European manufacturers are returning their attention to small cars. After a series of announcements from Volkswagen with the electric ID.1, Fiat with the small Panda, and Renault with the Twingo, Dacia is also on the way to its own version of the mini trend.
The announcement, made during a shareholder call by Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault, Dacia’s parent company, comes as part of Renault Group’s financial year summary, where CEO Luca de Meo announced that a new model from Dacia, yet to be named, is coming soon. In line with Dacia’s tradition, the car will primarily challenge competitors on price, with a target price of €18,000, about €2,000 less than the expected price tags of its rivals.
The announcement is interesting because it isn’t made without any context of time, and the timeline that de Meo mentions is 16 months, which is not much in car industry terms for car development. The assumption is that the shortened timeline is possible due to the reliance on the next Renault Twingo. Another indication of this is the intention to build the car in Europe, most likely alongside the Twingo in Slovenia, which will allow it to avoid tariffs on cars imported from China.
The Spring, Dacia’s current affordable electric car, is produced there and this makes it considerably more expensive by 35%. Another factor that is expected to reduce costs is the reduction in the number of parts in the car. In the case of the Twingo, de Meo said it uses 30% fewer parts and is made up of 750 pieces.
There is no official data yet regarding the motor, range, or charging of the car. But it can be cautiously assumed that these will be better than those of the Spring, which offers a choice of 45 to 65 horsepower, a 26.8 kWh battery providing a range of 220 km, and home charging of 7 kW with a fast charge of 30 kW.