Every week we bring you a fresh Insight from the biggest car market in the world. Many people are wondering: when will I cover byds car because in terms of volume, byd is the biggest domestic car brand in China and is on track to overtake Tesla to become the worlds number one electric vehicle brand in 2023.? The simple answer is, I couldnt get hold of one theyre too busy selling cars to customers so much so that it took me to this day to finally get a car on loan, and this is not a press car. But a demo car from a nearby dealership see the stickers on the car. I was told to hand this car back on Friday, because quote we need to do business on the weekend. Thats, how you know byds car is in hot demand. We start our byd coverage with the smallest and my favorite car of the range. The dolphin pricing starts from just 17 000 at 4.1 meters long. The dolphin is similar in size to the Honda Fit or the Volkswagen Polo, but it has a wheelbase of 2700 millimeters, that is at least 160 millimeters longer than its petrol powered Rivals. Looking at the side profile, its quite striking that the wheels are pushed right towards the corners and it has minimum front and rear overhang, because this is already the third generation of byds e platform, it is fully optimized for Pure electric architecture. As a result.

The second row is very usable Im 511 and, as you can see loads of space, even if I sit bolt upright the interior is interesting. You can see some very elaborate Design Elements which is a bit too much over designed. In my opinion, it would be great if it can be toned down a bit and while it is nice to see many physical buttons, they dont feel all that solid, just listen to it, but overall this interior in terms of materials at least, is very competitive. In its class, did you see how big the screen is its 12.8 inches, and not just that byd? Has this party trick where the screen rotates theyre so proud of this trick, that button on the steering wheel is dedicated to this function and when the screen is in a portrait mode, the aspect ratio is exactly like her phone, so the apps in the infotainment system Is displayed in a familiar layout talking about things we already know. Pyd clearly knows what a Chinese consumers want. There are three apps on a main screen: Golder Maps, which is the Google Maps equivalents in China, dolling the domestic version of tick tock and Wang, EU music or QQ music, the Spotify equivalents in China. Those are the three most popular apps in their respective category. There are other genius touches like this as well. There is a simple split view button. You can choose the left part of the screen to run navigation and the right half of the screen to run music or, if you rotate, the top half to be navigation and the bottom part to be music.

And they are exactly the apps that you use on your phone. How genius is that? Why why hasnt any other brands thought about this – you might say this is a very lazy way of doing an infotainment. Well, yes, but I would say why not: this is a budget car that starts at just 17 000. It doesnt need to be sophisticated or as smart as a Tesla. It just needs to do the basic stuff and I would argue by just transplanting the whole mobile phone ecosystem into the infotainment. It is much more intuitive to use and does a much better job. By contrast, Tesla Chinas navigation is totally unusable. Cuckoo music for a long time can only be streamed at 128 kilobytes per second and a phone mount is absolutely essential to any Tesla China owners. Now on to the performance of the dolphin, it uses a 95 horsepower motor front mounted and because it uses the lfp battery, which is heavier than the normal Lithium ion batteries. Performance is roughly 11 seconds to 100 kph, which you might think its slow but yeah its. Not fast, but being an electric car, it is very responsive, chassis, wise. The dolphin is on toshin being rear suspension, so it doesnt feel as sophisticated as the multi link rear suspension on the mg4 or the ID3. However, the dolphin rides like a bigger car because it is heavier than lets say a Honda Fit this cause. Curb weight is close to 1400 kilos, predominantly because of the lfp batteries because of the actual weight it actually helps with the ride quality.

This Glides over bumps. More like a golf and less like a Honda Fit it has that kind of refinement and confidence in it because of the extra weight and because its cost performance is well its an 11 seconds car to 100 kph. You will never drive it that hard to feel the negative impact of the extra weight. So, overall, I would say this car rides much better than its Rivals like 100 fit because of the extra weight, but on some rough surfaces it still feels like a small car. Now the steering first major criticism, the steering wheel, can only moves up and down and not front and back. This is such a fundamental thing. Ive mentioned this in other reviews as well. It not just affects your driving position. It also affects how you set up your seat as well, so if this next Generation dolphin, please put the four way adjustable steering wheel into this car now onto the steering feel this has a very light steering, but because this is a very small and light car. So it should be, I dont have a problem with it, but this car has a dead zone in the center. You see, and this in this range it doesnt do much and having this dead zone means, if youre on some long radius corners and if you make small steering adjustment. If you reaches this dead zone and then it means your adjustment is no longer linear.

You will get used to this and I dont think it is a deal breaker, but compared to how this car ride and how the suspension behaves. The steering fell slightly short of that it is a weak Link in this car. The steering while being weak is not a deal breaker. What is a deal breaker, though, is the indicator sound. It sounds like this. I mean. Why does byd think this is an area they should innovate. My cameraman puts it very nicely. He was on one of this cars before and he was mistaken. This the indicator sound for the seat belt, warning sound now you might think this is a very small detail. Why do I think this is a deal breaker? Because if you like me, live in a big city, you use the indicator almost every minute, and this sound is so annoying. I mean please give me an option to use the normal indicator sound in the next version of the OTA update. This is not something that byd should innovate now, on the plus side, the dolphin has the 360 surround View Camera. If you indicate and put enough steering lock on it, will quickly Flash the camera onto the center display. This is very helpful for new drivers and inexperienced drivers. However, if you are parallel parking by having this function, its pretty much impossible for you to curb the wheel now, while this function is not groundbreaking, other cars has this as well, but on such a cheap car to have this very considerate function is a major plus Now onto the range and efficiency of the dolphin, the dolphin, because its small and compact is very efficient, its indicating 11.

2 kilowatt hour per 100 kilometer for the past 100 kilometer average. That is seriously impressive and on Range. This car is on 44 kilowatt hour lfp or, as B Whiting, calls it the blade battery it charges relatively quickly for a battery of this capacity, the range is rated at 400 kilometers cltc that translates to about 330 kilometer double ltp and about 185 mile EPA now Part of the efficiency of the dolphin comes from the heat pump. This car, while being very cheap, has heat pump standard across the range. I think that is a major plus Point partially, because China is such a big country. You know in the northern part of China you can easily have minus 15 degrees Celsius in the winter fairly regularly. So if this car doesnt have the heat pump in the winter, the range will take a major hit, but byd took the decision to have heat pump standard on this car makes the dolphin very competitive in the northern part of China before the dolphin appeared this segment In China was in a dual police situation with the Honda Fit and the Volkswagen Polo, but ever since the Dolphins started delivery, their days were over byd through deep vertical integration of his supply chain, excellent packaging and knowing what the Chinese customers really want and also. I should mention after several attempts as well. The predecessor of the seagull is this mediocre E2. They finally nailed what the market needs and produced this explosive model now, 18 months after its launch, it still is the only credible electric car in his class.

It deeply undercuts any other. Expensive models stayed way outside Teslas price range. I mean even after several rounds of price inflation, the seagull still costs less than half of the Tesla Model. 3.. I should point out that a dolphin wild looks incredible value from an international perspective. It is not that cheap by Chinese standard there are other cars in this class. That is quite a bit cheaper than a dolphin and on paper at least has similar specs, but they are not as well optimized using petrol, converted platforms, so the dolphin should be a relatively profitable model for byd. The dolphin is definitely not Flawless, but many of his problems are low hanging fruit, which is why I dont recommend buying used to dolphins. The car we tested is from 2022. The 2023 model year has been announced and made decent improvements like adding a rear, wiper fit and finish problem are also easily solvable in a year to year. Update the particular example we have here today is not in the best conditions. I must say I think the dolphin overall just needs to be tightened up a little bit. I mentioned in the previous video about the Dolphins, smaller brother, the seagull that is coming out this year. That is similar in size to the Volkswagen e up and expect it to be priced around ten to fifteen thousand dollars the dolphin and the seagull combined is a formidable combination. I just hope that byd can keep up with the order book.

A friend of mine ordered a dolphin in March last year and took delivery in late October. That is nearly eight months of waiting time but thats a sweet problem to have, I suppose, thats all from this episode of the telescope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVmEBgwARHI