Little goes a long way

Just how versatile are these well-priced small electric cars from BYD, Citroën and Renault? We take them on a two-day road trip to find out

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IN CASE YOU hadn't heard, the Renault 5 (R5) is our 2025 Car of the Year. This Volkswagen Polo-sized electric hatchback is packed with charm, brilliant to drive and, until very recently, seemed exceedingly good value, with prices starting at £22,995.

However, Chinese brand BYD has just launched a rival that makes the R5 look positively overpriced. The new Dolphin Surf (called the Seagull in some other countries) starts at just £18,650, which isn't much more than tiny urban runabouts such as the Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03.

Indeed, even if you go for the range-topping Comfort version we're testing here, the Dolphin Surf still undercuts our favourite version of the R5 (the Comfort Range Techno) by more than £3000. So, to bring the prices closer together without a huge disparity in standard equipment (more on that later), we've lined up a cheaper Urban Range version of the R5 with a smaller battery.

Our third contender is the Citroën e-C3. It may not have the eye-catching starting price of the Dolphin Surf, but the range-topping Max version costs a seemingly very reasonable £23,795 - or even less if you're prepared to haggle or buy online. So, it's actually the cheapest of the three cars here.

These small electric vehicles (EVs) will spend a lot of their lives making shorter journeys in town and the 'burbs, but to find out which is the best all-rounder, we decided to push them a little harder. We plotted a motorway route out of London and down to the south coast, followed by an overnight stop in West Sussex. We'd then head back to London the following day, with a small diversion en route, for a total round trip of around 200 miles - fractionally farther than these cars can officially travel on a charge.