BYD has announced the locations of their new experience centres, a week after announcing the delay in deliveries of the standard model of the BYD Atto 3. These experience centres are in collaboration with Eagers Automotive.
This will soon give people in states and territories other than NSW a chance to check out the new Atto 3 EV over the coming months. This update was communicated to EV Direct subscribers late on Friday afternoon.
NSW will have four experience centres
NSW will have 3 more experience centres added to the existing Darlinghurst site, which was opened in February this year. Other centres expected to open include sites at Sutherland (south of Sydney), Castle Hill (north-west of Sydney) and Cardiff (south-west of Newcastle).
Queensland will have a Brisbane experience centre located in Indooroopilly, while the Gold Coast site will be based in Robina and Victoria also gets two experience centres, one in the inner-west of Melbourne at Brooklyn and the other in the south-eastern suburb of Dandenong.
West Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and ACT will get one BYD experience centre each. These are located in West Perth, Medindie, Hobart and Canberra respectively.
Local experience centre opening dates unconfirmed, NZ test drives open later this week
Although the locations have been announced for the new experience centres, their opening dates are still unconfirmed. Apart from the Darlinghurst site, all other newly announced sites are expected to be opened over the coming months.
All local order holders so far have yet to test drive the new BYD Atto 3 in Australia, and as of the time of writing the Atto 3 had still not received official vehicle type approval from the federal infrastructure department’s road vehicle regulator.
Meanwhile, social media reporting by Kiwi order holders suggests that some have test drives booked, starting as early as this Friday, the 22nd of July. This comes after many BYD Atto 3s in the right-hand drive configuration landing in New Zealand earlier in the month.
We are hoping to see the same for thousands of Australian customers awaiting to test-drive their first EV. There are high hopes that BYD will deliver on this over the coming months.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.