BYD has been on a path to rapid global expansion in recent years, starting with popular battery electric models like the Atto 3, followed by the Dolphin, the Seal and more recently the lower cost Atto 2 and Atto 1 vehicles.
The company has now unveiled its biggest fully electric offering, the 7-seater Atto 8 with up to 810 kW of power, in one of its first international markets.
According to reports from CNC, BYD has unveiled the new Atto 8 at an international Auto Show in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A green variant of the SUV was on show at BYD’s stand and is the first time this model has been shown outside of China.
In the Chinese market, this 7-seater is the Tang L BEV, coming equipped with either a 580 kW RWD powertrain or a top-spec AWD version packing 810 kW.
This top-spec version of the car, can accelerate from 0-100 km/h in just 3.9 seconds and is fed by BYD’s 100 kWh Lithiulm-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) blade battery pack.
It’s also one of the two cars in BYD’s line up that are able to use the company’s new architecture for faster charging.
BYD calls this new architecture the “Super e-Platform”, found in the latest versions of Han L sedan and Tang L SUVs.
This new 1,000 V architecture is capable of delivering 1,000 A of charging current and is designed to add 2 km of range every second, hence getting over 400 km of range in just 5 minutes.
That charging speed makes both of these models some of the fastest charging mass-market EVs in the world, peaking at over 1,003 kW or 1 MW during the charge.
These cars first began deliveries in China around mid-April, just before the Shanghai Auto Show this year.
Pricing of the Han L sedan starts at $A58,500, while the BYD Tang L SUV is priced from $A60,300, which of course is likely to see a bump up in international markets, factoring in freight and local operating costs.
Uzbekistan is quite an important market for BYD with the company already operating a factory in the country which started production of its cars as of July 2024.
Looking more locally, the Atto 8 could come in as a furutre variant to the upcoming BYD Sealion 8 PHEV, which is expected to land in Q1 2026.
This model may fill the gap left by mid-spec 7-seater electric options with most recent electric 7-seaters such as the Kia EV9, Hyundai Ioniq 9 and the Volvo EX90 being priced well over $100,000.
We look forward to keeping an eye for any developments on this model’s international expansion plans, particularly with the power and tech it’s delivering in its home market of China.
BYD Tang L/Sealion 8/Atto 8 review by Inside China Auto on YouTube
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.