In April, it was reported that the first 9,000 units of BYD’s smallest EV, the Seagull, were on their way to Europe ahead of official launch in the continent.
Now, the brand has officially released the car in Europe along with pricing and specs and a new name – the BYD Surf.
The BYD Surf will be offered in three variants: Active, Boost & Comfort.
Pricing of the Active will start at €22,390 with pre end of June orders starting at €19,990. For comparison the base model of the Seagull is priced under $A16,000 in China, its home market.
This variant will feature 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 has 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 with orders placed before the end of June seeing a price of €23,380.
This variant adds a bigger battery, coming in a 43.2 kWh which of course boosts the range by 102 km to 322 km on the WLTP cycle. It will feature the same 65 kW front mounted motor as the Active variant which is plenty for city driving.
The top-spec Comfort variant starts at €27,890 with orders placed before the end of June seeing a price of €25,880. This keeps the larger battery from the Boost variant but adds a more powerful 115 kW motor.
This does reduce the range slightly but still delivers a respectable range of 310 km on the WLTP test cycle.
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 which is likely to provide additional headroom for the front and rear passengers.
On the inside, there’s the main infotainment screen which like the car is the smallest in BYD’s lineup of screen sizes, coming in at 10.1 inches.
Like other BYDs, this screen rotates and has screen mirroring capabilities, helping owners bring their favourite phone apps into the car with Apple Carplay and Android Auto.
This latest model to head to Europe will start deliveries next month in several markets, including the right-hand-drive market of UK.
That would make it interesting for us in Australia and New Zealand with the European launch potentially paving the path for this practical electric city cars to also be included to BYD’s local line up later this year.
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.