BYD Dolphin (2023-) Review

Introduction

If you’ve never heard of BYD, you aren’t alone. But the Chinese company, whose initials stand for 'Build Your Dreams', is making inroads in Europe with a fleet of new electric cars. The latest addition to the range is the Dolphin, a family hatchback designed to compete at the budget end of the market, along with the MG4 EV and GWM Ora Funky Cat, as well as slightly more upmarket models such as the VW ID.3 and the Cupra Born.

In short, the Dolphin is competing with some pretty serious contenders, and it’s armed with more than just a charming name. BYD has a history of making batteries for other brands, including Tesla, and the company is already selling a sizable range of cars in Europe. In short, this isn’t an upstart brand – it’s a serious car company with serious know-how. The question is, will the Dolphin be good enough to offer serious competition?

At a Glance

At first glance, the Dolphin doesn’t look especially remarkable, but it improves as you get closer to the rear of the car. The tail is smart and the full-width lights give it a semi-premium image.

The interior looks good, too, thanks to the dashboard designed to look like a wave. Whether it does that is a matter of opinion, but it’s certainly a more interesting cabin than that of the MG4 EV, what with the flipper-shaped door handles and the rotating central touchscreen. 

Nor are there complaints about the interior space, which is more than sufficient for four adults, although the boot is a little smaller than that of the MG4 EV. The batteries are a bit smaller, too, with the largest measuring 60.4kWh and permitting a range of 264 miles between charges. There are three motor options, too, with the most powerful sending 204hp to the front wheels.

More remarkable, though, is the comfort. The Dolphin won’t appeal to keen drivers – the steering and body control are too slack – but it does ride cleanly around town, soaking up most potholes ably and proving really smooth over speed humps. As an urban runabout, it could make a lot of sense.

Key Features

Name aside, perhaps the Dolphin’s most interesting feature is the rotating touchscreen in the middle of the dashboard. It’s a big old unit, and though the rotation is clever, it isn’t especially useful. After all, once you’ve picked the orientation you like, you’re probably going to stick with it. But then if you and your partner have different screen-related preferences, the car can cater for that.

More important than the screen, therefore, is the spacious interior that really makes the Dolphin a useful four-seater. Yes, the boot space suffers slightly as a result, but with plenty of legroom behind the front seats and a relatively high roof, the Dolphin has more than enough capacity to seat adults in comfort. And in style, because it’s quite a smart interior. Of course, some of the plastics feel a bit cheap – that’s the price you pay for such a low RRP – but it all looks much more stylish than an MG4 EV.

Range & Batteries

BYD is offering the Dolphin with a choice of two different batteries, with basic versions getting a 44.9kWh battery that offers a range of 211 miles on a single charge. Of course, in the real world you probably won’t manage that – around 150 miles is arguably more like it – but those who need to go a bit further can opt for the larger battery pack. The 60.4kWh unit comes with a more powerful motor, so the difference isn’t huge, but BYD claims up to 265 miles on the official WLTP economy test. With that battery slung under the floor, the chances of topping 200 miles on a charge sky-rocket.

Performance & Drive

BYD is offering Dolphin customers a choice of three different electric motors, each of which is paired with a trim level and one of the two battery options available. The basic Active model comes with just 95hp, while the mid-range Boost model gets 176hp from its electric motor. Both combine their powertrains with an automatic-style single-speed transmission that sends the power to the front wheels. As does the more potent 204hp motor offered on the 60.4kWh Comfort and Design versions of the Dolphin.

Performance is naturally dependent on the motor you choose, with the 95hp version proving quite slow, and only really suitable for use around town. The Boost is, of course, much better, but with only the smaller 44.9kWh battery under the floor, range is going to be an issue for those who want to make use of the power on offer.

As a result, the more powerful 204hp versions make the most sense, offering more range and performance. A 0-62mph time of around seven seconds is plenty quick enough for use in the real world, and the immediate response from the electric motors means it’s easy to keep up with traffic and nip around in town.

The other reason to go for a more upmarket version of the Dolphin is the suspension, because while Boost, Comfort and Design models get a multi-link suspension set-up at the rear, the basic Active comes with a much less sophisticated torsion beam, which is likely to detract from one of the Dolphin’s best features – the way it rides.

The Comfort and Design models in particular ride very smoothly around town, with the soft suspension simply soaking up the bumps in the road. Of course, the weight of the battery has an impact, and some sharp potholes will catch the car out, but generally speaking it’s very absorbent. Speed bumps and other longer-frequency undulations are particularly smartly dealt with.

The motorway ride is smooth, too, but some of the Dolphin’s limitations come to the fore as the speed builds. Vertical body control isn’t always brilliant, so the car can feel as though it’s lurching over some bumps, and when the springs are fully extended it loses some of the comfort.

Cornering isn’t much fun, either, thanks in part to the softness of the suspension. The body rolls quite alarmingly, although you’ll run out of courage long before you run out of grip, while the soft springs can’t always react quickly to bumps, meaning the car can be unsettled by sharper imperfections in the surface. Combine that with the vague steering, and the Dolphin is nowhere near as good to drive as the MG4 EV, but at least it’s easy enough to steer around town.

Charging

Naturally, the cheapest way to charge the Dolphin will be at home, where the BYD can accept charge at speeds of up to 11kW on a three-phase charger, which will allow the battery to be charged overnight with ease. On the move, meanwhile, the larger of the two batteries supports 80kW charging, which allows it to charge from 30% to 80% in less than half an hour. Of course, other cars manage to get from 10% to 80% in a similar time, and the Dolphin’s charging system is far from the best, but for those to whom the Dolphin is best suited, that won’t matter too much.

To find out more about how to get the most out of every charge, be sure to check our our guides on picking your ideal EV charger.

Running Costs & Emissions

Among the many advantages of an electric car are the running costs, and while the price of electricity has risen, it’s still a cheap way of driving. If you can charge at home on a tariff with off-peak rates, it’ll be pretty cheap, but heading to a public charger might increase the price somewhat. Of course, for many customers, the Dolphin will be employed as a company car, and it’ll prove incredibly cheap. That’s because the BYD’s list price is comparatively low, and the low Benefit-in-Kind tax rate means it won’t cost drivers too much every month.

Interior & Technology

The Dolphin’s interior is much more modern than its exterior, and the whole dashboard is designed to look like a wave. Whether it does or not is open to interpretation but the dash is still pretty stylish, with shiny trim around the air vents and a huge central touchscreen dominating the whole space. It’s all a bit dependent on your colour choice, though, because the pink-and-white scheme is a bit of an acquired taste, while the blue looks unnecessarily bold. But it’s fresh and modern, particularly with that big screen in the middle.

The screen is quite remarkable in itself, if only because it rotates at the touch of a button. That means you can choose whether it’s landscape- or portrait-orientated, and the display adapts accordingly. The software isn’t perfect – it’s a bit of a knock-off of Android phone displays – but it’s pretty clean and it looks clear enough. It works reasonably well, too, and it can integrate with your smartphone.

But though the touchscreen is the most impressive screen in the Dolphin’s cabin, it’s far from the only one. There’s also a digital instrument display behind the steering wheel, which is somewhat less convincing. It’s bright and fresh and colourful, but the mixture of different colours and icons make it occasionally difficult to decipher.

The car’s bank of switches on the dash can be tricky to operate, too, with slightly unintuitive button operations that make it easy to press the wrong thing until you get used to it. And if you do get it wrong, you end up prodding the dashboard, which is made from a mish-mash of plastics. They aren’t all especially premium – some of them are quite cheap – but they are neatly tacked together.

Practicality & Boot Space

At 345 litres, the Dolphin’s boot isn’t especially big, but it’s just about big enough to compete with the MG4 EV. But you’ll definitely get more space from a Volkswagen ID.3 or a Cupra Born, even if you don’t always notice that. That said, the Dolphin’s boot is much more spacious than that of the Ora Funky Cat, and if you fold down the back seats you get 1,310 litres of space to play with.

That’s partly because there’s so much rear passenger space to play with. Rear legroom is more than ample, and you get plenty of headroom, too, thanks in no small part to the high roofline. That means you can fit four adults in the cabin with consummate ease, and you can just about squeeze a fifth into the rear bench, assuming they aren’t that tall and they aren’t going to sit there for too long.

Safety

The BYD Dolphin is yet to be crash-tested by Euro NCAP, but the only other car BYD has offered to customers in the UK received a full five stars. Of course, the Atto 3’s score doesn’t mean that much, but it does show BYD knows how to make safe family cars, and it claims to have done it all again with the Dolphin.

Certainly, there’s plenty of tech available. Every car gets a 360-degree manoeuvring camera to help prevent parking shunts, and there’s ‘level-two’ driving assistance technology as standard across the range. Moving up, gadgets such as front parking sensors all add to the Dolphin’s safety credentials, and assuming the body shell can match the Atto 3’s crash performance, we’re expecting it to prove a very safe and secure mode of electric family transport.

Options

With a choice of four trim levels, there’s a version of the Dolphin to suit every customer. Even basic Active models get electrically adjustable leather seats, as well as a 360-degree manoeuvring camera and 16-inch bi-colour alloy wheels. Upgrading to the Boost, meanwhile, gets you larger alloy wheels and the more sophisticated suspension, as well as the extra power.

But the Comfort is the one that really ramps things up. That car gets two front parking sensors, a six-speaker audio system and heated front seats, as well as the bigger battery and electric motors. But the range-topping Design version tops it all with tri-colour wheels, a panoramic glass roof and rear privacy glass, as well as wireless phone charging and two-tone paintwork.

Naturally, BYD is offering a choice of different colour schemes and interior designs, some of which are surprisingly funky, but the options list isn’t all that long. In fact, beyond paint jobs and interior styles, there’s nothing to choose. Just pick your trim level, choose your colour scheme and place your order.

Rival Cars

The Dolphin faces an ever-growing selection of rivals, ranging from similarly budget models to more upmarket vehicles from mainstream manufacturers. But by far the biggest rival is the MG4 EV. The car that showed us electric hatchbacks could be cheap without compromising on capability, it has revolutionised the market. It isn’t perfect – the interior isn’t brilliant and the boot is a bit small compared with some rivals – but it’s still very good indeed. And it’s competitively priced. Were the Dolphin better to drive, it might get somewhere close to the MG, but it falls short.

That said, it can still challenge other cars in the market. As an urban runabout, it’s easily a match for the GWM Ora Funky Cat, and it’s just as funky inside. Yes, the Dolphin’s exterior is a bit dull, but the cabin looks cool and there’s more boot space than in the Funky Cat. Quality is acceptable, too, particularly for something so cheap.

And that’s the Dolphin’s trump card compared with other electric hatchbacks. With a lower RRP than most of its rivals, and a far lower asking price than the Cupra Born and Volkswagen ID.3, the Dolphin is hoping to lure customers away from those more premium and better built models. Whether it can do so, however, will largely depend on how the finance prices play out.

Verdict & Next Steps

Though the Dolphin might be cheap, it’s no match for the market's most accomplished rivals. It’s comfortable and the interior is remarkably classy. The downside is that the Dolphin lacks some of the polish that has seen the MG4 EV and Cupra Born rise to their lofty perches at the top of the electric hatchback market. 

But although there are more rounded options out there, the BYD will be ideal lots of lease customers, particularly those who intent to use it as a second car.  And as a daily runabout or urban commuter, it’s a surprisingly capable EV. 

Where to next?

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**Score based on Select’s unique meta score analysis, taking into account the UK’s top leading independent car website reviews of the BYD Dolphin