Dacia today revealed the Hipster Concept, offering 100 per cent electric mobility tailored to everyday needs while aiming to halve the carbon footprint of electric vehicles.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the automotive industry has evolved, particularly under the impact of regulation and electrification, towards cars that are ever larger, ever heavier, ever more sophisticated and therefore, ever more expensive.
In this world that pushes for ‘more and more’, Dacia has been pursuing its goal of enabling as many people as possible to access essential mobility, with determination and success for two decades.
But what will really be essential tomorrow? How can we make the electric mobility market accessible to as many people as possible? What if we started with a blank page? This is the challenge Dacia has taken on, to reinvent the people’s car.
Romain Gauvin, Head of Advanced Design and Exterior Design at Dacia explains: “This is the most Dacia-esque project that I have ever worked on. It has the same societal impact as the Logan did 20 years ago, and it involves inventing something that does not exist today.”
DACIA HIPSTER CONCEPT: THE POPULAR CAR OF TOMORROW
To design Dacia Hipster Concept, the teams studied the real needs of drivers and passengers and how they use their cars in real life. In short, they focused on the essentials.
Designers had to ensure that the Dacia Hipster Concept was a companion for everyday life. Therefore, making it agile, practical and economical.
Stéphanie Chiron, Dacia Advanced Product Manager said: “Dacia Hipster Concept has everything you could want in an everyday vehicle. Measuring just 3 metres long, 1.53 metres high and 1.55 metres wide, it has four proper seats and a boot that can be adjusted from 70 to 500 litres.”
Hipster Concept includes genuine capacity in an ultra-compact format which is a unique proposition that does not currently exist on the market.
The car takes Dacia’s weight-driven approach even further. It is 20 per cent lighter than Spring. This performance is a result of Dacia’s overall ‘Eco-Smart’ approach – less weight means less raw materials and less energy used in manufacturing. It also means less mass to move, so less energy is consumers.
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.
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.
With Dacia’s first electric car, Spring, the brand was the first manufacturer to have made electric mobility affordable. With Hipster Concept, Dacia wants to go even further by targeting a wide audience that currently cannot find anything to suit their budget. The average price of new vehicles in Europe rose by 77 per cent between 2010 and 2024, far outpacing household purchasing power.
A SIMPLE AND OBVIOUS EXTERIOR DESIGN
In the history of the automotive industry, the most successful and popular cars have all been distinguished by innovative design.
Romain Gauvin, Head of Advanced Design and Exterior Design at Dacia adds: “Our ambition in reinventing the true people’s car was to give it a distinctive and memorable design. A car that can be sketched in three strokes of a pencil.”
The Dacia Hipster Concept stands out for being very simple and robust. It’s a block sitting firmly on four wheels at the four corners, with no overhang at either the front or rear.
This simplicity is reflected in the design of the front end, which is entirely horizontal and incorporates sleek headlights that give Dacia Hipster Concept a serious yet friendly look.
Priority is given to functionality at the rear. The tailgate covers the entire width of Dacia Hipster Concept and opens in two parts to provide ultra-practical access to the boot.
True to its design-to-cost expertise, Dacia Hipster Concept features an innovative rear light design. Positioned behind the tailgate window, they do not require their own glass panel.
In keeping with this approach, Hipster Concept is designed with a single body colour and only three three painted parts – the front of the car and the side door entry elements.
The robustness of the Concept’s design is further enhanced by generous side protection in Starkle – a material partly derived from recycled plastic, created by Dacia’s engineers – and front and rear skids that are dyed in the mass in line with Dacia’s ‘Robust and Outdoor’ approached.
Dacia Hipster Concept is not like other cars. It gets straight to the point, and this is evident from the moment you first see it. The exterior door handle has been replaced by a strap, which is lighter, less expensive and just as practical.
BIGGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE
The interior of the Dacia Hipster Concept has been optimised to offer exceptional space given its compact exterior dimensions.
The interior closely follows the very cubic shapes of the bodywork, particularly with very vertical windows and windscreen, to make the most of the available space. The glazed front section of the roof provides light, contributing to the feeling of space. To reduce costs and weight, the side windows are sliding.
Four adults can sit comfortably inside. The seating position for the driver and front passenger is identical to that of the Dacia Sandero, ensuring comfort and a safe view of the road. Access to the rear seats is facilitated by the wide door opening and the front passenger seat that tilts forward.
Dacia has paid particular attention to the design of the seats to combine comfort and user-friendliness with weight and cost reduction. Their design has been simplified with a visible frame combined with a particularly warm technical mesh fabric. The front seats are merged to form a bench seat, a simple and welcoming feature that is another nod to the iconic popular cars of the past. Finally, the openwork headrests once again help to optimise weight.
Designed for real life, Dacia Hipster Concept is suited to all everyday situations. Thanks to the folding rear seat, boot capacity can vary from 70 litres with four passengers to 500 litres with two passengers.
To enhance comfort and safety, the dashboard incorporates two airbags for the driver and passenger.
To respond as precisely as possible to everyone’s specific needs, the interior of the Dacia Hipster Concept is ‘YouClip native’. Equipped with only the essentials as standard, this interior can be customized using the range of YouClip accessories developed by Dacia. The 11 YouClip anchor points are distributed across the dashboard, door panels and boot interior. They can accommodate various accessories, such as cup holders, armrests, ceiling lights and so on.
Connectivity and digital technology are now essential features, helping to simplify and streamline everyday vehicle use, particularly with the smartphone docking station, which remains faithful to Dacia’s BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) philosophy. It enables seamless connectivity between smartphones and vehicles.
The smartphone even becomes a digital key to unlock and start the car. Once the driver is seated, the dock acts as a multimedia screen to display their favourite navigation app. It also serves as the vehicle’s audio system, connected to a portable Bluetooth speaker that is compatible with YouClip.
