It’s crazy that a new Dacia Spring EV can now be yours for just £10k
Mike Rutherford thinks the Dacia Spring is the electric car bargain of the year
It was me. I’m that “naive” car bloke whose request for a few new, small, pure-electric models at around £10,000 a pop was “greedily unreasonable” and “hopelessly out of touch” – or maybe not, I’m now smugly telling myself.
Consumer scepticism, suspicion and wariness of electric cars and their generally high prices were rife in 2024. This prompted my end-of-year plea to the armies of manufacturing, marketing and sales boys and girls out there to put at least one unapologetically modest, bargain-basement pure-EV on the market in 2025.
If nothing else, it would be a symbolic gesture and might just appeal to sceptics reluctant to splash out big bucks on pure-electric cars and tech they’re wary of, but who could be willing and financially able to have an exploratory dabble on one if it was dirt cheap.
Thus my proposal for what I dubbed the 10:100 – a £10,000 pure-electric four-seat car with a range of at least 100 miles in the real world and capable of 70mph on motorways.
Now, eight months later, the most modest motor of my tight-fisted dreams has arrived online and in the showrooms. I’m vindicated!
The latest developments go a bit like this: this summer you can be the outright owner of a proper, four-seat, delivery mileage, 100 per cent-electric car priced at, or very close to, £10k. Realistically, think a 130-mile real-world range – not brilliant, but OK for an urban dweller or a rural family in need of a low-mileage second or third car.
Admittedly, there are one or two negatives, the most significant being that while this EV at this sort of money has delivery mileage only, it will be officially “pre-registered” rather than “brand new” at point of sale; legally, therefore, you’ll be the second owner (the first was the dealership which, for boring and complicated reasons, registered it to itself). Who cares? Not me… or you if you’re seeking a great deal. After all, “pre-reg” and “new” cars are pretty much the same thing – unused, warrantied models, each with only a few miles on the clock and therefore factory fresh and good to go. What’s not to like?
The just-arrived £10k EV in question is the strangely appealing, serial award-winning Dacia Spring mini-SUV, which has an official and not unreasonable starting price of £14,995, but can now be purchased in pre-reg guise for £10k, give or take a few pennies.
Of the many I’ve seen on sale recently, the one at the official Dacia/Renault dealer in Nottingham impressed me most, thanks to having a mere 10 miles on the clock and a khaki paint job that does the Spring the sort of justice that no other factory colour can.
It’s £10,017 (for an unused, 100 per cent-electric car, remember) and there are plenty of other examples at similarly low prices, so if the Dacia Spring isn’t the EV bargain of the year, the decade and the century so far, I don’t know what is.
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