Dacia has confirmed that its upcoming cheap electric city car will keep the Spring nameplate, presumably because changing it would cost money and this is an economy car. The new Spring, built in Europe on the same platform as the revived Renault Twingo E-Tech, is expected to start around €17,490 ($20,050) - about €2,000 less than the Twingo's €19,490 price tag, proving that 'budget-friendly' is a family business at Renault.
The Spring will share its underpinnings with the Twingo, which itself is essentially a Renault 5 that went on a diet and lost the independent rear suspension. The Twingo specs - a 27.5-kWh LFP battery, 82-horsepower front motor, 163-mile WLTP range, and a 0-62 mph time of 12.1 seconds - will likely carry over. That means the Spring will be perfectly adequate for city driving, provided you're not in a hurry to get anywhere.
Dacia plans to unveil the new Spring in the second half of 2026. The current China-built Spring has delivered over 210,000 units since 2021, which sounds impressive until you remember the Dacia Sandero sold 289,000 units in 2024 alone. Perhaps the big news here is that Europe is about to get an even cheaper EV that isn't from China, though it's built on a platform that traces back to a car that traces back to another car. Efficiency, meet efficiency.