Consider all those other weird car names that now seem utterly normal. Ford Puma, anyone? Are mountain lions less odd than marine mammals? Probably not. Even the Volkswagen Golf is actually a really odd car name, if you think about it. So perhaps the Dolphin – and the BYD Seal saloon that will follow it later in 2023 – will become so popular that the weirdness of the name will just rub off over years of use. Atto 2 is just boring, anyway. I’d rather take the Dolphin to work.
Either way, this little electric car has a lot going for it by any objective measure. Size-wise, it splits the difference between traditional B- and C-segment hatches, being a touch longer than the Vauxhall Corsa and Peugeot 208 but not quite as big as the Volkswagen ID 3.
Beneath the body – which is also styled quite differently from other BYD products and has a hint of Hyundai i20 meets Proton Savvy, but not in an unpleasant way – sits the e-Platform 3.0 with a 60kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) ‘Blade’ battery nestled within it.
This is a cobalt-free battery that has its cells arranged in strips along the length of the car, rather than in the more traditional cylindrical or cuboid cells. It’s good for an official WLTP range of up to 265 miles. A smaller battery will be added to the range after the initial launch this summer to create a more affordable model with a likely 190-ish miles of official range.
A 201bhp electric motor sends power to the front wheels and delivers more than sprightly enough acceleration right up to motorway speeds. Our brief test drive of a European-spec, pre-production car took place on track, where it’s evident that body roll is heavy, but it’s also progressive enough not to be alarming.
Ride comfort is much harder to comment on, given the limited test conditions, but certainly on the 17in tyres it felt soft enough that we’d be more worried about potentially floppy body control than bump absorption. We’ll report back to you on that when we’ve driven the Dolphin more extensively in the UK. We’re hoping that the Ling Long Comfort Master tyres (no, really) on our test car are perhaps going to be supplanted by the Bridgestone tyres that BYD also uses, but that detail isn’t confirmed yet for the UK.