Had a look at some BYDs yesterday

BYD is going to start selling electric cars in Australia in a few months. There are already loads of BYD electric buses in Sydney.

They've just opened an "experience centre" in central Sydney, so I went along for a look yesterday.

They have two cars on display. Both are Chinese-spec, LHD, so they can't be test driven. But it was interesting to have a good look at them, both inside and out.

I think BYD only offers buses and trucks in North America so far. But I could be wrong.

The two cars on display were the Dolphin (called the EA1 in some markets), and the Yuan Plus (which will inexplicably be called the Atto 3 when it comes out in Australia). The Dolphin is a small city car, about the size of a VW Polo or Toyota Yaris, and the Yuan Plus is a compact SUV, about the size of a Honda HR-V or Toyota C-HR. The Dolphin is a purpose-built EV, and the Yuan Plus is the EV version of a car that's also sold as a hybrid and a PHEV.

They're going to be very cheap by EV standards. As benchmarks, Australian prices for EVs that I think you can get in the US are as follows:

• Nissan Leaf - from A$49,990
• Hyundai Kona Electric - from A$54,500
• Kia e-Niro - from A$62,490
• Hyundai Ioniq 5 (if you can get one - there's a two-year waiting list) - from A$71,900

These are list prices: On The Road prices add a couple of thousand dollars.

The cheapest new EV you can buy in Australia is the MG ZS EV, which is A$42,990.

The Atto 3 starts at A$44,990 drive-away, which is about the same as the MG ZS EV. Sales are starting in a few weeks. The Dolphin / EA1 will start at around A$30,000.

The Atto 3 was pretty good. I liked the interior design. There was a good amount of space - more than you'd get in an HR-V and a lot more than in a C-HR. Seats were comfortable and supporting. Most of the interior fittings were well-made. There was a nice, padded dashboard, and very clear digital driver's display and infotainment screen. Like the VW ID.3 (which we don't have here), the driver's display moves up and down with the steering wheel. The 12.8" infotainment screen is portrait when driving, and spins to portrait when parked so you can watch videos while charging the car. In the back, windows were big, and there was a panoramic sunroof, so there was a really good sense of space.

There were a couple of fairly big let-downs, though. The air vents were really plasticky and felt fragile. The air-vent controls were even more plasticky and fragile-feeling, and notchy and just cheap. The vents and controls had a cool, unusual design, but they were just badly made. It really let down the rest of the car. The volume controls and a few other buttons on the centre console looked like nice metal, but felt cheap and lightweight. All in all, it was a pretty good car, especially when you consider how much cheaper it is than rivals like the Kona and e-Niro. But it was not perfect.

The EA1 was the bigger surprise. Because it's a purpose-built EV, it's very well-packaged. While it's as big as a Polo or Yaris on the outside, there was more space than a Golf or Corolla on the inside. The design inside was cool - a lovely, swoopy dashboard in a combination of metallic pink hard plastic and soft purple-and-grey padding, with turbine-style air vents. Volume controls and other knobs were nice, solid metal. The back seats were very comfortable and had loads of space. Seats were a convincing fake leather, in white, pink and purple.

The EA1 is going to be 30% cheaper than the next-cheapest EV in Australia when it's launched, and prices are actually competitive with ICE cars of similar size: Yarises start at $23,990, but with far less equipment than an EA1. If I were in the market for a car that size, I'd seriously consider it.

Charging speeds may be an issue for both cars. They have BYD's Blade LFP batteries - the ones that are also going to be put into the Model 3. They're safer, and they seem to last longer than other batteries. But the EA1 charges at 60kW, and the Atto 3 at 80kW. The charging speed curve is much flatter than with other cars, so 80-100% is almost as quick as 10-30%. But still, I think this could be a problem: with the extended range version of the Atto 3, you get a 420km WLTP range (so maybe 320-330km real-world, and 10-80% charge takes 45 minutes. To me, this is too slow.

All in all, though, it was an interesting day.

I'll paste a couple of video reviews below so you know the cars I'm talking about.

 

EA1

Atto 3

 

Hmmm..... Yes, that just looks like straight protectionism. We have a worse relationship with China than even the US does. But we don't have our own auto industry to protect.

It's a shame. The buses we have here are good.

 

Most taxis in Shenzhen are e6s. They're kind of awkward-looking, and they're MPVs without an MPV number of seats. It was one of BYD's earlier efforts at an EV - they've come on a long way since then.

Very good, comfortable taxis, though. The taxi drivers I spoke to about them spoke very highly of them.

What's an FSP?

 

Yes. After all, if you want a focus group full of people who will complain about every little thing that's gone wrong, you can't beat a cab driver.

And there's the high-mileage, high-wear, urban driving too, I suppose.

Ah, right.

I think that's understandable. It's a big, heavy car. And it was around very early in EV terms - it was launched in 2009.

 

That would have been lovely.

But no, the new MGs are a very different thing. MG was part of British Leyland, which went through multiple bankruptcies and lots of owners. One of the owners, when BL was called Rover Group, was BMW. They kept Mini, and sold off the rest.

Eventually, MG was bought by Nanjing Auto, and its sister company Rover was bought by SAIC - Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation. SAIC then absorbed Nanjing Auto, so MG is now a SAIC company. Most of its cars are built in China, but some are assembled in kits in the UK. The first Nanjing Auto and SAIC MGs were based on MG-Rover cars built in Britain in the 1990s, which were generally boring family hatchbacks: MGs were just the "sporty" badge-engineered versions of Rovers and Austins in the 80s and 90s.

The current cars have absolutely no connection, other than that convoluted historical thread, to the MGs you remember. They don't even really use the old name: SAIC says that "MG" now stands for "Modern Gentleman" rather than "Morris Garages". I don't know why they bothered with that.

You don't even see the new MGs in a cloud of steam by the side of the road. What happened to tradition?

 

Yes. When the original MX-5 / Miata came out, people said how authentically it reproduced the experience of the 60s and 70s British roadsters. And yes, there was the wind in the hair, and the fun handling and the lightness and simplicity. But the whole not-breaking-down-by-the-side-of-the-road-in-the-rain thing took away from the authenticity. Getting to your destination on time, dry and comfortable, and not in a breakdown truck, just wasn't part of the traditional experience.

 

Yes. If I were looking for something that size, I'd seriously consider it. It looked and felt great, and there was a lot of room.

Its NEDC range is 405km. So I'd guess you'd be looking at 250km / 150 miles EPA.