I fully understand the frustration described by Rob Dean in his article about problems with the BYD Shark 6 plug in hybrid ute. A large number of early component failures does not engender confidence in a brand, and how well a company responds to such failures is critical to its reputation and consumer acceptance.
I reported on a recent road trip in our BYD Dolphin when we had malfunctions in several critical safety features – the SRS airbag system, the lane assist function and the rear blindspot alert system.
Fortunately, our story has a happy end. Although there was some delay in getting a booking, everything was handled well by BYD from then on.
The new BYD service centre at Osborne Park in Perth is next to the main train line into central Perth and on a major bus route. The service manager was efficient, polite and clearly knew her stuff.
She immediately organised for a technician to come for a test drive with me to observe the faults. The progress call she offered came through exactly at the time she promised, as did a subsequent call.
She was honest and apologetic that they were still relying on advice from Melbourne on technical matters, and that the 3 hour time difference made communication difficult. She was fairly certain that any recalibration of the lane assist function would not count as a warranty issue and would incur a cost of around $200.
The airbag fault related to a problem with the passenger seatbelt pretensioner, requiring a part to be brought in and fitted the next day.
I picked the car up the next day to find that everything had been done under warranty, including recalibrating the lane assist. The rear blind spot detector is a radar inside the rear plastic bumper.
She pointed out the subtle signs that someone had “parked by ear” and deformed the bumper, thereby causing the radar to malfunction. Since it does still work when a car is in the blind spot, but also has phantom actuations I decided to leave it as is.
So my experience was overwhelmingly positive. They were frank about having teething issues and requiring assistance from Melbourne. It is little wonder that there have been some problems, given the explosive growth of BYD since we bought our Dolphin in 2024.
There are still some concerns about the complexity of warranty conditions BYD offers, with variations on duration for varying parts of the car. Hopefully BYD plan to address this as it will become a consumer issue if these components fail.
The Dolphin is the family’s favourite EV and is a great car. It seems that this is a common theme – BYD make great cars, but rapid growth has caused some problems. My experience is that BYD are becoming aware of this and are starting to address these issues. This will be central to their reputation as a reliable brand in an increasingly competitive market for EVs.