Dacia to build an €18,000 EV in Europe

Renault’s low-cost daughter, Dacia, has started developing a new European electric city car (A-segment). The model will be offered at around €18,000, probably also thanks to its close relationship with the Renault Twingo E-Tech.

“Dacia wants to complete the development of the small electric car within 16 months,” Renault Group boss Luca de Meo told the British magazine Autocar. “I defy any competitor in the world to do that,” he added confidently.

This ultra-short development time is a product of the company’s new Leap 100 initiative, which targets a 100-week development window for all new cars. “We’ve moved to China speed,” added de Meo, hailing the success of the company’s partnership with a Chinese R&D consultancy on the Twingo program.

The short development time is also possible because the new Dacia EV will be based on the upcoming electric Twingo, which has been announced to cost around €20,000. According to de Meo, the corresponding Dacia offshoot, for which few details are yet known, will be another 2,000 euros cheaper and thus start at less than €18,000.

Of course, the new model will offer better technology than the current Dacia Spring. Depending on the variant, it only produces 33 or 48 kW, and the WLTP range of the 26.8 kWh battery is 225 kilometers. While the new car is set to match the current Spring on pricing, it will likely make substantial gains in performance, technology, and capability.

Twingo brother

Although no data is yet available for the Twingo E-Tech Electric, it is expected to have a range of around 300 kilometers and, above all, better charging performance: The Spring can charge with a maximum of 30 kW at DC columns.

“We’re preparing to go one step further in terms of EV affordability,” said de Meo about the upcoming electric Dacia and confirmed that the model will be built with the Twingo in Europe. In doing so, the French company hopes to avoid the additional import duties on electric cars made in China, which are now levied on the Chinese-built Spring and are likely to affect the model’s profitability in the very price-sensitive small car EV segment.

The only thing sure so far is that the Twingo and Dacia will use a variant of the AmpR Small platform, which is also the base of the Renault 5 and Renault 4. According to de Meo, the targeted vehicle prices for small cars will be possible primarily thanks to enormous cost reductions within the Renault Group.

Autocar quotes the Renault CEO as saying that the Twingo will cost 40% less to produce than the Renault 5, partly because the Twingo requires around 30% fewer components. The entire car should consist of just 750 individual parts.

During the interview, de Meo also hinted at the planned market launch: the Dacia should be available around mid-2026. In the case of the Twingo, Renault had recently only generally mentioned 2026. That’s roughly a year before Dacia is set to introduce the new third-generation Sandero, which will also be offered as an EV for the first time and will then probably be situated, as an EV, in the €20,000 to €25,000 price bracket.

Dacia CEO Denis Le Vot said earlier that a small new car in the A-segment would have to be electric because “the equation of a classic A-segment doesn’t really fly with ICE solutions,” given their thin profit margins. Dacia uses Renault platforms for each model and rigidly focuses on minimizing development costs to ensure it can offer them very competitively while maintaining profitability.