BYD DOLPHIN

MG 4-rivalling hatchback swells the ranks of burgeoning Chinese manufacturer's electric offerings

- VICKY PARROTT

They were thinking Atto 2. That would have made sense, right? After all, this small(ish), 4.29m-long pureelectric hatchback sits beneath the BYD Atto 3 family crossover that arrived here only a few weeks ago as the Chinese marque's first official UK model.

But no. At some point, some people sat around a table and decided that the brand adamantly wants to be 'fun and interesting', according to one senior executive. So Dolphin it is.

Do you know what? I get that.

There may even be a generational aspect here, where younger drivers who aren't rooted in traditional car culture and established brand loyalty could well look at BYD's apparently random naming policy and think that it has an appealing, fresh eclectics.

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 (p27) that will follow it later this year - will become so popular that the weirdness of the name will just rub off over years of use. Anyway, Atto 2 is just boring. 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.