2022 BYD Atto 3 review: First Australian drive

Accompanying the arrival of this BYD Atto 3 –a new Chinese EV on our shores – is something akin to the hysteria surrounding the iPhone fifteen years ago. Not when I got one, handed to me by a colleague who'd just arrived home from the US with a suitcase full of the original one, but the first official one you could actually buy here.

Social media is ablaze with fanboys as well as curious normal people asking questions and, let’s be honest, wondering what the hell is going on with BYD in Australia.

It’s an ever-changing story, with new bits of information coming through all the time, sometimes giving you whiplash. The new bits of information are often positive but the impression of confusion and constant change isn’t a good one.

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We’ve talked with EVDirect’s CEO Luke Todd about that and he says things will eventually settle. Let’s hope so, because even given the short time I had with this car, it looks very promising.

The Atto 3 isn’t here yet but we got one for a couple of days. Well, we got a Yuan Plus, a left-hand drive Chinese market car with a trade plate hanging off the back and the doors removed from the Darlinghurst showroom so we can drive it out on a rainy Monday morning. Atto 3 is the Australian market name as BYD’s (or Build Your Dreams) home market names aren’t always completely right for us.

Apart from just a tweak here and a crimp there, the car we drove is essentially what we’ll be getting here in Australia, so it’s a more representative test than I was expecting – which means this very detailed review won’t be too far off what we’ll be saying about it in a few months.

Pricing and Features

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You can choose from two Atto 3s (I still don’t know why it’s called Atto 3, just Atto would do) and they’re the same specification. The 50kWh with its 320km range starts at $44,381 and the 60kWh at $47,381. Both these prices are before on-road costs, which vary by state and but are all laid out on the EVDirect website.

Of course, you variously get rebates and stamp duty exemptions in some states and territories, so you’ll be able to wind about $4000 off in NSW and Victoria, bringing the car down to about $43,000 on the road give or take.

EVDirect claims that the Atto is the most affordable EV on the market, but as you probably already know, it’s only cheaper than the MG ZS EV on the road before incentives in Tasmania at $44,990. So it’s not wrong to say that but also not quite right because the entry-level ZS EV is $46,990 drive-away nationwide.

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The BYD is better equipped than the MG and has a much bigger battery as well as a more powerful electric motor. I’m yet to drive or even see the upgraded ZS EV so I’ll reserve judgement on the quality. The Atto 3 is better built than the outgoing ZS EV, though, as well as more spacious and comfortable. And solid-feeling.

For your money, you get 18-inch alloys, an eight-speaker Dirac-branded stereo, panoramic sunroof, fake leather trim, wireless charging pad, climate control, huge 12.3-inch central touchscreen, five-inch digital dash, keyless entry and start, card key (which wasn’t with the car we drove), power tailgate, powered front seats and a tyre repair kit.

The Atto 3 is better built than the outgoing ZS EV, though, as well as more spacious and comfortable. And solid-feeling

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The entertainment system is spread across several different apps but works reasonably well. Called DiLink, BYD is convinced you don’t need Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and to that I say, “You mock me, sir/madam!” The BYD system isn’t especially coherent and despite me not having any Queen on my phone, it would play a track by Australian indie icons The Clouds but display Queen artwork.

Cheeringly, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay will arrive on an over-the-air (OTA) update in September and that lovely big rotating screen will become far more useful. Admittedly, I don’t know what kind of clean-up will happen on the screen software but hopefully it’s brutal and well-curated.

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The safety package consists of seven airbags (including a centre airbag) front and rear auto emergency braking, front and rear collision warning, lane departure warning, lane-keep assist and rear cross-traffic alert.

Two ISOFIX points are listed in the spec sheet and one imagines there will be three top-tether points once the pen-pushers have had their way.

It hasn’t yet been tested by ANCAP, so we don’t know the star rating and we won’t know for a while, I imagine.

Comfort and Space

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The interior of the Atto 3 is, er, individual. The designers have taken inspiration from exercise equipment and seem to have spent a lot of time watching Avatar and taking colour inspiration from that. The quite vivid blue of the fake leather is a bit much for me personally but I can absolutely see what’s happening here: get people talking.

The blue aside, it’s a very well built cabin. Everything fits together very nicely and it all looked and felt high quality. There are some absurd touches like the dumbbell-shaped air vents and the exercise band stays for the door pockets, which also play a basic tune if you want. The touches verge on ludicrous when you discover a slot in the deep centre console bin for a karaoke microphone that some rogue has nicked.

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The seats look pretty sporty but are more comfortable than they are supportive. As you’ll discover, you won’t be hurling this car through corners if you know what’s good for you, so it won’t matter. The giant centre screen rotates through 90 degrees to switch between portrait and landscape and it’s a lovely piece of hardware.

It’s fundamentally an Android tablet you can buy from JB Hi-Fi and it was full of largely useless or incomprehensible apps as well as some useful ones like weather and sat-nav, although that looked to be web-based from a company I’m not familiar with.

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The software is going to need a good clean-up before it lands here but the important stuff was largely pretty good to use, if sometimes a good idea not completely thought through, like the climate controls.

Also not thought through is the size of the instrument screen. It’s way too small at just five inches (12.7cm) but thankfully the speed and range readouts are clear and obvious. It’s everything else that’s too small, although it’s another nice piece of hardware. Part of the reason it’s so tiny is because the steering wheel is quite small but also fat-rimmed, so the space to peer through the wheel is limited. Every millimetre counts here.

This is an excellent interior for the money and it’s things like poorly translated information messages that remind you that this is a Chinese car not sold in English-speaking markets

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I sound like I’m grizzling and picking on details, but I’m not really grizzling and yes, I am picking on details. You know why I’m picking on details? Because this is an excellent interior for the money and it’s things like poorly translated warning and information messages that remind you that this is a Chinese car not sold in English-speaking markets yet. Oh, and the buttons on the centre console, but there aren’t too many of those. And most of these things will likely be fixed by the time they arrive here.

There’s great space in the front and the driving position is adjustable and comfortable. The huge sunroof doesn’t ruin the headroom, either. The centre console houses two cup holders, the already-mentioned karaoke mic bin and a wireless charging pad. Under the console is an open-sided storage area and the doors will take small bottles.

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In the back, you’ve got two further USB-A ports but the spring-loaded thin plastic covers are a hazard to fingertips. There are air vents, though, which is terrific. The rear floor is completely flat and you can fit three across the back in relative comfort as a result. Headroom is good, again without the sunroof ruining everything. Legroom is impressive even though the front seats look really chunky.

Boot space is a fairly normal-for-the-class 430 litres with 1330 litres available with the 60:40 split-fold seats dropped.

The Blade Battery

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Here we go. This is the bit that will upset a few folks. This car had the 60.4kWh battery and I left the BYD Experience Centre with a chunky range of about 400km. When I returned it with 65 per cent battery, it still read 274km and that seems bang-on for the WLTP range of 420km. But that’s not the bit that’s going to make me unpopular.

Tightly integrated into the Atto’s chassis is the Blade battery. I’ve had a lot of people on various forms of media shouting at me about this, telling me it’s the game-changer and that I need to get with the program. Standard EV fanboy stuff. RIP Tesla, that kind of thing. It must be amazing, right?

Now, I am not a chemist or a physicist or a battery expert but I have done a lot of reading about this and so I’m going to do my best to boil it down to something digestible. That means the details may not be exactly scientifically correct but you should get the idea.

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There are a couple of advantages to this battery. First, it’s cheaper to make because of its chemistry, Lithium Ferrophosphate or LFP. You might also hear it referred to as Lithium Iron Phosphate because ferrous and iron are the same thing.

LFP batteries are cheaper to make because they have fewer rare metals, notably the absence of nickel and cobalt. I’ve seen figures of about 20 per cent cheaper per kilowatt-hour or roughly $80 for LFP versus $100 for NMC. Given a significant proportion of the cost of an EV is the battery, every little bit helps. There are other cost-saving measures, but the metals are a big cost. Also, the less nickel and cobalt we’re dragging out of the earth, the better.

Where the Blade has done well is the effective arrangement of battery cells to improve power density over some other LFP constructions

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The trade-off with LFP is a reduction in power density compared to other batteries commonly used in EVs of between a fifth and a third (depending on how you measure power density). Not a big deal, especially when you consider the price of this car and the available range.

Tesla is also investing in LFP batteries for standard range cars where power density is less of an issue. Where the Blade has done well is the effective arrangement of battery cells to improve power density over some other LFP constructions. There is a lot of internet talk that Tesla is in fact dealing with BYD on the Blade battery but BYD rubbished that rumour late in 2021.

All of that is probably not important to you, but it’s basically not the messiah. In practice, you won’t notice much difference between this and batteries of another type. It’s not like it’s a quarter of the size or costs ten cents to make or has more energy storage than a nuclear reactor.

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The second advantage is the overall safety of the Blade. As the name suggests, the pack is made of a series of blades. These blades have a much greater surface area than the commonly used battery architecture, which is effectively a bunch of AA batteries crammed into a pack and then installed in a larger housing with a few more packs and yes, I know it’s more complicated than that.

When a battery is punctured (say, in an accident), the inevitable cause is a chunk of metal moving at great speed. It pushes through the material of the battery and creates a series of shorts. That means a lot of energy – usually released over a few hours of driving – suddenly has nothing to do but make its escape, generating a lot of heat and, in some cases, causing a fire that takes forever to stop burning. Some just get really hot and stay hot.

The chemistry itself doesn’t generate the kind of heat that some other batteries do. From a safety standpoint, it’s a big step forward

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In BYD’s battery, each blade has a much greater surface area and therefore the sudden heat spike – known as thermal runaway, if you’re interested – doesn’t happen because it dissipates across the long metal casing.

Rather than trying to keep all that heat inside like a cartoon character that’s swallowed a stick of dynamite, it spreads out slowly and the chemistry itself doesn’t generate the kind of heat that some other batteries do. From a safety standpoint, it’s a big step forward.

After all I’ve read, it seems to be a very good battery and there are lots of whispers, probably started by BYD, that it’s capable of a million kilometres with minimal degradation, which is also a good thing if it even does half of that. We’ve seen recent stories of newer Tesla batteries having vastly longer and more effective lives than earlier efforts, so it’s not out of the question for that figure to be about right.

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Bottom line: EVs are more than just the battery. The BYD Blade Battery seems pretty good but we’re not going to know just how good until it’s been in real customers’ hands for a number of years. It does, however, show how hard companies are working on making better and cheaper batteries to get EVs down to more affordable prices and make them safer at the same time. And less destructive to make, even if it’s a small amount less.

Charging

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The Atto 3 offers both AC charging through a domestic socket and DC charging through a CCS2 port.

The latter is capped at 80kW, which means you won’t be seeing headline fast-charging numbers like the Tesla, Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 and Porsche Taycan. In practice, of course, fast-charging is hard to find and even if you do find one, it may not give you the stick you’re looking for. I know my adventures with fast charging have been less than impressive.

All going well, the BYD will charge to full in about 45 minutes on the DC plug.

With AC charging, you can wait up to 12 hours for the battery to be fully replenished, with two choices of wallbox at 7kW and 11kW, the latter requiring three-phase power. Using the wallbox will reduce the time by up to half and they’re not particularly expensive items if you’ve got an easily-accessible garage and appropriate power supply.

On the Road

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The Blade provides juice to a 150kW/320Nm motor driving the front wheels through a single-speed reduction gear, a pretty common set-up in the EV world. There are two levels of energy recovery, weak and less weak. Probably the biggest missed opportunity in the Atto 3 is the lack of one-pedal driving and a more aggressive energy recovery program. While further aggression might not necessarily add a ton of range, when done right, one-pedal driving is really good.

Having said that – and without me having the opportunity to really test the range – the numbers appeared to stack up to the WLTP figure, which is excellent news.

An extra three grand for the 60kWh version appears worth it if range anxiety is your jam, which I totally understand. It’s not that you’ll always need 420km in one go, but recharging is still a chore if you don’t have ready access either to fast-charging or, at worst, a garage with a power socket.

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The chassis is pretty much what you might expect for a Chinese-developed car straight off the factory line. Soft, squidgy and not really built for speed. It doesn’t help that the Atto is shod with some pretty ordinary tyres and all those rumours that the Australian-delivered cars will have better Continental tyres are sadly just that – rumours.

Both BYD and EVDirect confirmed that in the interests of getting the cars here and into customers’ hands, the cheap tyres are staying. Also not happening are the rumoured Australian-spec suspension, steering and braking changes.

The chassis is pretty much what you might expect for a Chinese-developed car straight off the factory line. Soft, squidgy and not really built for speed

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EVDirect CEO Luke Todd did say that the Australian cars will have a slightly tighter feel but it’s not going to be a transformational tune, again to avoid hold-ups in production.

The vast majority of buyers are probably not going to care too much about the tyres or the suspension. It is a little floaty and the shocks aren’t particularly adept at keeping the tyres on the road over sharp bumps, but it feels secure enough overall.

Direction changes are a bit lazy and the body does move around a fair bit, but the trade-off is a generally comfortable and quiet ride that won’t upset you or your passengers if you drive like a normal person. Having said that, get a set of better tyres on it as soon as possible, because the standard items weren’t too flash in the wet, with plenty of understeer in the slippery conditions.

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The electric motor responds quickly to the throttle and the strong stream of torque gets the 1690kg 60kWh car moving as smartly as the tyres and BYD's fairly brutal traction control system will allow. This in particular could do with more finesse, the power coming in and out until the system is satisfied there’s enough grip.

Other safety systems were unobtrusive, with only one false alarm from the forward collision warning in my ridiculously narrow and parked-out street.

Direction changes are a bit lazy and the body does move around a fair bit, but the trade-off is a generally comfortable and quiet ride

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Possibly the only other area of real concern – and this is more about usability – are the brakes. At low speeds you look like a complete tool as merely waving your foot at the brake pedal produces a strong reaction from the braking system, presumably because the car has brake-by-wire.

As speed builds, the brakes become more consistent but have almost no feel, a common EV bugbear. When one clown sailed through a roundabout without looking and nearly wiped me out, the pedal was not confidence-inspiring when I jammed it down as hard as I could. The fact the internet is not full of jeering posts about a dumb journalist crashing BYD Australia’s only car means I survived unscathed. There is some in-car footage of me saying bad words and wishing the Megane CC driver a nasty bout of…never mind.

Ownership

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BYD’s local distributor is offering a seven-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty while the battery’s warranty is the same length in years but only good for 160,000km or just under 23,000km per year. Although that is high for the average Australian motorist, I’d like to see BYD put its money where its mouth is and offer a few more miles on the battery warranty.

UPDATE, August 24, 2022: BYD warranty detailed

BYD's Australian distributor has finally offered a full breakdown on what its warranty and servicing plan will entail. It's not as long as originally described, and a number of items on the vehicle have an even shorter warranty.

Get the details at the link below, and watch our video below.

Story continues

As with delivery and handover, you’ll be relying on MyCar (formerly known as Kmart Tyre & Auto) for your servicing. It’s not yet clear what the service intervals will be, how much each service will cost or exactly how many MyCar sites will talk to you about your BYD.

Another important ownership point is how you buy the Atto 3. At the moment the only way to buy one is by putting down a deposit on EVDirect’s website and waiting patiently for your number to come up. The first 1500 cars will be here in July, with that number to continue flowing each month provided all goes well.

EVDirect is in talks with Eagers Automotive to act as more traditional dealers but can only say there’s an MOU and because Eagers is a listed company, can’t even say how those talks are going.

VERDICT

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I will admit to being pretty sceptical about the Atto 3. The interior seemed a bit silly in the photos and the brief look I got at the glitzy Sydney unveiling. In the following week, the information flow was a wild ride. But the car is good, really good. Its obvious competition can’t match the range or equipment levels and is only $200 cheaper with a shorter warranty.

The BYD is a strong contender for your EV money. It’s the size of a Kia Seltos, well-built, reasonably good to drive and looks pretty okay too. Once EVDirect gets a right-hand drive car we’ll be driving it and will be able to deliver the definitive verdict on the Atto 3.

It’s not an EV for fans of fun driving but if you’re looking for a city car powered by electricity, the Atto 3 nails the brief. It proves BYD knows how to make a solid EV and the platform itself underpins further new models coming in the next year or so. If EVDirect gets it right, the Atto 3 will be the start of a very fast-growing automotive brand in this hyper-competitive market.

2022 BYD Atto 3 specifications