The Dacia Spring Electric is now available | Hacker News Reader

The Dacia Spring Electric is now available

en.media.groupe.renault.com

41 pointsbogidon41 comments

"Good news!" - James May

The benefit to the BEV marketplace is that it gives consumers a point a reference to compare to the upper ends of the market allowing them quickly decide if vehicles between those two points are offering suitable range at their price point.

Originally a Leaf was good for 117 KM EPA/173 KM NEDC.

We have cars pushing or exceeding 500km and a few elite in the 700km+. So repeating myself, people can see this Dacia with its 225km range with a 26.8 kWh battery can be had at just under 18k Euros, they can walk up market and at each stage make a determination in their head as to whether the manufacturer is actually offering a good deal. This is going to put more pressure on those who under perform on range as there are a few just over 300km range at very steep price points

The title is wrong, the car was just announced, it is not available NOW. It does not even have a price announced, otherwise I would probably order one right now. I currently don't have a car, but I need one only for short city drives orthogonal on public transportation routes and the range is not a problem, weather protection in the winter is.

Any insight about who makes the batteries for those cars?

It seems they are supplied by CATL, like all western automotive groups that are manufacturing in China.

It's no Dacia Sandero, though.

That's great news, isn't it? (-:

As you can see, people didn't get your reference to Top Gear's running joke about the press release announcements ahead of availability of the Sandero, in a comment to a press release announcement of a Dacia car that is "available now" but cannot be ordered until 2021.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7-7Ps8EWnk

The future of French cars… made in China.

Dacia is a Romanian car manufacturer, now part of Renault Group.

> The Dacia Spring is based on the Renault City K-ZE produced in China since 2019, which itself is based on the Renault Kwid produced in India and Brazil, and its made on the CMF-A platform.[4].

Is the Spring assembled in Romania though? Or is it simply a rebranded City K-ZE? I assume that at the very least, batteries are made in China.

No, it's not, it's just rebranded.

Czech

Romanian :-)

I just looked for the announcement video and it felt very bad that the CEO pronounced Dacia wrong so many times in 4 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUwmEXtMYGQ

At the same time I hope it will be successful on the market.

Plenty of companies adapt the pronunciation of brands according to different markets or changing fashions.

Porsche has one syllable in Britain, Nissan has a short "i" in Britain but a long one in the USA, Skoda has lost its Š, etc.

Dacia is targeting Europe with this car, but it's not planning a British version. Maybe in Britain and US it's not important, but in Eastern-Europe we at least are trying to be respectful with other nations by not changing the pronounciation of the brands too much (also we would just laugh at somebody who doesn't know how to pronounce Porsche correctly). I'm not from Romania, but I haven't ever heard this brand mispronounced in my country.

I personally try to learn a bit of the local language everywhere I travel at least on a very basic level (maybe just a few words), and usually people appreciate it.

"Respectful of other nations" and "just laugh" don't go together. You probably can't pronounce my first name, surname or hometown, but I won't laugh.

In any case, I'm not defending the practise, just explaining it. The marketers don't care at all about respect, unless (or until) that increases sales.

One is done by adults, the other are by children (I remember even 7 year old classmates collecting cards with cars on it). These car brands are just part of the culture independent of age.

If you weren't ever laughed at / shamed at in high school, consider yourself lucky, it's not a good feeling.

Dacia is the former name of the country before it was conquered by the Roman empire. It is not a matter of fashion to "adapt" how to correctly pronounce it.

Everything is a matter of fashion when the marketeers are in control of the publicity.

The original Latin pronunciation would be "Da-kia", and the current English pronunciation for the region has a soft C "Da-si-a".

Nissan is pronounced Nis-san in Japanese so I would take that (with a short i) as the "correct" pronunciation.

The British pronunciation doesn't separate the two syllables in the way that is implied by Nis-san. There is only one s sound in the British English. But I know almost nothing about Japanese so I'm not sure if the Japanese is different.

Maybe more accurately Ni-SAN as the 's' is quite silent in the first syllable and the stress is on the second. But to be honest, I don't think there is that much difference in pronunciation here in the UK compared to the US and they are both not that far off from the Japanese pronunciation.

Top speed of 78 miles per hour and a maximum range of 140 miles. This car is not really acceptable for freeway driving.

As an American, our typical freeway speed limit is 70mph. I’m not familiar with the speed limits where this car is designed to be sold/used, are you saying this car is too slow to drive on the freeway? What’s the average speeds for the freeways over there?

In my EU country minimal car speed for highway is 80km/h, so this car would be allowed to drive there. Trucks are limited to max 90km/h on highway here, so only question would be if it is agile enough to be able to safely overtake trucks, or it would just have to follow some truck most of the time... I think that is quite ok for city car.

I assume bgorman is American, as he has quotes the values in miles, even when the website gives them first in metric.

130km/h is the motorway speed limit in many European countries, this car's top speed is 125km/h. It's advertised as a "city car" though, so it's probably fine. In and near cities the limit on motorways is often 110km/h or less anyway.

In the Netherlands the highway speed limit is now 100km/h to lower CO2 and N emissions. So it would do perfectly fine here.

For us metric using people that's 125km/h and 225km range. Enough for day to day use, esp. in Europe.

That top speed is less than I would be expected to drive on most freeways in Denmark.

Most commuters never drive on the freeway. Especially in Europe where most cities do not have freeways inside the city.

It is not an this is not a problem for the target audience. As we accept that desktop computers and laptops meet different requirements, small cars for short urban trips are just a different requirement and there is a pretty big market for it.

In this country, at least, the speed limit on motorways is 120km/h, so that should be fine. It’s probably aimed primarily as a city car, in which case the range should also be okay.

It's meant for poor Europeans and rest of the worlders, and definitely not for Tesla buyers. And in this case, for city dwellers.

I'm only half joking about the "poor" part. For 80% of the world a car starting at $35k (which is actually about €45k everywhere outside the US, so more like $55-60k) is an expensive car. I'm pretty sure the world average car price is $20k or less.

There's no mention of price anywhere in the source material though.

Cheapest in Europe which means less than the Skoda Citygo which is ~£20,000.

Gossips in local EU media says the price is expected to be around 15k EUR before benefits.

in Romania the state incentive for electric cars is 10K EUROS! can't wait to buy this car for 5K :D

Not really, cause it's 10k EUROS but no more than 50%

I know Dacia and Dacias are cheap. Ain't nobody gonna buy a $50k Dacia. Maybe in 2040, but definitely not now.

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