We won’t stop the presses, but we will urge you to look up from whatever it is you’re doing for 30 seconds in order to process the momentous news that has emerged this morning from the Dacia camp. 

We’ve had word from the budget Romanian carmaker that it has issued a name for its new electric car, and it’s going to be called… the Spring. Yes, the same Spring as the Spring that’s already on sale and has been since 2024 in the UK and since 2021 elsewhere. 

There’s a second generation Dacia Spring on the way, and it’s coming to the UK. That’s really all we’ve been told by Dacia – it’s a budget carmaker that’s economical with its words too. 

So let’s indulge in some totally uninformed guesswork, shall we? 

We’re expecting a full reveal later this year – likely at the Paris motor show in October, because it’s parent company Renault’s home show and nobody goes to the Bucharest motor show. 

Although the Bucharest show takes place the week before Paris, maybe we will see a shock global debut there. Then the car will go on sale in early 2027. 

But what will it look like? Dacia says the new Spring “keeps the essentials” – wheels, four seats, a boot, that sort of thing. Which is essentially meaningless and tells us not very much, except for that the new Spring will stay small.

The Dacia Spring is based on the Renault Kwid, a cheap little crossover for emerging markets in South America and India that’s been on the simmer since 2015. There’s been no news that Renault done anything with the platform the Kwid is built on (CMF-A for platform fans), but what else is there?

The only option is to build something on the RGEV Small setup (which is a development of CMF-B for platform fans and also used to be called AmpR Small), which also provides the underpinnings for the Renault 5, 4 and new Twingo. And the Nissan Micra and two new Fords that are going to be launched in the next year or two. 

We’re expecting a city car based on the Dacia Hipster concept at any point in the next 12 or so months – could that be the Spring? Seems like that would be a waste of a good name they’ve created with the Hipster. And Dacia is probably waiting for the EU to firm up its new European kei car rules too. 

So could the new Dacia Spring be a re-engineered version of the Twingo? Dacia has the Hipster city car on the way, a new electric Sandero coming in 2027 and a larger EV after that. 

Which means we can expect a battery around 28kWh for a range of about 160 miles, a price starting around £15,000 that would keep the Spring as the cheapest EV on sale, and it’ll be built in Europe to take advantage of some of those sweet, sweet government EV subsidies.