Yes, you read it right. I'd buy this EV. I went into this review thinking the BYD Atto 3 (also known as the BYD Yuan Plus) would be a bit of a stinker, but came out of it at the other end blown away by how much value you get from it. You'd be bonkers to spend another $30k on a base Tesla Model 3.
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More BYD content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/byd
More BYD Atto 3 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/byd/atto-3
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 01:00
Interior 04:21
Infotainment 06:10
Safety Tech 09:11
Practicality 10:13
Charging 15:37
On the Road 16:35
0 - 100 km/h 21:16
Verdict 26:44
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#byd #atto3 #review
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More BYD content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/byd
More BYD Atto 3 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/byd/atto-3
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 01:00
Interior 04:21
Infotainment 06:10
Safety Tech 09:11
Practicality 10:13
Charging 15:37
On the Road 16:35
0 - 100 km/h 21:16
Verdict 26:44
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
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#byd #atto3 #review
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. There is a car that you guys have been asking us countless times to review,
00:04 and it's been impossible for us to get our hands on one until today. It's this. It's called the
00:09 BYD ATO 3. It is one of Australia's cheapest electric vehicles. This one right here is the
00:17 extended range version. This competes with things like the MG ZS EV, the Hyundai Kona EV, and also
00:24 the Nissan Leaf. This is priced at just over $47,000 for the extended range, but if you don't
00:31 want the extended range, or if that's a little too expensive, the whole range kicks off with the
00:35 model beneath this with a slightly smaller battery for just over 44 grand. So it is pretty cheap when
00:40 you look at the rest of the competitors in this segment. Today we're going to do a detailed review
00:44 of this car, so if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time
00:48 codes on the screen, or if you're on YouTube you can scroll down and use the chapters below. And
00:52 if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon, that way you'll
00:55 find out every single time we review new EVs to Australia. Let's talk about the exterior, and we'll
01:01 start off with the colours. You've got four colours to pick from. All but white is going to cost you
01:06 $700 extra. Look, I've got to say, I think this looks fantastic. When I first saw it, maybe not in
01:12 this colour, but when I first saw it, I thought the design was just really smart and stylish, and
01:18 the thing you've got to realise with BYD, it is one of China's best-selling car brands, let alone
01:24 China's best-selling EV and hybrid brand as well. So they've delivered hundreds of thousands of
01:30 these in China, and they are extremely popular, and the company itself actually has backing by
01:35 Warren Buffett as well. So obviously someone believes in what they're doing. Now let's have
01:40 a look down the front here. You've got this section down here with the BYD branding on it,
01:44 and then like a brushed aluminium there. You've got an LED light that runs along the bottom there
01:48 and then connects into these headlights as well. Piano black down the centre here. You've got a
01:53 camera down here for the 360 camera, radar sensor down the bottom. Yeah, the styling just really
01:57 isn't too over the top. When you look at the price tag, this actually looks a whole lot more
02:01 expensive than it actually is, which I think is pretty cool. Over on the headlights, they are a
02:05 set of full LED headlights with adaptive high beam. This little section here is for aero. That
02:10 cuts through all the way to the back side of that bumper. Around the side here, you've got a set of
02:15 18-inch alloy wheels. You've got this wheel arch cladding over here. This is front-wheel drive
02:21 only, ground clearance of 175 millimetres, so you're not going to be doing any off-road driving.
02:26 This is the charge port. I'll run you through that in just a second. BYD design, whatever that means.
02:31 Now these tyres, let's talk about these for a second. It's a brand that I've never heard of,
02:35 Atlas Batman A51s. I suspect this probably won't be a great tyre. We'll see how it goes
02:42 later on when we go for a spin. In the centre here, you've got a machined finish,
02:46 piano black on the inside, and then these little caps here, which I suspect are for aero.
02:51 Now, up here, we've got a wing mirror in body colour. You've got an indicator built into there.
02:57 You have a camera off to the side there and an LED puddle lamp. Now this is interesting. It says
03:02 NFC. I don't exactly know what that means. NFC stands for near-field communication, so maybe you
03:08 can tap something on there or who knows, but it's very interesting. If you do know what that means,
03:13 leave it in the comments section below. You've got chrome here around your window sill. You've got
03:18 roof rails here. You have a panoramic glass roof as well. This section here, it's like a 3D design
03:25 element. Looks similar to what Kia's done with the Carnival. I think it actually works really
03:28 well and breaks up that body colour nicely. Whip around to the rear with me. So now, I know you
03:33 were wondering, what does BYD stand for? Well, it's written right here, "Build Your Dreams."
03:37 ATO3 is the model and then EV because this is a full EV. Actually, I quite like the rear design
03:44 as well. So you have LED taillights. You've got a chrome strip down the back here, and then this
03:48 bottom section is kind of a little bit busy, but you've got a reflector here. You've got a couple
03:53 of these little panels, and then you've also got a grey section down the bottom. Now, let me know
03:57 what you think about all this. I do find some of the stuff, and when we jump inside the cabin,
04:01 I'll run through this just a little bit more, I do find some of the stuff a little bit strange. Like,
04:05 "Build Your Dreams." I think if they did a focus group here in Australia, you probably wouldn't
04:09 want that on the back of your car, but I guess it is what it is, and I will have time to refine this
04:14 as I go. But let me know what you reckon in the comments section below. Do you like the design? Do
04:18 you like the offering? I'm keen to see what you think. So we are inside the ATO3. We'll start off
04:24 with the key. So you have lock, unlock, boot, and then remote start, and then on the back here you
04:32 have BYD. It's a proximity sensing key, so you can leave that in your pocket, and then once you're
04:36 inside, you have a push button start just here. So, this is actually way nicer than I thought it
04:43 was going to be. When you think this is one of the cheapest EVs in Australia, you think that it's
04:48 probably going to be cutting corners and all that sort of stuff, but to me, this is actually really
04:52 nicely presented. There are some silly things in here that I just think would get old very quickly,
04:57 so inside the door pockets here you have strings that you can sort of play guitar with, but just
05:03 sort of looking at these from a usability point of view, if you had a bottle in there over time,
05:06 it's going to stretch those out and they're going to become saggy. Some of these materials,
05:11 I mean, they look really cool, but it's a bit of a strange design, and I don't know, maybe your cup
05:16 of tea, but I think it is probably just a little bit over the top for me. But it is all sort of
05:20 centred around this screen in the centre here that I'll run you through when we talk about
05:24 infotainment, but for the most part, I actually think this is really nicely presented and I think
05:28 they've done a fantastic job here, especially at this price point, so a big tick there.
05:32 Now, in terms of your materials, so everything is soft to the touch. There really is nothing
05:37 inside this cabin that is cheap and nasty feeling, and then it's the same story with
05:41 the touch points. That's nice and soft there, soft on the door as well. How soft are they?
05:45 Well, we've got our durometer, we've tested the main surfaces in this cabin. If you want to see
05:49 how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description.
05:52 Build quality. A little bit wonky there in the centre, but for the most part, the rest of this
06:00 actually feels really nice and solid. Door test, they have these weird door handles as well,
06:04 so you pull that down from the top. Sounds really nice and solid.
06:10 Now, infotainment. This may look familiar, it looks very similar to what Tesla has done in
06:14 the Model 3 and the Model Y, but it does have a couple of unique features that I'll run you
06:18 through shortly. So, the actual screen itself is 12.8 inches in size, uses an Android operating
06:23 system. That actually means you can install your own apps in here, and when they do over-the-air
06:27 updates, which this car actually recently had one, they're going to be able to add new features as
06:32 they go. And one of the things I won't be able to show you today is Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
06:36 because that feature is still coming, but it will be part of a free over-the-air update.
06:41 The most recent over-the-air update added Spotify and satellite navigation to the actual
06:46 screen itself. And look, it is pretty straightforward to use. You have the home
06:50 menu here with your three main pillars. You have different profiles you can select.
06:54 This is where Spotify was added. You just need to sign in with your own account and then it uses
06:58 the car's 4G SIM to stream music as you go. In addition to that, you have inbuilt satellite
07:03 navigation. This actually works pretty well. It's quite a sort of detailed system. It has traffic
07:09 built into that as well. I used it this morning to get here and it was no dramas at all, so pretty
07:14 sort of impressed with that. And then in addition to that, you have AM/FM/DAB digital radio. It's all
07:20 plumbed through an eight-speaker Dyrak branded sound system. Never heard of it. Sound system is
07:25 okay. Nothing to sort of write home about. In addition to that, you can actually load music
07:29 onto the car itself. You can stream it locally. There's a number of different features here in
07:34 terms of getting music onto there as well, in addition to video too, so you can play things
07:38 back here on the screen. Now, here you ask me, what if I don't like that orientation?
07:42 When you hit this button here on the steering wheel, it flips the screen around, and then once
07:46 it does do that, all of your app's orientation changes as well to take advantage of that
07:51 different layout. So I do like the fact that you have that different versatility because, you know,
07:55 sometimes widescreen is great, sometimes portrait is good, so, you know, just depends what mood
07:59 you're in, I guess. I'm going to rotate that back again. There are a couple of other cool features
08:04 here as well. So in addition to all that stuff, you actually have a, basically a dash cam here
08:11 that records out the front window, so this is playing back what's sort of going on outside the
08:16 car. So, yeah, the quality is fine. In fact, it looks better quality than a Tesla camera anyway.
08:21 Yeah, and all pretty straightforward. It even tells you your speed and then the drive mode
08:26 and other details as well, including the time. So, really like this feature, and I love that
08:30 manufacturers are actually thinking outside the box and giving you stuff like that, so you don't
08:34 need to hook up a separate dash camera to achieve the same thing. And then finally, if you look away
08:38 from this screen, you actually have then a small screen here in front of the driver. It's only
08:42 five inches in size, but this is perfect, and this is one of the things that I hate the most about,
08:47 well, hated the most about my old Model 3 and don't like about our Model Y at the moment.
08:51 That is that you don't have a head-up display. It's super cheap when they don't fit that,
08:55 and I get, you know, they want to go for that simplistic look, but this has all the details
08:59 you need. It's got your speed, the car status, charge, all this sort of stuff. It's right there
09:03 in front of you, and it means you don't need to take your eyes off the road to come back to this
09:06 screen. So, really impressed with this setup here for infotainment and then the screen ahead of the
09:10 driver. Let's talk safety features. You have autonomous emergency braking that works both
09:15 forwards and backwards. You have an auto-dimming rear vision mirror. You have a blind spot monitor
09:20 built into the wing mirror. You have rear cross traffic alert, radar cruise control. You have a
09:26 semi-autonomous steering function. We'll test that out later on, see how well that works on our
09:29 banked bowl. In addition to that, you have front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I'll
09:34 show you what that looks like. So, there it is there. You can see clearly out the back there.
09:39 The quality is actually pretty good. It's quite sort of clear and sharp. That's your 360 view.
09:44 A little less useful. It looked quite distorted around the edges there, but you can change
09:48 the view so you can have a see-through view to see what's going on with the car there. You have
09:53 the ability to go 3D, and then you can adjust all of those different angles depending on
09:58 what you want to be seeing. Once you're outside of that 3D mode, you have a number of different
10:03 angles you can have a look at here. It's actually a really impressive camera and
10:08 lots of functionality there too. So, really impressed with that as standard fitment.
10:12 What about your practicality? We'll start off with your connectivity. Down the bottom here,
10:17 you have a USB-C outlet, an SD card slot, and a USB-A outlet. You have a 12-volt outlet down
10:23 there as well. While there's a phone charging pad just here, I think that's pretty comprehensive
10:28 there in terms of your connectivity. What about your phone storage? So, if it's not going to go
10:32 on the charging pad, you can fit it here in the cup holders without any dramas at all. Coffee?
10:37 Not great. It'll get de-lidded if it sits in there, so I had to prop it up with keys this
10:44 morning. But you do have this little doodad here that allows you to adjust the height of that,
10:48 but not quite high enough for a pool-sized coffee. Water bottles fit in there without any dramas,
10:53 but because you don't have any teeth, they kind of move around a little bit. I'll try and fit that
10:57 inside the door. It fits in there. Whoops, accidentally hit our guitar strings. Big bottle,
11:02 see if that fits in. No, it doesn't, unfortunately. It's a shame. Other storage. So, centre console
11:10 here, that is enormous. So, it's nice and deep and it tucks in just under the cup holders there.
11:15 You have this whole bottom storage area down here. You have a pretty reasonably-sized glove box there
11:21 as well. And then, not quite, I thought that was a sunglasses holder. Now, what about your comfort?
11:27 It's all pretty straightforward. So, down here, you have single-zone automatic climate control.
11:32 In addition to that, you have seat heating for the front row. Strangely, though, this morning,
11:37 I needed to put the rear demister on and there's no buttons here for that. You actually have to
11:40 go into the climate menu, then the seat heating menu, and then turn on your rear windshield
11:45 demister. And in addition to that, one other thing I didn't really love is when you do have it set to
11:49 auto, which is typically what I'll do, I'll set it to 22 degrees Celsius, this thing just really
11:54 struggled to actually heat the car. And it was, it does kind of like what Toyota does, where it
11:59 just blows cold air at you and you need to just crank the temperature up to get warmer. So, yeah,
12:05 don't love that. Could do slightly better on the calibration of that system. You do have
12:09 purification though, which is pretty cool. So, it tells you the quality of the air outside the car
12:13 and also inside the car as well. In terms of seats, they are actually really comfortable. I've
12:19 spent a fair bit of time in this car now and just really appreciate how comfortable the seats are
12:23 and they look bloody unreal. So, you've got this red piping around the edges, you have perforations
12:27 in them so you don't get too hot in summer, and then these side bolsters, they're electrically
12:32 adjustable for both the driver and front passenger, so you can go forwards and backwards.
12:35 Backrest can go forwards, backwards, you can lift the back of the seat and then drop that down as
12:39 well. Steering offers both tilts and reach adjustment. This all moves with the steering
12:44 wheel. And on our reach test, all of this stuff was pretty easy to reach while I was driving.
12:48 Second row of the ATO3. This is actually really impressive in terms of room. Have a look at that
12:54 knee room. Toe room's really good, headroom isn't too bad, and also really comfy seats back here as
13:00 well. In terms of your creature comforts, you have air vents here, you have a USB-A port, USB-C
13:05 port, a little bit of storage down the bottom. You have two of these big matte pockets with device
13:09 holders here as well. Those strange door handles just there. More of your guitar stuff, which the
13:16 kids are no doubt going to annoy you with. Center armrest here with two cup holders, so bottle fits
13:21 in there and it's got these rubber tabs on the side to hold the bottle in. Bottle can also fit
13:26 inside the door without any dramas as well. One thing I did notice, so you have two ISOFIX points
13:32 on the outboard seats, but you only have two top tether points. Well, only two top tether points
13:37 that I can find, which I think is a big omission, and my understanding was with stuff like the
13:41 Honda HR-V, they couldn't sell that in Australia because it didn't have a top tether point for the
13:46 center seat, so I don't know how they got away with that. The other thing that I noticed as well
13:51 that is a little bit disappointing is things like this, that's sort of really loose there on both
13:55 sides on that ISOFIX cover, and the front ISOFIX clip has actually fallen off somewhere as well.
14:01 This car's virtually brand new, so a little disappointing there in terms of the build
14:06 quality. And finally, our window test. It's auto up and down. We'll see how far down it goes. Oh,
14:11 almost all the way down, so there we go. Now let's talk about cargo space. Being an EV,
14:16 it should actually be pretty decent, so power tailgate, which is good to see.
14:20 Out of the way there. Very low power tailgate, I have to kind of duck down. It's set to 100%
14:26 as well, so I think that could be much higher. So in terms of your standard space, you have 440
14:31 litres of cargo available. You've got room off to the side here to store bits and pieces, and then
14:36 beneath the actual cargo floor, you've also got plenty of room there as well, so tyre repair kit
14:41 under there because you don't have a spare tyre. I'm a little bit surprised though because this is
14:45 front-wheel drive, and if you look at something like a Tesla Model Y, it is so deep and cavernous
14:51 here, whereas this is kind of not very deep, and there's no rear motor, so it's a bit confusing
14:55 why there isn't more space here, but I guess that is what it is. Let's have a look at what it's like
15:00 with our bags in there. So, top bag in there, and our suitcase in here. I wonder if that'll actually
15:08 shut. Let's give that a shot, see what happens. No, that's not going to work. I think you have
15:17 to go sideways with that. Yeah, once that is sideways, there's plenty of space there, but yeah,
15:22 it's probably not the biggest boot in the world. I was hoping it would be a little bit bigger than
15:26 that, and then in terms of more storage space, you can drop the second row from here. Once that is
15:32 out of the way, it expands the space to 1340 litres. So, before we go for a drive, let me run you
15:38 through the charging. So, it's behind this cover here. You have both AC and DC charging. On the AC
15:45 front, it can do three phase up to 7 kilowatts. On the DC front, it can do up to 80 kilowatts.
15:51 Battery size is just over 60 kilowatt hours, so it's that sort of nice sweet spot before they
15:56 start getting heavy, and it gives you a driving range of 420 kilometres on the WLTP cycle, 480
16:03 on any DC. The other cool thing as well is that it has vehicle to load. So, using the AC port,
16:08 you can plug in an adapter, and that allows you to have up to 2.2 kilowatts out on the AC front,
16:14 so you can run, you know, whatever you need to run if you're out camping or something like that.
16:18 So, look, the specs aren't too bad. For this price point, it's actually pretty impressive.
16:22 The fact that it comes with vehicle to load as well, I think, is a really good and handy feature.
16:26 The model beneath this that isn't the extended range has a 50 kilowatt hour battery and gets
16:30 slightly less range, but I think this is right where you need to be in terms of that drivability
16:34 and the range. So, I've just hit the road in the ATO3. So, this just uses a single electric motor
16:42 on the front axle, so no all-wheel drive. It is pretty straightforward in terms of the way that
16:46 it works, and that front motor produces 150 kilowatts of power and 310 newton metres of torque.
16:54 So, those numbers are pretty healthy. The second you go above that sort of 310,
16:57 350 mark in terms of torque, that's when you start getting torque steer,
17:01 and it starts getting just a little bit scrappy there as a front-wheel drive. So,
17:04 that is about the limits of where you want it to be in a car like this that is fairly light.
17:08 It's around that 1700 kilo mark. Does it do all the EV stuff? So, we've just got it in the normal
17:12 drive mode at the moment. I'll just roll onto the throttle. Yeah, look, it's fine, but talk about
17:17 torque steer, I don't even have to hold the wheel there and it kind of just steers us around the
17:21 corner. So, you can see the effects of that right at that performance limit that we're at at the
17:27 moment. But outside of that, you put your foot on the throttle, it really rolls into the torque
17:32 nicely. It doesn't sort of pin you back in the seat unnecessarily, but it is quite responsive
17:36 and feels just nice enough to drive here behind the wheel. I've got to call out as well the
17:41 steering at low speeds here. It's actually really good. It feels sort of nice and, I guess, soft,
17:47 but then has a little bit of firmness to it as well. So, you actually feel like you're doing
17:51 something. Often with EVs, they're just devoid of any steering feel to try and make it feel like
17:56 nothing is actually going on here behind the wheel. Now, BYD claims an official consumption
18:01 of just over 15 kilowatt hours per 100 k's. I mentioned earlier that we've been driving this
18:06 car a lot, so I'm keen to see where we're at. I'm going to scroll through here. We're currently
18:12 sitting on an average of 16.1 kilowatt hours per 100 k's. That's a really impressive figure and
18:18 quite sort of happy with that. We're doing a fair bit of highway driving as well, which arguably
18:22 is worst case scenario for a vehicle like this. Let's talk about some of these modes here. So,
18:26 you have two regen modes. You have high and standard, and both of those just vary how much
18:31 regen you get before the car sort of lets go. It doesn't have any one-foot driving mode,
18:36 so that means that when you do get to a lower speed, it just means that you need to take over
18:40 with the brake. Transition between regen and an actual friction brakes is fantastic. It is very
18:46 seamless, and it just does everything nice and smoothly without any dramas. You do then have a
18:51 couple of different sort of driving modes here. You have eco, normal, and sport, and in addition
18:57 to that, you have an ice mode, which is like a limited traction mode. I have a digital speedo
19:03 just there. I also have the, I was about to say fuel consumption, but the energy consumption for
19:08 the past 50 kilometres of travel. I can then flick through different menus there as well to see
19:12 other things. I have range in kilometres, battery capacity, and also trip data and kilowatts here in
19:18 terms of how much energy I'm consuming, and then if I roll out of the throttle, how much energy I'm
19:23 putting back into the battery. So, really good little screen there, and just gives you all of
19:27 the key information that you need. Okay, let's put this into sport mode. I'll throw it through
19:33 our corners. This actually becomes really quite responsive there. Brake pedal feel is okay.
19:38 It's so weird. It's doing some very random stuff on the rear axle there, because it has such little
19:45 weight over the rear, it kind of feels like it's breaking the rear as we go through these corners,
19:50 like an attempt at torque victory. But once it gets up and moving, it is actually surprisingly
19:55 agile. Sort of getting up along our back section of the track here,
20:00 and it is moving along with a fair bit of pace. Hazard lights just came on there when we jammed
20:07 the brakes on. Something else we've seen in other Chinese cars, when you do sort of get on the
20:11 brakes hard, hazard lights come on way too early. All right, we can see how it goes on our back
20:17 straight here. Yeah, look, brake pedal feel isn't great once you dial on the brakes past the reach
20:23 end point in sport mode, but I really have very few complaints. It has a little bit of body roll
20:28 here, but the steering feels really nice and communicative. Here's our back straight.
20:33 It's actually moving along pretty quickly here, so about to nudge 160, 170 there, so
20:43 it's not too bad. And there's the hazard lights go crazy. So yeah, I wasn't expecting that. Look,
20:48 I think ultimately the limit here is going to be these tyres. They are really not very good. So
20:53 when you do start dialing it through some of these corners, you really do feel that the tyres are the
20:59 limit to the chassis. And then there's that strange stuff happening on the rear axle where
21:03 it's biting the brakes in an attempt to torque vector, but it really just unsettles the car a
21:07 bit. But look, it's definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and sort of quite
21:11 impressive. And if you do want to go for a little bit of a punt, it is actually a little bit of fun
21:15 as well. Okay, time for some 0 to 100. I can hear some of that low speed hum coming through the
21:21 speakers. So BYD claims a time of 7.3 seconds. We've got our V-Box hooked up. I'm going to go
21:27 to 120 so we can see what the overtaking time, 80 to 120, is as well. So I'll put this into
21:34 sport mode, and I'm just going to hit the throttle. We'll see what happens. Here we go.
21:38 A little bit of wheel slip there. We're just grappling for grip. Okay.
21:45 And 100.
21:48 And 120. Come to a stop as the hazard lights go bananas.
21:56 Okay, so 0 to 100 was 7.4 seconds. I think if I switch stability control off, it'd probably
22:01 hit 7.3 without any dramas. And then our 80 to 120, that came in at 4.9 seconds. So
22:08 that's actually not terrible. Normally EVs are quite slow for 80 to 120, but pretty sort of
22:12 happy with that. And now our all-important reverse speed test. How fast will it go in reverse?
22:18 So there's reverse there. Give this a shot.
22:21 Takes a while to get moving. Oh, that is very soft and gentle. 27 kilometres an hour.
22:32 Now let's talk about the ride. So in and around the city, you're going to love it because it is
22:37 really nice and soft. You can throw it at speed humps and it really just doesn't have too many
22:41 dramas at all. They've tuned in a lot of softness to the ride, and I've mentioned this in our
22:46 previous reviews of Chinese market vehicles. That is how they're tuned for the Chinese market. The
22:51 Korean market is the exact same. The Koreans, on the other hand, though, do a lot of right-hand
22:54 handling tuning for Australia. BYD hasn't done any of that here for the 803. So I think when
22:59 we attack our sine waves, it's probably going to be a little bit sloppy, but in and around the city,
23:03 it is perfectly fine. Okay, let's dial things up to 130 k's an hour for our sine waves. This is the
23:09 bit where I think it's not going to do all that well because it doesn't feel like... I mean,
23:13 it is quite a soft ride and I feel that that's going to come at the cost of body control,
23:17 and that's often the case here with these Chinese vehicles. So let's give this a shot.
23:21 Oh yeah, that is really sloppy. Yeah, look, ultimately, I think that BYD is going to need
23:29 to invest in a local right-hand handling tune. We've seen with countless Chinese market cars
23:34 before that they are tuned way too softly for Aussie roads, and when you hit consecutive bumps
23:39 like that out in the country, it just has no control at the top end and you just feel like
23:44 the thing's going to leave the ground. And it is worth considering, look, if you are going to be
23:47 doing city driving predominantly, it's not going to be the end of the world, but if you do want to
23:51 drive out into the country, this really will start feeling sloppy if you hit a bump mid-corner or one
23:56 of those consecutive sine waves as you're attempting to overtake. Now let's talk visibility.
24:00 So down the front there, it's great. Wing mirrors are really nice and big. You've got the blind spot
24:04 monitor built into those. Visibility out the back isn't amazing, and that's because of those
24:08 enormous headrests. They really do get in the way of things, and you only have a narrow gap between
24:12 the headrests to actually see what you're doing. So visibility out the rear could be a little
24:16 better, but for the most part, it's fine because you do have all of those cameras for parking
24:20 and doing low-speed manoeuvres. Now, are you doing any towing? It has a brake-to-towing capacity of
24:25 750 kilos. Nothing too crazy, but it does mean that you can tow a small trailer if you need to.
24:30 What's it like in terms of road noise? Look, it's actually not that bad. Often in a car this size,
24:35 you do get a fair bit of tyre noise coming into the cabin, but at highway speeds, you do still get
24:40 that, but it really isn't the end of the world. There is a little bit of wind noise that comes
24:43 over the wing mirrors, but it really isn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be.
24:47 Okay, so time to test the safety assist systems here for lane departure warning and the lane
24:52 keeping assistant. This also has a lane centring feature with basically this button just here that
24:57 will allow the car to stay within its lane. So we'll test how well it works. So we will begin
25:01 in this lane, then we'll move to the next lane and then the outermost lane. I've only had two
25:05 vehicles achieve the outermost lane, so I'll be keen to see how this goes. Start off by setting
25:11 cruise control to 70 k's an hour. There it is just there. So first up, this is our lane departure,
25:20 so we'll see how that goes. It doesn't really work well at all, it's not doing anything,
25:25 so we'll try that again. That's strange, it's actually not doing anything.
25:32 There we go, so now it's saying emergency lane activation, so it vibrates the steering wheel,
25:41 pulls the steering back in. Now what I'll do is try and engage the self-steering function. So
25:47 that's now active, it comes up with a warning on the screen there. That appears to work perfectly
25:53 fine here in this lane. We'll jump over to the next lane, see how well that works. Wait for the
26:00 system to go green. Okay, there it is there, I'll let go of the steering wheel. Okay, that is
26:09 working well. So it's holding our position in the centre of the lane there without any dramas,
26:14 telling me to hold the steering wheel in the most annoying buzzer known to man.
26:18 We'll jump up here to the third lane, we'll see how well this works. Wait for that to go green.
26:23 Okay, there it is there, I'll let go of the steering wheel. Okay, so it's failed to hold
26:28 that. Try that one more time. Let's whip back up here. So there's green, I'll gently ease it down
26:36 to that line. No, that's failed altogether. So yeah, passed lane one and two, but failed lane three.
26:44 So the BYD ATO3, I've been really, really, really surprised by this. It drives way better than I
26:54 thought it would. It's quite dynamic. It is let down a little bit by those tyres, but the drive
26:58 train's great. It has a big enough battery with more than enough range for most people, and the
27:03 price, you just cannot beat the price. It is pretty impressive. So I am a little dubious on the
27:08 distributor here in Australia. It still doesn't make sense to me how you're meant to buy this,
27:11 where you collect them, and all that sort of stuff. But if you look outside of that stuff,
27:14 the car itself is excellent. And I think that if you look at this compared to something like an MG
27:19 ZS, this just feels light years ahead. The MG ZS feels comprehensively old. So I think they've done
27:24 an excellent job with this. I think that if you are buying one of these or have one of these on
27:28 order, you're really going to enjoy it. So let me know what you reckon in the comments section
27:31 below. Have you bought one of these? Are you thinking about buying one of these? I'm really
27:35 keen for your feedback. Are you as impressed as I was with it? If you did enjoy this video,
27:39 please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates. And if you haven't done so already,
27:42 subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.