The plug car is finally affordable for people who cannot or do not want to spend more than 25,000 euros. Then look my trio: 19,950 euros for the Leap engine T03, 24,499 euros for the Dongfeng Box, both from China and 24,300 euros for the Citroën ë-C3.
Yes, Dacia has been supplying the electric spring since 2021, but you can’t expect too much from that for twenty mille. With 44 or 65 hp you should not be in a hurry, after 200 kilometers the battery is empty, fast loading is not possible. More and less capital people are needed. Fast charger, range of at least 250 kilometers, better performance, room for four adults with luggage.
These three meet with a WLTP (specified) range of 265 (T03), 310 (box) and 320 kilometers (ë-c3) and fast charging speeds up to 46, 60 and 100 kW respectively. The box even loads AC chargers 3 phase with 11 kW, which the T03 is not and the Citroën can only be at an additional cost of 400 euros.
For similar money you now also have a decent electric occasion, but not everyone wants a heavy Tesla or VW ID.3 after the introduction of road tax for plug -in cars. In and around the city, that too, is always smaller. Great, for the first time the electric budget driver has something to choose. I already praise the slightly more expensive Hyundai in heaven here and soon BYD will also come with a little one.
Dongfeng Box
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Newcomer Dongfeng uses high with the box. For just over 24 mille you have a car with a large 42kWh battery and all the trimmings. Electrically adjustable driver’s seat, extensive multimedia system with the slick graphics of a premium brand. Start screen of the touch screen is a living room in which all furniture is controls. Via the radio you activate the audio, via the table lamp the mood lighting, via the drawer in the table on which it stands the apps. With Android Auto or Apple CarPlay you project your phone menu on the display, the wireless telephone charger is perfectly in line with the center armrest, the concern of the safety systems has no limits. A camera mounted in the A-style for the fatigue sensor apparently does not see the difference between light and moderate fatigue, because it almost warns against it at the same time. Equity: the box offers a quiet, pleasant living environment. The dashboard rigged with Citroën with Citroën and stitching strikes even looks chic.
The space for is large, that in the back of such a small car extraordinary. With the driver’s seat in my position I can sit behind myself royal. Storage space everywhere, two cup holders, a deep mountain compartment under the center armrest. The trunk is deep, the backrest made of one piece of the rear seat can be flat. For example, it will be fine shopping at IKEA or celebrating a couple without objections to a large portion of charging stops, although even that seems to be better than expected. A range of 300 kilometers is in Kwakkelwinters like ours. Due to their low weight, these cars, including the 1,324 kilo -heavy box, make their factory assignments more easily than larger and much heavier EVs. Dongfeng makes a first -class debut. If the box is just as reliable as thought out and you are looking for an EV without extreme requirements, then this is your choice. The aforementioned Hyundai instructed him, but with the larger 49kWh battery and similar equipment even after deduction of a temporary bonus discount, is 4,000 euros more expensive.
What can Leap motor and Citroën put about it?
Leap engine T03
Photos: Merlin Doomernik
The Citroën looks very nice, while the just not cuddly pug of Leap engine makes a big appeal to your aesthetic tolerance. Fortunately, the T03 has one strong asset. The prize for a fully equipped car dives with 19,950 euros just below the magical border of the twenty mille. This makes him a direct competitor of the Dacia Spring, but the T03 with its much larger 37.3kWh battery performs better in all areas. With a length of 3 meters 62 and a width of 1 meter 65 it is a dwarf, but not in the front. Larger drivers are also fine there because of the SUV-like height and in the back you are still better than in larger Stellantis models. You shouldn’t think too much about the 210 liter trunk.
The T03 is very interference and the camera that is still looking for the nuance in the box, literally pays every yawn from the driver with a tiredness -shunning alarm signal. Do not look at the interior for too long, because the Chinese think, just like the Koreans, not so long ago that piano polish is decent. Furthermore, for a bargain price you have a practical, comfortable, properly built car with hard but reasonable seats and one for the price ridiculously complete equipment with air conditioning, electric windows, a multimedia touch screen with navigation and Bluetooth, steering and speech controls plus ten safety assistants. Even the navigation system seems surprisingly well -informed about current traffic situations. After a wrong exit, he immediately calculates a new route and also loves it: “A new route has been calculated for you.”
With a capacity of 95 hp, as much as the box, the T03 is remarkably smooth and inside it stays quiet, although you hear some wind noise. This is not a premium product, that will be clear. He sounds like a flying dish in a comic radio play from the fifties. And one problem has to solve Leap engine quickly: the thermostat is difficult to adjust through the touchscreen. In the T03 the ice cold is either sultry. A windscreen wiper behind it could have been quite able to.
The other defects are details. The belt alarm sometimes wrongly thinks that your belt is not stuck. You straighten that with a jerk on the belt. Equity: his endurance is excellent. A 230 kilometer highway ride with one lunch break, in which I had a little 15 kilometers on an AC pole, ends with 24 kilometers of residual range. At an outside temperature of 5 degrees I could have taken that route just without a charging stop. I admit that for that result I did my best by not pushing the little one above a hundred, but it often didn’t go harder. In pointy traffic situations, the average highway speed in the Netherlands quickly drops to eighty, ninety.
Those who do not demand too much and are not hindered by moral objections to Chinese products saves themselves well with this car. It is more usable ten times than the Spring, the lack of a three -phase loader is not a disaster with such a small battery and a weight of 1,175 kilos saves thick in the road tax.
Citroën ë-c3
Photos: Merlin Doomernik
Chinacritics who thought they could go to the Citroën will be disappointed. The 44kWh battery of the ë-c3 is also Chinese. But the car is French in the best meaning. He is almost charming and that was a long time ago at Citroën, expert in pseudo-leuke, SUV-like boxes for the extinct genre Eigenheimers that this brand once kept going.
On departure he makes Frans difficult to do my wireless telephone connection. His Bluetooth cannot detect a smartphone, perhaps because according to the car it is 14.52 hours, while it is actually 10.31 hours – whatever a Citroën is, it is not a time machine. Frans Trusted, and therefore secretly nice, is a stubborn rattle in the dashboard. The signals of the safety systems are hysterical gaming noises from the nineties, a kind of retro needed panic sowers. For others a disaster, a virtue for me. As a sadomasochist, I cannot get enough of that childlike clunicity from an incurable Francophone environment. Furthermore, he is almost shocking professional for a Fransoos. You sit well on quite sitting seats of acceptable size, left and right your knees pleasantly have the space and the dashboard does not put too far into the cabin, which still promotes the spatial impression. The finish is apart from the rattle above modal, and typical French operating unit is omitted. You get normal buttons for air conditioning and ventilation, front and rear window heating; Cup holders and wireless telephone charger are located in understandable places. With typical Stellantis-Parafernalia such as the switch lever that Stellantis also mounts in Opels, you have learned to live as a Francophile.
Furthermore, the fastest and with 113 hp strongest car from the test trio appears to be a pleasure to ride. Spring tasty, sends pleasantly.
Loading is less. The loading speed did not come close to the promised 100 kW. While the battery was quite empty, with EVs a condition for fast loading times. At the Fastned display, the loading speed continued to rock around 30 kw after a short peak at 45 kW. That doesn’t get along. The Leap motor also makes no hurry by the way.
Another thing: the so-called lithium-iron phosphate or LFP battery of the Citroën performs poorly with cold. If you are fully loaded battery at 23 percent on departure, you have a range of less than 200 kilometers. The cold weather of 1 to 4 degrees and the strong wind were against, driver and co -driver were not light weights. The downside of the coin is that you can load LFP batteries more often without capacity loss. And maybe you get that 100 kW in the spring and summer without any problems. What is nice about the Citroën: for 340 euros and 9 cents you buy a mobile coffee maker with the name Handpresso Auto Capsule, blessed by Citroën with the incomprehensible recommendation ‘exactly as automated as needed’. That sentence has been haunting my mind for days.
Whatever there is to complain and worry, the democratization of electric driving has begun. The concessions for reach and employability are not too bad if you do not cross half the country every day, but like 90 percent of drivers, your car only uses commuting plus groceries. And that is now possible with a comfort that you could only dream of in this price range.