember was the painfully slow acceleration. Dacia has addressed this by offering two motor variants. The 45-horsepower motor is the same as before, and it takes over 18 seconds to go from a standstill to sixty, but an optional, more powerful 65-hp motor cuts the sprint time to a more reasonable 13 seconds is also offered. The top speed is the same: 78 mph (125 km/h), regardless of what motor you choose.
Both motor variants draw from the same air-cooled 27.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack that provides a claimed WLTP range of 136 miles (220 kilometers). The battery is unchanged from the pre-refresh model. That car could do an honest 100 miles on a full battery, or a bit more if you only drove at lower speeds in town.
Dacia hasn’t increased the Spring’s maximum charging power with this refresh. The car still comes with a 7-kilowatt onboard AC charger as standard, which needs about 4 hours to charge from 10 to 80%. Optionally, you can add a 30 kW DC fast charger that cuts the charging time to 45 minutes.
You can also buy a special adaptor for the Spring that gives it vehicle-to-load (V2L) capability. It can supply up to 220 volts and 16 amps of current, which should be enough to run various appliances or power tools.
Dacia has sold about 150,000 Springs since the model was launched in 2021. Over 90% of the people who bought it got one as their first EV, and this is unlikely to change post-refresh. Its affordability is ultimately what will draw buyers.
The base Essential model kicks off the range at €16,900 ($18,430 at current exchange rates), while the fully-loaded Extreme variant is €19,900 ($21,702). Most European countries still offer EV incentives, and even though they have shrunk in 2024, they still take a sizable chunk off the asking price.
In Romania, where Dacia is based, the EV incentive dropped from €10,000 to €5,000, but it allows buyers to pay just €11,900 ($12,978) for a base Spring, which is an amazing deal for a real car with safety systems and airbags. The Spring is classified as a car, not a quadricycle like the Microlino that we liked but found too expensive or the Citroen Ami, which are both slower and lower-range and way worse at protecting their occupants.