This just in: Dacia is readying a sub-£15k electric city car

All hail the Small Car: Dacia is readying a tiny new EV that, true to Dacia’s values, will be cheap. Like, really cheap.

Announcing the Renault Group’s financial performance in 2024 – short story, it good! – boss Luca de Meo said the as-yet unnamed new Small Dacia (we’re running with Tinyster until someone says otherwise) will be priced at below €18,000. That’s less than £15k.

It’ll also be really fast, but not in the traditional ‘fast’ sense because... it’s a Dacia. No, fast in the ‘we’re gonna churn it out really quickly’, because the Tinyster will be developed and ready for production in just 16 months.

Sixteen months. “I defy any competitor in the world to do that,” de Meo said, “including the Chinese when they come to Europe.” Consider the new Renault Twingo took just 21 months to develop, and you’ll see Renault’s making the pizzettas faster.

Speaking of the Twingo, this new Tinyster will likely be spun off the same platform, especially as de Meo pointed out the Twingo’s advantages and the development the Group has put into making it.

Stuff like reducing the parts complexity – the Twingo uses 30 per cent fewer parts than the new, award-winning Renault 5, for example – and thus reducing the production outlay. Renault said it’ll be 40 per cent cheaper to build than the R5 because it only uses some 750 parts. There’s more complexity in a Lego Technic set.

And speaking of Technic sets, you’ll remember Dacia already makes a small electric car which is already quite cheap, and it’s called the Spring. De Meo didn’t say whether this new Twingo-based Tinyster would sit alongside that car or eventually replace it, but considering it’s still at least a year and a bit away, we’d proffer the latter.

More as we get it.