For the price and the technical characteristics, the Dacia Spring can be considered the Electric car the cheapest in the entire Spanish market, and that is why it is not possible to expect exceptional performance from it. With a homologated range of 230 kilometers and a top speed of 125 kilometers per hour, it is not a car designed to move on fast roads, but it is something that Javierour protagonist today, doesn’t seem to matter, because even though it’s hard to believe travels 200 kilometers daily with his electric Dacia Spring.
Javier got his own Dacia Spring at the end of last year. He bought it new and since then, and being a rural nurse in Extremadura, he has to travel a total of 200 kilometers a day between trips to and from work.
The proof that Javier covers a route of this magnitude every day lies not only in the number of mosquitoes that his Dacia Spring accumulates at the front (the unit is the one that accompanies these lines), but also in the more than 22,000 kilometers that the odometer reflects. Your on-board computer also indicates a average speed of 79 kilometers per hour, indicating that the majority of mileage is on highways. “I do 1,000 kilometers a week; 60% of the journey is on the motorway and 40% on secondary roads”, explains Javier.
This is how we live with a Dacia Spring and travel 200 kilometers a day
As Javier pointed out, it is also the cheapest Dacia Spring you can buy in Spain. No metallic paint, no automatic climate control, no cruise control. This means it is a Spring Comfort, and it has a price of 17,905 euros. Thanks to the Moves Plan, you can reduce up to 10,905 euros if a car is delivered in exchange for scrapping. If you don’t, it will be 12,905 euros.
For both performance and dynamic capabilities, Spring is a car designed to be used mainly in town. Javier is honest about it and says that on the highway his biggest rival is the wind.
With an approved autonomy of 230 kilometers and a power of 45 hp (33 kW)the truth is that the Dacia Spring will not be the model that most people will choose if they have to travel, like Javier, hundreds of kilometers a day.
In this sense, Javier not only admits that he has to recharge his car daily at home and leave at the start of the day with a 100% battery, but once he arrives at his destination, he recharges between 20 and 40% to be able to return home. with a sufficiently loose state of charge, since he states that due to his daily commute and the type of roads he travels on, with 90% battery, it can travel about 160 kilometers.
It may seem like an odyssey to have to charge an electric car twice a day to be able to cover long kilometers in one go, but the truth is that Javier takes the opportunity to work or rest while charging his car, and that “the effort ” Putting it on charge is no greater than plugging our mobile phone into the mains.
Has this Dacia Spring had any problems during these 22,000 kilometres?
When it comes to reliability, and considering electric cars, there is always one issue that stands out above many others; the battery degradation. In this sense, Javier says: “In the first 22,000 kilometers I did not notice any difference, the recharge time is the same as at the start and the estimated autonomy indicated by the car is similar.”
Yes, some breakdowns remained anecdotal during these first 22,000 kilometres, as Javier told us: “During these months the car gave me two warnings: one recently purchased, when I unplugged the charger, it came out “electrical failure”. I continued to circulate because I had to work; when I shut down and restarted it disappeared. I guess it would be my fault if I didn’t follow the logout protocol properly, it hasn’t happened to me anymore.”
The second warning came this week, in the midst of a heat wave: “I was going down the highway at 110 km/h, outside temperature 43 degrees, I had been driving for an hour straight and “turtle mode” enabled with “limited functionality”. I reduced the speed to 100 kilometers per hour and after five minutes it disappeared. That hadn’t happened to me until now, doing the same route.”
How much did Javier save by driving 1,000 kilometers a week with an electric car?
By way of conclusion, the protagonist of these lines not only declares that this is a car whose characteristics are sufficient for daily use, but also that, based on his calculations, he saves an amount of Substantial money compared to its previous vehicle, which was a hybrid utility vehicle.
“Comparing with the cost of running my previous hybrid utility vehicle, I calculated that in the first 6 months I saved around €1,200adding fuel savings and the absence of scheduled exams in this period”.