Finances model Dacia has introduced it should enter the Dakar Rally from 2025 with a automobile created in collaboration with British motorsport and automotive tech agency Prodrive. 

The Romanian producer says it should use the event of the racing prototype entered within the World Rally-Raid Championship as a chance to check new applied sciences for its street automobiles. 

Though not beforehand related to rallying, Dacia believes the Dakar Rally is a “excellent illustration of the steadiness between the ‘rational’ and the ‘emotional’ that lies on the coronary heart of Dacia’s DNA”. 

The T1+ prototype to be developed for Dakar will enable Dacia to show its manufacturing abilities in the case of all-wheel drive functionality in excessive situations. 

The Dacia challenger will compete within the 2024 Rallye du Maroc as a take a look at occasion for the Dakar Rally the next yr and might be piloted by Rally legend Sebastien Loeb and Spaniard Cristina Gutierrez Herrero. 

“Not solely is that this a take a look at of Dacia’s true robustness, however it is usually a exhibiting of our dedication to low-carbon mobility,” mentioned Dacia CEO, Denis Le Vot. 

Along with Prodrive’s motorsport data and manufacturing capabilities, Dacia may even draw sources for the challenge from its dad or mum firm, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. 

Prodrive has seen earlier success within the Dakar Rally, attaining second place in 2022 and 2023. 

Final yr, Prodrive created what it calls the “world’s first all-terrain hypercar”, with energy from a 3.5-litre twin-turbocharged V6 engine making greater than 447kW and 700Nm. 

The £1.25m (AU$2.38 million) road-legal rendition of Prodrive’s Dakar racer offers “house owners the chance to expertise what it’s prefer to drive Loeb’s Dakar automotive throughout the desert, however with all of the comforts of a street automotive and the flexibility to drive it from your house, via a metropolis, to any vacation spot of your selection.”

Dacia additionally says that the prototype will run on artificial gasoline provided by Saudi oil big Aramco. 

The artificial take a look at gasoline, created by combining “renewable hydrogen with captured CO₂, leading to a lower-carbon, drop-in gasoline”, will enable Dacia to check the effectivity of low-carbon fuels appropriate with present combustion engines. 

After Germany’s opposition to the EU’s proposed ban of latest combustion autos from 2035, it was introduced that combustion-powered automobile gross sales would proceed past 2035 offered they “solely use CO2-neutral fuels”. 

With combustion autos now not headed for sure loss of life in these markets, it’s probably extra producers, similar to Dacia, will look to the viability of artificial fuels as a further providing alongside electrical autos. 

Porsche is only one main automaker that has made important investments in artificial fuels, together with the institution of a manufacturing plant in Chile in 2022 and plans to begin manufacturing in Tasmania by 2026.

The Dacia model isn’t presently accessible on the Australian market, however Renault Australia boss Glen Sealey informed CarExpert the native market could also be on the playing cards for 2025 when the next-generation Duster could possibly be engineered for right-hand drive. 

Of Dacia’s present product lineup, the fashions that can curiosity Australia are the Duster and Bigster (which continues to be in idea kind), in line with Mr Sealey.