The New Dacia Spring Redefines “Cheap” Electric Cars

we are here at the Geneva Mo show where it is busy and it is noisy but it is totally worth it because we're about to show you something extremely special and to give the exclusive on what the price will be in the UK we are of course talking about the all new Daya spring which is a far cry from its extremely basic cousin that Jack reviewed just a few years ago and that's all thanks to its brand new platform and extremely appealing price point maybe this is the electric vehicle that genuinely launches us Springs us into a new era of EV like fully charged then you'll love our fun-packed everything electric Expos around the world next up we're in London and Harriet remember energy and transport professionals Go free on the first day now I am going to hold on to my notes in part because it is busy here and it's a good sort of B people out of the way but let's start with the price because let's be real that is the reason that you're watching this video and I am extremely pleased to tell you that this will be the cheapest EV available on the market in the UK and across Europe and it is going to be 15,000 you can pre-order them from March 2024 and they will be arriving in the UK from October now this isn't just going to be the cheapest EV I also believe it's going to be one of the best value for money EVs and what I mean by that is that it does the job it does it well and it throws in a couple of surpris and delights along the way but who is this actually interesting for who £5,000 good value for when you think about things like company car schemes Lee schemes which would put it at like £100 a month or perhaps you're even going to wait 3 years at which point accounting for depreciation we're talking under £8,000 of that bit and just to put this into context you know £15,000 that would get you a four-year-old Nissan Leaf it would get you 60% of an mg4 so to really really frame that in context but at that price point I'm sure you're thinking well presumably this is is the EasyJet the wiiz a of EVS but actually let me tell you there are a few things that make this particularly special and that is because this sit on a brand new EV architecture why is that significant well so many EVS to date have been built on existing architectures designed and perfected really for petrol and diesel vehicles and it's a little bit like thinking about taking an existing house and trying to knock down walls perhaps do a loft extension in order to make it work for you and your family and whil that will be pretty good to really get that perfect Barbie Dreamhouse building from scratch would be the preference but like building from scratch is much more expensive the same is true of developing a new EV car architecture so when a car company does it it's saying we are investing in EVS we believe that they're the future and we're also so committed to developing a vehicle that is totally fit for purpose so that's what we're going to be checking when we take a little look around this [Music] one so at £15,000 of course this thing is pretty Diddy um and in fact it's 3.7 M long which makes it 7 cm longer than the fear 500 but that's quite deceptive because when you look at it it's obviously got quite an aggressive and confident and robust stance and of course that's total marketing spill that I've lifted from the press material but I have to say I kind of agree with it because when you look at small cars which we so desperately need to take up less room on Road they are small and cute and bug eyed and sweet and actually you don't always want that and especially when you don't want this to be a gimmick it needs to be taken seriously you want to be let out at those Junctions after all so I think it's very sensible that this is a small car but dressed up in SUV clothing the perfect kind of antidote or the thing to get us off our addiction to SUVs but the coolest thing is that this has a wall to- wo turning circle of 4.8 M but you might not think that's a particularly exciting stat but if you live on a very very narrow Street where it is a real bunfight to get parking then that is incredibly exciting say goodbye to 17o turns or stressful parking where you end up parking 15 minutes from your home because you haven't found a parking space that you can adequately get into this totally changes that um so that is extremely cool and part of that is enabled by the fact that the wheels are right right at the edge you've got teeny tiny overhangs and wheels that really sit at the at the edges that allows you to get that amazing turning Circle um but it also means that it's probably going to maximize the space within the cabin which we'll come on to in a little [Music] moment now everything about this car has changed with the exception of this one panel that is the only thing that keeps it in common with the previous iteration of the data spring everything else has been been really reimagined and Rec crafted now we spoke about the fact that this is going to be incredibly easy to park and maneuver within tight City spaces uh particularly if parking is a bit of a challenge and as such there are some things that help make it really durable so these wheels these caps actually removed they can be easily replaced super super important you're not going to get super precious about scuffing those Wheels in those very very dense Urban centers um there's also these panels like this which again helps for bum especially if people are opening doors and and opening them into yours again those can be really really easily replaced super important things when if you are living in a place where you don't have access to off-road parking you don't want to be constantly worried about your car getting knocked and in this instance you don't need to be worried moving round to the front and you can see that there is a brand new sort of identity signature at the front these aren't lights they are purely decorative but I think it looks all right actually kind of like um maybe like a wrestler's belt maybe that's just me uh but here at the lights they have you know they sort of look like a rocket ship on its side I think it's you know it's pretty neat it has been there's definitely been some thought gone into that um there are loads of opportunities for a bit of personalization including these sort of decals or stickers this one here sort of looks like a bird's eye view of a city maybe some tire tracks I'm not sure um but you can swap those out and sort of adapt them as you as you see fit um there are a range of different colors actually this one here is brick red there's also beige Safari real kind of far and bu colors there let's talk about charging because these numbers are not going to blow your socks off uh we're talking 7 KW AC charging 20 to 100% in 4 hours or 30 KW DC charging which will give you 20 to 80% in 45 minutes but according to Daya they found that actually a lot of their customers 75% of the time they're charging from home anyway so this is very much a charging little and often either at home on the street or at your place of work destination charging it definitely is key here and it also doesn't have a particularly big battery we're talking 26.8 kwatt hours which to put that into perspective the boxal corser E has something like a 50 kwatt hour battery giving 180 Mi of range uh typically electric vehicles would have something like a 70 KW hour battery so 26.8 kwatt hours is giving 137 M of range which is super super efficient and part of that is achieved by the fact that this is so lightweight this is one of the only EVS I think it's the only evv certainly that will be available in the UK that will sit under the one ton Mark it's at 984 kilos um so that gives you something like a 4.2 m per kwatt hour now if you're thinking 137 miles is that going to be enough well data have the evidence they've done the data they've s seen that actually the average Daya Spring customer drives 23 m a day at 23 m per hour so yes 137 miles is absolutely fine um and sure it might not do your massive massive long road trips that you do once every 6 months but it is going to do everything that you need it to do 95% of the time and in those other instances rent something so moving around to the rear and you can see that we've got Dacia emblazened on the back now get used to that because I think this is going to be an exceptionally popular car so you're going to be reading that a lot when you drive along the motorway or around your city um we it's got a similar sort of lighting signature to that we did to the front except this time we've got rocket ships going pointing outwards rather than rocket ships pointing inwards um or certainly that's what I think they look like more opportunities for you know customizing this yourself again you can swap and play around with as you see fit now Boot opens with this little button here the boot space is really class leading at 38 L now to put that into context the voil corser e that's like 267 l so not masses but totally fine you could fit in sort of three carry-on suitcases you could definitely do your big shop uh you could get a big suitcase and when you fold the seats down you get 1,4 l so again totally absolutely adequate for what you need there is also a fce floor um so more space under there as well let's talk about power because again these numbers aren't going to make you weak at the knees or particularly gooddy there is 33 KW and there's 48 Kow which in old money is 45 horsepower and 65 horsepower so that means they not to 62 mph in 14 seconds so definitely more get around than geta away car and the other thing that I should tell you is that this has vehicle to load which means that you can plug various Appliance into so what is there to say about the interior well the basic things are done well exactly as sort of is true to the Deo brand and there are a few kind of nice surprises and delights um so first of all you know there is a a white roof and there are white features on some of the important things that you use so your your tray at the front and your door panels and that has the effect of trying to make this space feel bigger it obviously has to be clever this is a small and quite narrow car so it has to sort of find the illusion of space where possible um things like there isn't sort of an elbow rest which again makes you feel that you have that sort of slightly wider wider feel um so whilst the sort of materials are totally adequate they are totally fine um there are some things that make this feel a little bit higher quality so for example there is this 10-in screen which is compatible with Android auto Apple carplay so you can get you know Spotify and everything that you need to make this feel like a familiar car but at the same time there are these really nice physical buttons and it is always so nice to see physical buttons and these ones they don't feel cheap they don't feel like a 17,000 car they actually feel pretty high quality they even have these nice textures which help give it that sense of quality and I always think it's quite important actually where you have these physical buttons because say you have a passenger here you've said oh you know they're starting to fiddle with things if they can do it here rather than going into the screen that's infinitely less distracting for the driver so big big big fan of these lovely physical buttons um now if you saw the uh review that Jack did a couple of years ago he commented on the fact that there were a load of fake buttons so clearly the wheel was a carryover part from a different vehicle as a cost-saving thing and loads of the buttons were there but they actually did absolutely nothing that is not true with this vehicle there are of course still many many many buttons but each of these relate to a range of different ads features or uh features within you know the infotainment system and that means that this car is actually way more sophisticated than its £ 15,000 price tag would give it credit for and especially say you where you have a teenager at home who is starting to drive I think that sort of assurance that this is a basic car but comes equipped with all of those safety features that would give you a lot of confidence if you have a 17-year-old going out on the road for the first time we are in the back seat this is not the Jack back seat test he is 6'5 I am 5'3 so radically different experience I think he would have a tough time getting into the back of this vehicle but if he was in the back of this vehicle how often would he be doing that it probably because he's been given given a lift by a friend it would be very rare that someone of that size is in the back of this car the more likely situation is that you're fing children around to school interestingly there are only two seats not three and that means that you can get the much much narrower vehicle that this is it can be smaller and lighter and all those good things there isn't a tremendous amount of storage uh there are just these sort of rear um seat Pockets which again I think is fine because otherwise have loads of storage have loads of little people you find things tucked away in all sorts of nooks and crannies this at least keeps it simple and tidy please support our stop burning stuffff patreon and help us to tackle misinformation about electric vehicles and clean energy so there you have it the brand new era of electric vehicles is here and this little pocket rocket is leading the charge all powerered all thanks to a brand new electric platform let us know what you think in the comments and please do like and subscribe and if you Haven been thanks for watching

Channel: Fully Charged Show

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Keywords: electric car youtube channel, renewable energy youtube, renewable energy electric vehicles, latest news on renewable energy, crowd funded youtube, kryten, fully charged show live, ev show, fully charged show, robert llewellyn, electric cars, fully charged, Imogen Bhogal, Dacia, Dacia Spring

Id: 6gCSoAiaEbI

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024