The Dacia Spring, which is one of the most affordable new electric vehicles sold in Europe, is due for a 2024 makeover that should make it more attractive to customers in an increasingly crowded market.
The Spring, which is built in China and shipped to the Old Continent, is based on the Renault City K-ZE and debuted in Europe in 2021, where it immediately became the cheapest new EV on sale.
Currently, the baby SUV that seats four and measures just 147.2 inches (3,740 millimeters) long has a starting price of around $22,700 (20,800 Euro), but incentives in some European countries lowered the purchase cost to as little as $13,000 (12,000 Euro), making it an ideal choice for a second car or even for the main city runabout in a family.
Gallery: 2023 Dacia Spring Extreme
With a single electric motor making just 44 horsepower in the base version and a WLTP-rated range of 140 miles (230 kilometers), the EV isn’t anything to write home about, but it gets the job done for a low price.
Now, Dacia’s design boss, David Durand, says that the Chinese-made hatchback is “lacking a bit of modernity,” according to Autocar and that it “needs to be reconsidered to express more of this electric trend.”
The comments come even as the Spring got a mild facelift for the 2023 model year, which also brought a second, more powerful Extreme variant with 64 hp to the lineup.
Currently, the budget EV sits on Renault Group’s CMF-A platform, a fact that will remain unchanged for the next generation, as we reported back in 2022. In other words, the next-gen Spring won’t be related to the upcoming Renault 4 and Renault 5, both of which will be underpinned by the company’s CMF-B platform.
The Romanian brand has sold roughly 120,000 units of the pint-sized EV in Europe since its debut in 2021.
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Source: Autocar