THE LONG CHARGE

Impressive range and an enticing price tag make the Chinese hybrid BYD Atto 2 DM-i (and its pure EV version) tempting choices, if you don't need lots of space

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Another week, another Chinese car. It’s not my fault, but merely a consequence of the sheer number of new makes and models from the Middle Kingdom invading our shores.

Something called AION is next, so I’m told. In scale and variety, this influx is already surpassing the flood of Japanese brands that arrived in the 1970s to tear out the heart of Europe's car industry. They didn't quite do that, but they did change the market for the better, spurring reliability and efficiency, and there's every sign their Chinese counterparts will achieve the same. Hence the two new BYD siblings, the Atto 2 DM-i, a plugin hybrid and the closely related Atto 2 Comfort, which is a proper full-time battery electric vehicle.

First, for those still unfamiliar with the world's largest producer of battery electric and plugin hybrids, tussling with Tesla for preeminence in the "new energy" sector, a few words on what all those letters mean. "BYD" is short for "Build Your Dreams", which they certainly are doing, challenging well-established automotive giants from a standing start making laptop batteries only a couple of decades ago.

The “Atto” doesn’t mean anything according to their PR man, though further research tells me it was originally applied to a rather smaller model. At that point, being derived from “attosecond”, the shortest unit of time, it was chosen to project a “speedy, energetic, and dynamic” image.