Green NCAP granted the Dacia Spring five stars and the title of Best Electric Vehicle of 2022, a significant honor for the tiny electric city car from Renault's Romanian subsidiary. Green NCAP is the environmentally friendly branch of EuroNCAP, an independent group entrusted with evaluating the safety of new cars marketed in Europe. Green NCAP, unlike EuroNCAP, does not submit automobiles to crash tests and evaluation tests of their safety-focused ADAS systems but instead conducts an eco-audit of new models, awarding them from zero to five stars based on how environmentally friendly they are.
Each vehicle is tested and qualified in three separate categories: the "Clean Air Index," the "Energy Efficiency Index," and the "Greenhouse Gas Index." Typically, all new electric vehicles assessed receive excellent ratings in all three areas, translating to five stars. However, in the case of the Dacia Spring, its scores have been genuinely remarkable in addition to the five stars.
Thus, Dacia's modest electric urban vehicle received a 10/10 in clean air (characteristic of all new electric cars). Still, it also received a 10 in "greenhouse gases" and a 9.8 in efficiency, which is unusual. As a result, the average of the three scores was 9.9 out of 10.
In light of these findings, NCAP Green Technical Manager Aleksandar Damyanov claimed that "this Dacia car sets a standard for the industry," adding that "the Dacia brand is ahead of many other manufacturers in terms of environmental effect."
And it is astonishing to see a Dacia model leading a rating not based on sales or price, ahead of models like the Tesla Model 3 or the Cupra Born.
It should be noted that no model has yet managed to achieve 9.8 points in the energy efficiency assessment, which should cause the various manufacturers to reconsider the suitability of mounting large and heavy batteries in models designed for movement in urban environments and between small neighboring towns.
Another essential component of this certification is that it confirms the efficiency of the Dacia Spring during the loading and unloading procedure. Manufacturers now again emphasize the charging speed of their systems, but we rarely have data on how much energy is wasted as heat during these rapid charging procedures.
It should be noted that the Dacia Spring was the best-selling electric vehicle in Spain during January, with a market share of 9.2% of all-electric cars. This figure is expected to rise further with the arrival of the Dacia Spring Extreme, which is already available at Dacia dealers.
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The Dacia Spring Extreme has a maximum power of 65 hp (48 kW) and a slightly shorter gear ratio to deliver more torque to the wheels and increase dynamism when compared to the 33 kW (45 hp) variant, all with a more extended range of 224 kilometers, rising to 357 kilometers in the urban cycle. @via Green NCAP.
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