- Four-seat compact SUV could be cheaper than Dacia’s spring
- Design study loses the comfort of the creature to keep costs down
- Inspiration taken from nothing and teenage engineering
The Dacia Hipster concept, which was not three meters long, 1.53 meters high and 1.55 meters wide, looked a little comical as it silently rolled into a hangar on the outskirts of Paris, complete with driver behind the wheel and Dacia design vice director David Durand and waved from the back seat.
It is inevitably small, but with all four, 14-inch wheels pushed to every corner to maximize the space, it can comfortably put four or transport a washing machine in the back when the rear seats are folded flat.
As projects go, this is probably the most dacia thing that Dacia has done for a long time.
In order to summarize, the company has been on an upward course for the past ten years, proving a smash hit with customers thanks to its excellent value proposition and non-vice dicks.
Dacias has always represented good value, but they have moved beyond the cut price properties and now packs their own personality.
Proudly part of the Renault group, the company is able to take existing technology (often from previous generation cars) and apply it quickly and cheaply to its own models.
But in recent years, it has increased its styling, spiced its branding and cemented its reputation as a ‘Go-Anywhere’ Road Trip Facilitator who has squeezed customers from virtually every car segment, age group and social status.
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When spring EV arrived, it quickly became the cheapest electric vehicle money could buy and is still one of the most affordable ways to enjoy emission -free car driving. But not happy with what Dacia is on a mission to lower costs further.
By removing 70 cm from the total length of spring, the company has been able to create significant material savings in the hipster concept, but there are hundreds of other details that help bring down costs further.
Design Director David Durand points to the fabric handles that open the doors, the sliding glass windows (the fact that they do not fall into the door card, provides extra space for elbows) and the exposed front and back lighting that removes excess cabinets.
“It just adds extra material and weight, so we left the lights raw,” Durand explains, accepting that there is more than a hint of teenage engineering and nothing about the exposed screws and cuboid surfaces.
Inside ditches the seats The usual damping and coating for a light frame covered by a surprisingly comfortable mesh fabric. “Like these office chairs,” Durand points out.
There is a small digital screen in front of the steering wheel for speed readings and other key metrics, but it is up to the driver to bring their own device.
There is a cradle and charging ports for a smartphone, and Dacia offers an app that connects with the vehicle to transform the said phone into a traditional infotainment dashboard, complete with shortcuts to Spotify, Google and all the other important apps.
Hip to be square
Dacia’s designers have also riffed for the next generation of the brand’s YouClip 3D-printed accessories that see things like lights, cup holders and storage solutions nicely fastened to different points throughout the car.
In the hipster concept, a number of these points boast a feed of power, which means that users can hit devices on the move from charging cradle, but also drift a fan for cooling or warming, and a bluetooth speaker to blow up the tunes.
“We even asked if we need air conditioning in a car like this,” Durand explains. “This is a vehicle owner will jump in a driving for 20 km, so there is no real need for large screens, A/C and other after -under -utilized extras,” he adds.
Durand tells me that the company is aiming for a hypothetical range of about 160 km from a full battery charge, and that DC quickly charging is probably out of the question as most people are likely to join at home or work.
Hipster is still very much a concept for now, but it feels that Dacia wants this to want this for production, with reference to the fact that the European Union is currently discussing and adding another car category to the existing L7 quadripsycle, which can be run without a full license and of those as young as 14 years in some countries.
A secondary category that sits just below an A-segment vehicle that legally requires a number of active and passive security systems that will add weight and cost to hipster would allow the compact four-seat to serve those who want something more than a Citroen Ami, but also do not want to commit to a more traditional EV.
As the budgets are stretched, younger drivers who find it difficult to find freedom and potential EV convertites exposed by large, inflated SUVs, the hipster concept offers a cool alternative -something unique, something wise and something very dacia.
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