Chicer brother electric Dacia Spring

The model range of car manufacturers varies from market to market and more than once one model is not the other, although they may share their model name. Today we have the Dongfeng Nano Box on offer for you, another version of the car that you know in the Netherlands as the electric Dacia Spring, although Dongfeng takes a different tack with the Nano Box.

The Dacia Spring was presented for the European market in October 2020. With an initial starting price of €17,890 – which is now almost 21 mille – the Spring is the cheapest real electric car in the Netherlands. Dacia has managed to do this by basing the Spring on a model that is in fact not intended for the European market. The Spring is a fully electric version of the Renault Kwid adapted for the European market, a small, somewhat crossover-like hatchback that debuted in India in 2015. The Spring is by no means the only electric variant of that Kwid and a new model has now been added to the series of electric Kwid-like ones: the Dongfeng Nano Box.

Interior Dongfeng Nano Box

Like the Spring, the Nano Box has a front with lighting spread over two layers. The light units are logically almost identical, although the rest of the front is filled in differently. pretends the Nano Box has a grille between the headlights and Dongfeng gives the car, among other things, bumpers with chrome accents and silver inserts around the actual headlights. The part that is finished in black on the doors of the Spring has been sprayed on to the Nano Box. The interior of the Dongfeng Nano Box looks noticeably fresher than that of its Dacia brother. The traditionally covered instrumentation of the Spring makes way for a loosely placed 7-inch digital clock shop. In addition, the Nano Box does not have a small infotainment screen integrated in the center console, but a considerably larger 10-inch measuring unit that protrudes more or less loosely from the dashboard. Underneath we find deviating, thin ventilation grilles and a plastic part that visually involves the rotary knob housed in the higher center tunnel to choose the direction of travel with the rest of the dashboard.

Interior facelifted Dacia Spring

As mentioned, the Nano Box is by no means the only electric car that is in fact a Renault Kwid. Since 2019, New Energy Automotive – a partnership between Dongfeng, Renault and Nissan – has been producing the electric Renault City K-ZE. Renault sells the Spring in Brazil as Kwid E-Tech Electric and in China Dongfeng’s Fengshen division supplies the electric Aeolus EX1. Dongfeng’s Fengxing department sells another variant under the name T1. Then there is the E1 from Dongfengs Fenguang and Venucia, a collaboration between Nissan and Dongfeng, also has an electric Renault Kwid in the range in the form of the e30. That e30 was a Nissan Leaf before its last generation change.