Dacia Spring vs Leapmotor T03: which baby EV is the biggest bargain?

When the new car market started to sway towards electric power, many of us hoped that small, affordable cars would lead the charge. It’s a bit of a shame, then, that with the exception of one or two credible but expensive city cars, what we mainly got was a glut of large, heavy SUVs that make little to no sense in urban areas. 

After a couple of false starts in the small-car segment, the choice is now rapidly expanding; the vehicles’ sizes are coming down, but more importantly, so are the prices. The two cars you see here are perfect examples of that: a pair of small electric cars that cost less than almost any petrol-powered alternatives in the class. 

The Dacia Spring is hugely popular in mainland Europe already, with thousands of them zipping around continental city streets. But it’s only now, following a cosmetic and mechanical overhaul, that it’s available to British buyers, so was it worth the wait? 

We’re testing it against the dinky T03 from a brand unfamiliar to most people in the UK, Leapmotor. We want to find out if it’s possible for a new car to simply be too cheap. And do these two rivals demand any compromises that will be too much to bear in everyday use? 

Dacia Spring

38

The Dacia Spring is the Romanian brand's first fully electric car, and it’s also the smallest model the firm has offered in the UK. Both of those things are likely to attract new buyers to the brand, and this is backed up by data from the continent. Dacia says that based on Spring sales in Europe, where the car was available in a pre-facelift guise, 79 per cent of buyers were new to the brand, and 93 per cent had never purchased an electric car before. 

Used - available now

2022 Vauxhall

Grandland

20,340 milesAutomaticPetrol1.2L

Cash £19,395

View Grandland

2022 Volvo

XC40

23,538 milesAutomaticPetrol1.5L

Cash £27,291

View XC40

2022 Volvo

XC40

30,131 milesAutomaticPetrol1.5L

Cash £24,391

View XC40

2021 Volvo

XC60

10,908 milesAutomaticPetrol2.0L

Cash £32,791

View XC60

But it faces a tough battle to convince UK buyers, because in addition to the similarly priced Leapmotor T03 and the similarly sized but more expensive Hyundai Inster, the Spring has to fight off a range of used EVs that are available for similar cash – a three-year-old Vauxhall Corsa Electric or Fiat 500e both easily fall below the £15,000 mark. 

Tester’s notes

Electric powertrains make perfect sense for urban delivery drivers, and Dacia caters to that market with a commercial version of the Spring, the Cargo. This replaces the back seats with a mesh bulkhead and lashing points, opening up the load space to 1,085 litres, with a maximum 370kg payload. 

It gets the more powerful 64bhp electric motor and much of the Extreme trim’s standard kit, but rides on smaller 14-inch wheels and has a top speed that’s limited to 70mph. Sill protectors and a more robust seat fabric complete the changes. 

Leapmotor T03

38

While Leapmotor is a new brand to UK customers, it benefits from being a part of the wider Stellantis group, which means it already has 44 dealerships in place at the time of writing. Northern Ireland is the only country in the United Kingdom that isn’t yet catered for, but it will follow later as part of an expansion that will bring the total number of dealers to 80 before the end of 2025. 

Tester’s notes

Pop open the charging flap on the nose and plug in a CCS plug at a typical rapid charger, and the Leapmotor T03 is capable of topping up its battery at up to 48kW. That’s fairly modest by modern EV standards, but it’s still quicker than the Spring’s 30kW maximum. 

Given that the battery isn’t that big anyway, it means that a 30-80 per cent charge takes 36 minutes. That means there’s a reasonable wait on a longer trip, but those trips aren’t likely to be very common in a car like this anyway; most T03s will be topped up at home.

Head-to-head

38

On the road

If we approached this pair without knowing their respective prices, we could have been convinced that the T03 was the more expensive. 

While a back-to-basics feel makes the Spring lightweight and nippy in town, the Leapmotor is noticeably more effective at suppressing wind noise, tyre roar and suspension knocks. While the T03 has a slight performance edge on paper, the two cars feel similarly nippy around town.

Tech highlights

The term ‘rightsizing’ has been used in recent years to describe fitting a car with an appropriately sized powertrain, and these EVs’ motor and battery combinations fit that term. 

While the Spring’s 64bhp and 113Nm of torque are way off most new EVs, the Dacia weighs just 984kg. The Leapmotor is a little heftier, at just under 1,200kg, but makes up for that with more power (94bhp) and torque (158Nm) than its rival. 

Price and running

A lack of inertia is one of efficiency’s great allies, and these two featherweights prove this: few cars on sale use as little energy. 

At a time when many EVs average between 3.0 and 4.0 miles/kWh, the Spring struggled to dip much lower than 5.0mi/kWh in our hands, meaning that it costs pennies to run. The T03 ran it close, averaging an impressive 4.6mi/kWh over a similar mix of roads.

Practicality

Both cars occupy a tiny amount of space on the road, but the Leapmotor is the better packaged of the two. The T03’s back seats are genuinely usable for adults on short trips, with knee and headroom both impressive. 

The Spring’s back seats are a bit tighter, but still fine for children. Its strength is its 308-litre boot, which has more capacity  than the T03 (210 litres) and even the petrol-powered Hyundai i10 (252 litres).

Safety

Dacia’s Euro NCAP ratings regularly look lacklustre against ever-more stringent safety criteria. The same is the case with the original Spring, which scored one star in 2021. Its most recent incarnation has gained extra safety tech, though (see Reliability & Safety, page 42). 

On paper, the T03 fares a lot better, but its incredibly irritating – and often plain wrong – driver-assist systems were so intrusive that we turned most of them off.

Ownership

It’s too early to tell how well the T03 will stand up to daily life, but piggybacking off the existing Stellantis dealer network should give plenty of drivers the chance to sample the car up close and place an order. 

The Leapmotor’s four-year warranty is more generous than the Spring’s three-year package, too. Dacia finished in 22nd place out of 32 brands in our 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey.

Verdict

Winner: Leapmotor T03

38

For a new brand to wade into the market and emerge victorious at the first time of asking is no mean feat, and for Leapmotor to overcome one of our perennial favourites in Dacia is even more significant. It’s a deserved win, though; the T03 is impressively refined and grown-up for such a small car, the interior packaging is excellent and the price is very competitive. 

However, we’d argue that its victory here should have been far more comfortable, were it not for its frustrating touchscreen interface and over-zealous safety-assist systems. With those flaws in mind, it wins by just a whisker rather than at a canter. 

Latest Leapmotor T03 deals

Runner-up: Dacia Spring

38

Initially we gave quite glowing reports of the Spring, with its low price point making it easier to overlook some of its flaws. However, the arrival of the Leapmotor T03 shows just what buyers can have for the cash, delivering significantly better refinement and space for even less money, which makes the Spring’s downsides harder to forgive. 

Dacia’s poor NCAP ratings will be a deal-breaker for some people, but the fabulous efficiency, ease of use and manoeuvrability make the Spring an ideal urban or second car. Convince your Dacia dealer to fit some proper tyres and enjoy this city car’s tiny running costs.

Latest Dacia Spring deals

Prices and Specs

Looking for your next car? You can now search our nationwide dealer network for a choice of great cars on offer right now with new, used and leasing deals to choose from...