Image: BYD UK
BYD’s smallest electric car, the Seagull or Dolphin Surf, recently entered the European market, with slight modifications to suit local requirements. Now, this model has received top stars for safety, with EuroNCAP awarding five stars, making it one of the smallest cars ever to receive the top rating.
On BYD Europe’s X page, the company shared: BYD Dolphin Surf scores maximum five-star Euro NCAP safety rating️.”
For this city electric car, the awarded results from Euro NCAP were:
The BYD Dolphin was officially launched at the Shanghai auto show in April 2023. It was then reportedly the star of that show, raking in thousands of orders in only a few days of being there.
Shortly after, the company began deliveries of the vehicle in its home market of China and just six months later, had produced 200,000.
In 2024, BYD upped the sales of the Seagull further in China, with over 360,000 units sold during the year.
By early 2025, the company had announced plans to launch this model in European markets under the name BYD Dolphin Surf.
In April this year, it was reported that the first 9,000 units of this mdoel were on their way to Europe ahead of the official launch on the continent.
By May 2025, the company had sold over 1 million BYD Seagulls in China and various other countries. That took just over two years since the unveiling, making it the company’s most popular individual model.
During the same month, BYD launched a bigger Seagull in Europe under the new name and released pricing and specs.
For Europe, the model will have three variants which include Active, Boost & Comfort. All of these new variants will see a size upgrade in terms of the length and height of the car.
It’s grown in size by 210 mm for the European market, coming in just shy of 4 metres at 3,990 mm in length. The height has also gone up by 50 mm, with the car now standing 1,590 mm tall. That is likely to provide additional headroom for the front and rear passengers.
Pricing of the Active will start at €22,390. For comparison, the base model of the Seagull is priced under $A16,000 in China, its home market.
This variant comes with the smallest 30 kWh Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) blade battery pack, which will deliver up to 220 km of WLTP range.
Charging speeds for the European version have also been increased. AC charging speeds of up to 11 kW is on offer, while DC speed has also been ramped up to 65 kW for the smaller battery pack variant.
The Boost variant is priced from €25,390 and adds a bigger battery, coming in a 43.2 kWh battery, which of course boosts the range by 102 km to 322 km on the WLTP cycle.
The top-spec Comfort variant starts at €27,890, which keeps the larger battery from the Boost variant but adds a more powerful 115 kW motor. That in turn reduces the range slightly but still delivers a respectable range of 310 km on the WLTP test cycle.
Moving inside, there’s a centred infotainment screen which comes in at 10.1 inches. Like other BYDs, this screen rotates and includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for the owner’s convenience by bringing their favourite apps into the car.
Deliveries of the Dolphin Surf in markets like the right-hand-drive UK have begun, and now with five-star EuroNCAP, it will encourage business fleets and customers concerned about small city electric cars’ safety to get behind the wheel.
It’s unclear if BYD plans to release the car here in Australia in the coming months, but if sales in the UK market start to take off, it could build a business case for our right-hand-drive market too.
BYD Dolphin Surf EuroNCAP Test Video
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.
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It would be great if this came to Australia. If they price it the same as a kia picanto I think it would be very popular
Picanto is a size smaller, 3600 vs 4m and narrower. The EV needs to sell on its own merit rather than being the cheapest of the cheap, at which point you are arguably better off buying second hand and people will assume it’s Temu quality. There is a reason e-scooter fires happen in Australia every day. No new model comes in cheaper than its aging competition.
If this is priced logically below the regular Dolphin then that should be very affordable.
Once the lease runs out on my current Dolphin I'll definitely consider upgrading to this. Come on BYD.
Go smaller and ''upgrade" ?.
Not everyone defines themselves by how many cubic metres their car occupies.
Only yanks rate that......but Aussies are learning... unfortunately.
Top spec only priced at $24,999 thanks. They won't be doing themselves any favours brining in the other models unless its $3K cheaper.
I assume that at least some of the dramatic falls in grid-scale battery costs reported recently on Renew Economy will flow through to EV batteries, with the promise of lower EV prices in the near future.
We are a long way from the days when a popular German VW had the petrol tank on your LAP !. Ralph Nader, (from the nanny state) interfered with the freedom to die in flames. He was, most definitely, WOKE.
BYD Australia, you have no excuses to bring this to Australia now!
Great - finally - at last - an EV that WILL fit through my gates. All I need now, is CATL's latest battery in it. So I can stay away from lithium batteries. The sun is starting to rise.
I've also found an induction cooktop, so I can replace the present gas one - looks sleek, instant heat, and easy to clean. The early ones were "a good idea" - but if you spilled anything, it was hell to clean them (IF you ever managed to!) Gas is on its way off my property!
The LFP "blade" batteries used by BYD are almost impossible to set on fire. Check their nail test, for example.
I did read once about the Seagull switching to sodium batteries (for cost reasons, and possibly only within China), but haven't seen any further info about it.
Induction cooktops have pretty much always just had a flat glass cooktop, there's nothing easier to clean. Our $400, five-year old Kogan unit is still going like new, with minimal wear on the glass.
Before bringing the Seagull to Australia, we'll need to crash test a few more to confirm that we get the same result as the Europeans.
Yes, Australia, home of "reinventing the wheel"...