Home / R&D / Sustainable Mobility / FC has a new Electric Car!
By Daniele Pagani
Former trainees – or anyone who has been in Folkecenter in the last ten years – will remember the “Red car”, companion of many excursions and adventures. Well, time passes for everyone, including for the red car…and one day it is just time to move on!
As the car was involved in an accident at the beginning of the year (luckily no one got injured), it was decided that the moment came to send it to retirement and get a substitute. After a long search and evaluation, we found its successor: welcome everyone to the new Folkecenter’s Dacia Spring!
The car entered Folkecenter’s family in June and it was purchased used, with approximately 39.000 km on the clock. Currently, if bought new, it is still the cheapest electric car that you can get in Europe – although that is probably going to change soon, as competitors are planning to release vehicles in the same price range.
Forget about the power or hi-tech that you can find in Teslas (or similar): this is meant as a cheap, electric city car, equipped with only the essential. Still, that essential fits very well with our needs (and the ones of many people) and it can still carry four people from A to B without worrying too much about range.
The car is equipped with a usable 25 kWh battery and has 33 kW of power (equivalent to 45 hp). The declared range is between 110 and 255 km, depending on the weather conditions, and our model is equipped with a 34 kW DC quick charger, which can bring the car from 10% to 80% in 38 minutes. It is based on the petrol-powered Renault Kwid (designed for the Indian market) which has an average CO2 emission of 108 g/km. This will be the value will we now use to track the CO2 savings for this car.
The Dacia fulfills three objectives: first, to allow our trainees to move around; second, to make young people experience electric cars, so that they will consider them when buying their own; third, as a test bench for our studies on renewable energy system integration and electricity price monitoring.
We hope the Dacia will be with us for many years and that it will drive all the new generations of trainees towards an emission-free world!