In less than three years, three Chinese car companies have arrived on the Irish car market. MG and Ora have now been joined by a rather daunting competitor, BYD, with all three companies offering electric cars that are priced to attract new customers.
They are also wooing them with generous levels of equipment and safety features as standard.
It's a well proven marketing strategy, allowing a brand to stand out as a value for money alternative to more dominant competitors. Toyota did it when it first arrived and so did Hyundai and Kia. Fast forward to where these companies are now, accounting as they do for a sizeable proportion of the car market here.
BYD (Build Your Dreams) is being billed as the biggest car company you’ve never heard of and it boasts a blizzard of statistics to illustrate its might in China. It has some 600,000 employees; has 69,000 of them working in research and development; has been a best-selling manufacturer of electric cars in China for several years; has filed some 40,000 patent applications and currently has an annual revenue of about €58 billion.
So, what is this behemoth bringing to Ireland ? Its first offering is called the Atto 3, an electric crossover with a claimed range of 420 kilometres. (Do bear in mind my previous caveats about claimed ranges and how they very seldom match up in real world conditions. However, we’ll wait and see.) It sits between Volkswagen’s ID 3 and ID 4 in terms of length but in terms of price it’s about €5,000 cheaper than an ID 3.
It’s a well designed car deliberately in tune with European styling. The company refers to its Chinese origins, however, with "a dragon-faced front", although it is so subtle that you would have to look hard to identify it as such. The rear LED light bar is almost an industry standard at this stage.
Nevertheless it fits in well with the general design trend for such EV’s.
The interior is more distinctive, dominated as it is by a 12.8" screen of the type you will find in a Tesla or a Volvo. It can rotate from panoramic to upright to give a vivid and clear satellite navigation (which comes as standard) or other infotainment function.
I only had a brief opportunity to acquaint myself with the car but the finish looked like a good quality one. There are on-trend nods for younger drivers - a gear selector that look like a jet engine throttle and interior door handles in the shape of dumb bells. They’re more gimmicky than anything else.
There is good space for four, with the rear a tad cramped though. The boot has a reasonable 440 litre capacity and you can get a lot more with the rear seats down.
In terms of EV motoring, the car has a capacity to charge - on a fast 150 kW charger - from 30 to 80 per cent in 29 minutes. It will obviously take an appreciably longer time on slower chargers. A home charge should take around seven hours. The power output is 201 horse power.
The Atto scored a maximum five stars in the EuroNCAP cash test programme. BYD doesn’t quite match the seven year warranty offered by Kia and MG but it does have a battery guarantee of eight years and a 12 year body warranty. The warranty on mileage covers the car up to 200,000 kilometres.
There are three versions of the car - Active, Comfort and Design, which cost €37,128, €37,596 and €38,964 respectively, including current grants. In July EV grants are being reduced by €1,500 so all electric car prices will increase accordingly.
On the aforementioned levels of standard equipment, the Atto and other BYD cars in the pipeline all have:
Forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking, rear collision warning, rear cross traffic alert and rear cross traffic brake, lane keep assistance, lane change assist, emergency lane keep alert, blind spot detection , electronic stability programme, electronic brake distribution, electric parking brake, antilock braking, automatic vehicle hold, traction control, hill decent control, traffic sign recognition, intelligent speed limit Information, and intelligent speed limit control.
It’s an impressive list of standard equipment
Another car - a compact EV - will arrive in September.
We’ll have a more comprehensive review on the Atto in the coming weeks.
