Volkswagen has plans for a budget electric car to be sold in Europe for £25,000 in two years time. But it looks like Chinese brand, BYD, has already beaten VW to it and will begin selling a car for that price - even in Ireland.
BYD (Build Your Dreams), the brand recently launched on the Irish market, has announced that its smaller model - the Dolphin - will start arriving in September. While the first versions of the car are a bit more expensive than the holy grail price of €25,000, a version of the same car due to arrive from next January likely will.
The Dolphin is based on the Atto model already on sale here. That means a you get things like vegan leather upholstery and a 12.8" touchscreen as standard. The claimed range for the Atto is 427 kilometres and the real range isn’t that far off (more in my forthcoming review of the Atto).
The Comfort level version of the Dolphin comes in at €27,818 and the Design version at €29,318. They are extremely competitive prices - the Renault Zoe, for example, costs €35,399 - leaving BYD and another Chinese brand, MG, as leaders on price.
Both cars have a 60 kWh battery and an output of 201 horse power.
What will increase the competition even more, however, is the arrival of another two versions of the Dolphin next January. The Active and Boost versions will have a smaller battery and smaller range of in or around 240 km, making it essentially a city car. The battery capacity is 45 kWh.
Given the price and bigger battery capacity of the first two versions, I’m expecting that the January versions will have a price of about €25,000. Even the VW European price target of €25,000 for its budget EV is unlikely to come near that when Irish taxes are added.
