BYD’s electric Atto 3 has overtaken Tesla’s Model Y to become New Zealand’s best-selling electric car in both the month of May and the year to date.
The latest data shows the Atto 3 with 1,399 sales in the year to the end of May, beating out the Model Y year-to-date sales total of 1,192. The next closest competitor is another SUV, the MG ZS EV, which comes in with 891 sales so far in 2023.
On the back of this success, BYD this month announced the launch of its next Model, the Dolphin electric hatchback in New Zealand with a starting price of $NZ49,990.
Prospective buyers and interested owners received an email from the New Zealand arm of the brand, announcing the launch of its website that promotes the new offering.
Some new details shared were around the charging speeds of the New Zealand specs car which can fast charge from 30-80% in under 30 minutes as well as the small electric hatchback’s vehicle-to-load feature:
It also notes that the Dolphin can also run as a mobile power station with Vehicle to Load (VTOL) technology as standard. VTOL can achieve 3.3kW external discharge to run such things as home appliances, and power tools from the vehicle.
Safety features are now also listed with standard features including:
- Seven airbags
- Forward Collision Warning
- Driver Fatigue Monitoring
- Autonomous Emergency Braking
- Rear Collision Warning
- Rear Cross Traffic Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Brake
- Lane Departure Prevention
- Emergency Lane Keep Assist.
The Dolphin is also likely to arrive in Australia in 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.