► BYD’s smallest car yet has landed
► Built to challenge low-cost supermini EVs
► Prices start from under £19k
The city car is back, baby! Years of the smallest kind of car barely having a pulse and now we’ve got them coming at us left, right and centre. BYD is the latest to throw in a contender, having already taken its home market by storm… albeit with a different name.
At a glance
Pros: Well-built and well-equipped, big boot for its size, tidy handling
Cons: Mushy brakes, naggy driver assistance, lower-spec models will be slow
What’s new?
This is now BYD’s smallest car for sale in Europe, and quite possibly its most hotly anticipated here. The phoenix-like rise of the small car has been entertaining to watch, with new cars like the Dacia Spring, Leapmotor T03, Hyundai Inster, Fiat Grande Panda and Vauxhall Frontera all squaring up against eachother, are aiming to drive down the price of electric cars. But you can’t say the words ‘drive down the price of electric cars’ without including BYD.
In its home market, the Dolphin Surf – a.k.a. the Seagull – is hugely popular, becoming one of China’s bestselling EVs and BYD’s best-selling cars by far thanks to its low price. For Europe, BYD has tweaked some of the bumper design and the suspension has been given a re-tune, as well as tweaking a couple of bits of the interior to bring it more into line with the larger Dolphin hatchback.
What are the specs?
Three are available, which tie both performance specifications and equipment together in one. All use BYD’s ‘blade’ battery technology, all have just one electric motor and all run out of puff at 93mph. As for equipment, every Dolphin Surf features a 10.1-inch infotainment system that can rotate, as well as rear parking sensors and a camera, keyless entry and start, adaptive cruise, vegan leather upholstery and electric mirrors. Also included is vehicle-to-load, allowing you to power things directly from the car.
Active is your entry-level option, featuring that tasty £18,650 price tag. Here, the Dolphin Surf comes with a 30kWh battery pack and an 87bhp electric motor, meaning an 11.1sec 0-62mph sprint time and a claimed range of 137 miles. BYD says this version has 65kW DC charging, but weirdly quotes a 30-80 per cent charge being possible in 25 minutes.
Boost – the £21,950 version we predict to be the biggest seller – comes with a larger 43.2kWh battery pack but keeps the same e-motor. That dulls performance slightly, with BYD claiming a 12.1sec 0-62mph time, but the range claim rises to a possible 200 miles. This version also throws in electric front seats, automatic wipers and electrically-foldable mirrors.
Choose the top-spec Comfort model, priced from £23,950, and it comes with that larger 43.2kWh but power jumps to 154bhp. That boost in power drops the 0-62mph sprint time to 9.1sec albeit at the expense of a slightly smaller 193-mile claimed range. Creature comforts with this version include 360-degree parking aids, LED headlights, heated front seats and a wireless phone charger.
What’s it like to drive?
It all starts with a bloop! in traditional BYD fashion, as you settle in the soft leather seats. The driving position is pretty good – a little high, perhaps, but this is a tall car – with good adjustment in the steering wheel allowing you to see the dinky instrument cluster that blends dot-matrix numbers for your speedo and power meter with a screen for some basic info.
In town, naturally, is where the Dolphin Surf will spend most of its time – and it feels right at home. It’s relatively square stance makes it easy to place, with a good turning circle for navigating the tightest T-junctions easily. The steering is fluid and has a reasonable weight to it, giving you a bit of assurance that the car knows what it’s doing; it’s not overly light, which would make it feel nervous.
The ride itself is neatly judged and manages to be a little less harsh than the Hyundai Inster. Potholes and drain covers will jolt, but only lightly, with those sporty-looking wheel designs wrapped in reasonably-sidewalled Hankook iON tyres soaking up some of it. More than anything, it’s a cool customer in town and feels like a well-made product – something that can’t be said for all small cars.
Our model was a top-spec Comfort, meaning we had the speediest one – relatively, anyway. It’s perfectly brisk enough, allowing you to enjoy the instant-ness of an electric car powertrain and even getting a little bit of a chirp from the tyres if you’re in Sport mode. Eco mode, while absolutely perfect for town driving, really does dull the throttle, mind. Of course, we’ve been driving the quickest one; we’d need more time to see just how slow the Active and Boost models feel by comparison.
The only weak part of the driving experience were the brakes, as they’re a little mushy. It feels like BYD has engineered the Dolphin Surf to rely considerably on its regenerative braking given it’s a city car, which leaves the physical brakes feeling a little underbaked.
What’s the interior like?
It feels like familiar territory if you’ve been up close to a BYD before: namely that it’s very well put together and comes with plenty of technology as standard. The steering wheel is the same as the Dolphin, with other similar details like the set of physical buttons and transmission shifter. That said, we’re irked to find out there’s no physical button for quickly changing the regenerative braking – a key feature for a city EV.
Like every BYD, the Dolphin Surf comes with the brand’s party trick (read: gimmick) of having a rotating infotainment screen, which happens to run the same software used across all BYD models here in Europe. That means crisp graphics, customisable designs… and a whole lotta menus. So much so that the Dolphin Surf introduces a search bar you can type into to find the setting you want to change.
Happily, there is a swipe-down toolbar for quick access to important bits, allowing you to toggle comfort features or turn off certain safety aids. We did wish some others had their own quick-off button, though – namely the distracted driver system that’s sometimes a little too eager to tell you to look forward. Indeed, it’s standard fare for BYD that many of its safety aids like to bong and beep while you’re on the move – but you can turn a lot of them off.
Material quality is really good – nothing feels overly cheap or tinny inside, with neoprene-like material on the dashboard and armrests, and soft vegan leather. Storage is decent, too, with good door bins and big cubbies beneath the central armrest – itself housing two large cupholders and (provided you pick a Comfort model) a fiercely powerful wireless charger.
Rear space is good for its size, even if you can only seat two in the second row. I’m 6’2”, and can sit behind myself in the back seats. My knees touch the seat, but I wasn’t wedged in – and had just the right amount of headroom. The 308-litre boot is a good shape, with storage underneath the faux floor plentiful for your cables. That said, an Inster will trump this for rear occupant space given its relatively lengthy wheelbase, and its boot can be made a smidge bigger provided you slide its seats all the way forward.
Before you buy
The Boost spec is effectively all you really need, providing the largest amount of possible range and plenty of equipment. There is visually no difference between this and the higher-spec Comfort model, and luxuries like a wireless phone charger and 360-degree parking aids are just that: luxuries.
This part of the car market is heating up fast, with all sorts of small cars and superminis going electric and (happily) giving us more choice. The Dolphin Surf, then, arrives to a battle that is already being waged by the likes of Dacia with its Spring, as well as the Leapmotor T03. Both are priced lower than the base Dolphin Surf, but feel it; the BYD is certainly more car-like than the Spring, and there’s more space inside than the Leapmotor.
They aren’t the only competitors, though, as the BYD’s pricing structure puts it into the crosshairs of cars like the Hyundai Inster and Fiat Grande Panda. The flagship Dolphin Surf is only about £450 more than a base Inster; the small Hyundai that offers more rear space (but a smaller boot) and, generally, feels zippier and more fun to drive. The Panda goes big on the funk but offers similar performance and range for a similar price tag. Quite the quandry…
Verdict: BYD Dolphin Surf
The Dolphin Surf isn’t quite as roomy or zippy as an Inster, but it feels much more of a quality product than rivals from Dacia and Leapmotor and – dare we say it – Fiat.
Crucially, though, it ticks many boxes: assured handling, perfectly decent performance, good range and good space. BYD’s best car? Quite possibly.
Specs are for a BYD Dolphin Surf Comfort