WRAPS OFF DACIA HIPSTER

Budget brand unveils new concept to demonstrate how it thinks a 13,000 electric vehicle could be developed

- Phil McNamara

EVERYONE is talking about how to make the affordable electric car. But talk - like everything to do with Dacia - is cheap, so the Romanian value brand has sprung into action to deliver the Hipster, its vision of a £13,000 EV.

The chunky cube measures just three metres long but crams four seats into its flexible interior. And those tough 4x4 looks feed through to the interior: the driving position is roughly the same height as the Bigster SUV's, to give occupants a reassuring view out.

But the most compelling stat is that the Hipster weighs just 800kg, a whopping 20 per cent reduction on Dacia's 3.7m-long Spring EV. Some of that saving comes from a right-sized battery the Hipster would be good for about 100km (62 miles), almost three times the typical French daily mileage but it's also to shrink the car's footprint to cut mass, material cost and carbon emissions.

Dacia unsurprisingly sees the Hipster as the perfect car for not just cramped cities, but also the countryside, where bus routes are being cut and some retirees live on a tight budget. It's a family's ideal second car or "for nurses on a small salary starting work at 2am, who need a car," David Durand, Dacia design director, told Auto Express at a sneak preview in Paris.