Dacia launches cool new Hipster

• New Dacia Hipster revealed
• Quirky concept
• Takes inspiration from Japanese Kei cars
• Sub-£13,000 price tag
• ‘Rethinking what customers want from an EV’, says Kia

Pour yourself an artisan coffee and check out the new Dacia Hipster - a concept vehicle that ‘rethinks what customers want from an EV’.

This dinky Dacia is an ultra-compact SUV designed for the cut and thrust of Shoreditch, Dalston or Manchester’s Ancoats.

It’s cool, it’s funky, and it’s probably partial to a tattoo and a plaid shirt.

Here’s everything you need to know:

What is the Dacia Hipster?

The Dacia Hipster is a fully-electric, ultra-compact concept SUV that ‘invents the popular electric car of tomorrow’.

It measures just 3 metres long, 1.53m high, and 1.55m wide, making it more of a pipsqueak than a Fiat 500e.

Yet there are four proper seats and the boot can be adjusted to measure a whopping 500 litres.

The Hipster has, then, a lot in common with Japan’s famous ‘Kei’ cars - a unique category of vehicle famed for being both compact and lightweight.

Speaking of which, the Dacia Hipster is 20% lighter than the Dacia Spring and the ambition behind the concept is to ‘halve the carbon footprint over the entire life cycle of the vehicle compared with the best electric vehicles currently available today’, says the firm.

A spokesperson adds: “Dacia Hipster Concept is just as at home in the city as it is on country roads or suburban routes. It is designed for everyday life, offering sufficient range for daily journeys with the need to recharge just twice a week. Here too, the Dacia Hipster Concept meets the real needs of customers. For example, in France, 94% of motorists travel less than 24 miles per day.”

To save expense and to make the Hipster as affordable as possible (reports suggest Dacia has built it to a sub-£13,000 budget), it has just a single colour and only three three painted parts - the front of the car and the side door entry elements.

A cube-shaped body, vertical windows and vertical windscreen make the most of the available space.

There’s no fancy touchscreen, with Dacia sticking to its BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) philosophy - so don’t forget your smartphone.

Will the Dacia Hipster be put into production?

It’s unlikely that the Dacia Hipster will be put into production as you see it here - but it is likely to inspire future models, even if it’s just a boxier version of the Dacia Spring.

It’s worth remembering that Dacia is partial to an eye-catching concept.

The radical (and doorless…) Dacia Manifesto off-roader (below) won umpteen awards and was used as a sort of rolling lab to test future tech.

The ‘Starkle material’, made from 20% recycled polypropylene, is now used in abundance on Dacia vehicles and was pioneered with the Manifesto.

So, while Hipster is just a concept, it could still be an important testbed for Dacia going forwards.

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