Brand New Dacia Spring

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I used to think that way, now I'm Old and have brittler bones, slower regeneration and less resistance to Hospital pathogens, I'm coming round to the idea of cars that cosset me in a crash!

A "small" (large by 1960s standards) car is never going to be as highly rated as a modern behemoth that won't even fit into a space at Tesco simply because the driver is a lot closer to the accident.

My bloated eC4 is much more survivable than a Spring would be- any accident has to crunch through several metres of energy absorbing material to reach me cocooned inside an array of airbags.

Arunmor

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81922410#Comment_81922410

The older I get the more I spend on tyres (cheaper than an expensive car with all the bells and whistles), gone are the days of Linglong ditch finders.

eschaton

They were £10k for delivery mileage cars not long after the car first came out so £9,500 isn’t exactly ground breaking.

If you just need a small car for mostly short journeys then for the price, they’ll do the job.

Ectophile

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81921668#Comment_81921668

It looks like the latest ones come with a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. In which case, forget about the advice of not charging it to 100%. The battery will probably outlast the car anyway.

WellKnownSid

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81921668#Comment_81921668

The 100% thing is a bit of an old wives' tale - it has a ring of truth if you really abuse the battery but many batteries top-balance so you must charge to 100% at least once a month to maintain the range. For LFP’s - they really need to be charged to 100% where possible because of their slightly odd voltage curve, the BMS needs it to retain accuracy.

That said.. my son recently tested the state of health of an ex demo car - he was horrified it was just 95%!

Turns out the (almost £100k) car was being driven by one of the managers who would charge it to 100% every night, take it to work (now 97%) and it would then be plugged in "just in case" it was needed as a demo, then plugged in again immediately after use!

Being plugged in four times a day and probably never ever going below 96% charge in the entire six months had probably put the equivalent of 150,000 miles on the battery!

HedgehogRulez

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81923283#Comment_81923283

Thanks for the hyperbole

Herzlos

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81922386#Comment_81922386

That's what I was thinking, they standards get stricter every few years and a lot of stars are lost for driver aides. A lot of the smaller Dacias rate badly by todays standards but are likely no less safe than a similar sized car of a few years prior and still on the road.

Could they be safer? Absolutely.
Does that make them dangerous? Not really, especially if you're using it as a low mileage city car where you're rarely getting above 20mph.

mgfvvc

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81922386#Comment_81922386

Also the MG3 scored 4 stars, even with a "critical safety failure".

Mildly_Miffed

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81923283#Comment_81923283

IF that were true, then that'd be a rather huge issue with the charge management software.

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I find conflicting information on LFP vs LiPo, it seems like the LFP battey in the Spring suffers huge degradation compared to LiPo (which is exactly the opposite of the scaremongering).

Some Springs are below 90% at less than 10K miles which is a big problem with a small battery.

I rather fancy a Spring, or an Inster, most likely the Spring, it would be a more useable package than my fault ridden eC4.