BYD Yuan Plus Atto 3 small SUV

[coulomb]

BYD Yuan Plus electric SUV locked in for Australia

but then

BYD Yuan Plus delayed for Australia

In the second article, BYD seem to be on the defensive.

[reecho]

https://www.drive.com.au/news/byd-elect ... in-sydney/

[sleeperpservice]

Being released here as the Atto 3

Keen pricing but not as cheap as people were expecting I presume. From $44k before on roads.

https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/byd-at ... -announced

One thing is a bit odd is the range of the 2 versions. Does the car suddenly become more efficient with the bigger battery?

50kWh - 320km - 15.6kWh/100km
60kWh - 420km - 14.3kWh/100km

That should be 380km for the larger battery going by smaller ones consumption.

Also the charging speed is a bit odd. 80kW but 90 mins to charge. Must be from 0 to 100 but an extremely slow top end. Worse than Ioniq here really.

[g4qber]

5BF4E9D9-7E1D-4A87-A0A2-406BA9CD413E.png (396.63 KiB) Viewed 1978 times

Atto has rake n reach on steering wheel

[KlinkPC]

Very good look at the Atto 3:

https://youtu.be/kPpBF1f5xB4

[FyKnight]

From the PoV of a current MG ZS EV owner I went to the Sydney showroom today to look at both the Atto 3 (Yuan plus) for myself and the Atto 2 (Dolphin) for my partner.

(They're not taking orders for the Atto 2 yet, expect to do that in about July I believe. The car on display has a fixed sunroof with a movable shade. Tiny bonnet. Great space in the back.)

The Atto 3 is taking orders now with a refunadble deposit. Test drives around May when the first 47 vehicles will come into the country for this purpose. Order now for delivery around August for Sydney through Mycar in Chatswood, though they might expand the locations given the demand. Anecdotally (i.e. from assessment of salesman there on the day, not official numbers) more than the initial 500 slots are thought to have been taken.

I had several technical questions about the vehicle that I thought others might be interested in the answers to:

- Boot dimensions are about 95 cm wide x 75 cm deep at the bottom. The sides rise pretty vertically. Same dimensions under the boot shelf (which can be put in two different positions). This is bigger than the MG ZS EV.

- It has V2L with an adapter that plugs into the Type 2 plug. Other end of adapter is a GPO socket. Adapter has 10A written on it, so it seems there must be at least a 2.4 kW inverter in there.

- The CCS2 implementation will support V2G according to the salesman (Dan)

- Towing is currently being tested to get an Australian rating. They are expecting 1250 to 1300 kg for a braked trailer, maybe up to 1500 kg. Awesome!

- Roof rails also being rated for racking. They want to one up the MG ZS EV and so do better than its 75 kg rating.

- The LiFePO4 (LFP) battery chemistry allows a relatively flat charging profile with no worries about leaving at 100% nor discharging to 0%. Compared to the Li-Ion in the MY2020 MG ZS EV that tapers off quite quickly from 70 kW.

- Thought to be a deal with Telstra for the SIM for 3 years. This will allow OTA updates and app connectivity. Unsure if locked to Telstra (that would be bad)

- Infotainment screen doesn't seem to be able to detach easily.

- Claim that the CCS2 connector will be able to fit in upright in the charging door... I am sceptical about this though. Charging port above the front right wheel is an ideal location near the OBC for shorter cable runs (unlike the MG ZS EV that has to wrap the cable around the radiator). It's a small saving but for fast DC charging at 200 A it probably does make a difference in power loss.

- When the rear seats are down, there is a practically no bump between the boot (with shelf in the raised position) and the back seats. There is a slight rise up the seat back, seems to be slighter than the MG ZS EV. I think it'd be pretty good to sleep on for car camping... but there were too many people in the showroom for me to dare to climb in there

- Still plenty of space under the bonnet for a frunk, though there are 3 black steel cross bars that would get in the way a bit.

- There is no 12V battery visible under the bonnet. Salesman said it did have a 12V battery that he thought was in the boot, though none of us was able to locate it. (Also... the Atto2 bonnet is so small that I cannot see how a 12V battery would even fit through there...)

- Regenerative braking has two modes, and the stronger one is said to be pretty close to one-pedal driving.

Thanks to Gabe (a fan and future customer) who knew a lot about the car and able to answer many of my questions today while the salesman was busy.

I might go back at a less busy time for another look, if anyone has anything they'd like me to ask reply here and I'll see what they say.

Edit: Oh, one more thing: Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is not currently present but I was told it's expected around September. I'd be happy with just the 'second screen' approach that they currently have, because those APIs are very restrictive.

[g4qber]

@FyKnight
Please find out if it is 22kW 3 phase AC charging.

[KlinkPC]

Hi Joseph
from https://www.chasingcars.com.au/news/new ... australia/
"Those with access to three-phase power will be able to charge the Atto 3 at up to 11kW using an AC wallbox, which is quicker than speeds offered by a Jaguar I-Pace which is limited to 7.4kW on two-phase power. "

[g4qber]

https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/n ... h-for-audi
New I-Pace can do 11kW AC.

Lo "2 phase power."

[FyKnight]

Good one, I'll ask about the 3 phase AC charging. I had heard it was only 11 kW somewhere. Actually I'll see if I there are some specs on the OBC, it'll probably have a label. (Though the model we eventually receive might be different of course)

[Chuq]

- Claim that the CCS2 connector will be able to fit in upright in the charging door... I am sceptical about this though.

It sounds like suggest the CCS connector may be placed horizontally? This isn't something I've considered as being an issue before. My current EV isn't CCS, so have limited experience, but isn't the connector designed for the downward weight of the cable to be in a specific direction (i.e. when plugged into a socket that is rotated 90 degrees, the cable sticks out from the side, rather than down)? And ergonomically, isn't it designed to be held with the connector in it's usual orientation?

[FyKnight]

I'd prefer it in the usual orientation too but I don't think it'd be an issue (mechanically) having the connector sideways. Plenty of times I've used a DC charger the cable has had to be pulled around to reach so there ends up being more force horizontally on the connector than vertically. (e.g. Coffs Harbour ultra rapid) It's a pretty chunky unit, she'll be right.

[AlessandroPez]

If the charging is anything like the BYD T3, it will be incredible.

The T3 with a 45kw pack at a DCFC in my own experiences will pull 54Kw from 10-80% and still pull >25Kw until almost 100%, I drive from Forster in NSW to Newcastle and mostly charge at the Chargefox DCFC in Karuah, fromm 9-100% last time took me 50 minutes.

Assuming the ATTO3 has the same Blade pack I'm sure the charging times will be great. In comparison to the Nissan E-nv200 which is relatively quick unto 80% but tapers off quickly to <10Kw.