• Enough range for town duties
• More difficult for long journeys
• Average DC rapid charge times

What are the running costs?

BYD hasn’t provided any efficiency figures for the Dolphin Surf – and we haven’t had chance to run its battery flat to test the brand’s range claims. In any case, you shouldn’t buy this car for long motorway journeys. Officially, the entry level Active model can only drive 136 miles, while the Boost and Comfort models can only muster around 200 miles

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Charge times aren’t exactly blistering either, as BYD expects you to charge the car slowly overnight. It can only accept DC charge speeds of up to 65kW, meaning a charge from 20 to 80% takes 25 minutes. For the sake of comparison, the Vauxhall Corsa can charge at up to 100kW, meaning an 80% charge from empty takes 30 minutes despite the fact it has a larger 51kWh battery.

Servicing and warranty

The Dolphin Surf has a lengthy service schedule. BYD recommends its first service should be scheduled two years or 20,000 miles after its registration date – whatever comes first.

That sounds great in principle – but BYD hasn’t thought out its aftersales programme as thoroughly as it perhaps should have. I can’t find any service plans on the company’s website, which means your wallet is at the mercy of inflation. Or, if BYD parts suddenly become more expensive to import, it’ll be the owners that’ll bear the brunt.

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However, BYD offers an eight-year warranty on the Dolphin Surf’s battery and motor as standard, while everything else on the car is covered for six years. That’s competitive. Kia warranties its cars for seven years, while Toyota and Suzuki are the only brand that can beat BYD with standard 10-year warranties.

Reliability

The Dolphin Surf is an electric car, so it should be more mechanically reliable than a petrol-powered city car as there are fewer moving parts to break in its powertrain. We’ll monitor its reliability over the next year and update you if we hear of any catastrophes.

One thing worth mentioning is that one of then DRLs on our test car was a bit intermittent. It stopped working on our way back from this shoot and only started working again after we’d left the car to sit overnight.