BYD Yuan Plus, named Atto 3 in Australia. Supplied
Chinese manufacturing giant BYD will launch its first electric vehicle in Australia on Saturday, dubbed the BYD Atto 3, a renamed version of its Yuan Plus made for the local market.
Set to be launched on Saturday night, according to the website of BYD’s importer in Australia, EVDirect, the BYD Atto 3 is expected to be the first of a range of BYD electric vehicles brought to Australia that will compete for price against high-quality petrol cars.
The Australia-bound Yuan Plus was seen testing in China back in December, emblazoned with “Australian 2022 Design and evaluation model”, following comments made earlier in the year that the Yuan Plus would be heading to Australia in early 2022.
EV Direct CEO Luke Todd has been shepherding BYD’s EV models into the Australian market, and was on hand in China to help with the final design styling and testing of the BYD Yuan Plus vehicles built to Australian specifications.
And this week, in comments to the press, Todd explained that EVDirect has invested “tens of millions” of dollars into Australian-specific production lines at one of BYD’s mega Chinese factories.
“BYD is the biggest global company that most people have never heard of. BYD is one of the world’s leading advanced battery manufacturers with a significant proportion of mobile phone companies using BYD batteries,” he said.
“This technology, combined with the world’s leading European and global car design teams has now merged into building exciting passenger EVs, and they are now available nationally via our EVDirect.com.au sales platform.”
Thus, manufacture of 15,000 EVs is expected to begin shortly, expected to be the Atto 3, “a sleek-looking compact SUV with over 500KLM’s driving range, powered by BYD’s exclusive Blade Battery power packs.”
Source: evdirect.com.au
The first images of the BYD Atto 3 also made the rounds earlier this month, highlighting the car’s sleek SUV looks and landscape-oriented touchscreen on a moulded two-tone dash.
A shiny red BYD Han has also been spied ahead of the lBYD aunch in Sydney on Saturday. The images emerged on social media yesterday, drawing numerous comments.
They show a sharp sleek vehicle that has been given the thumbs up by Mark Mansour, who spotted the BYD Han, which was first brought to Australia in left-hand drive for evaluation in January 2021, in the wild.
“It looks great,” he said in comments to The Driven. “This model was left-hand drive, but the quality of the build was decent, the paint seemed good, the panels all perfectly aligned, and production quality looked good.”
Group members commenting on the shared images were largely positive. “BYD is going to be a massive player in the car market in a very short space of time,” said one member.
“This’ll be (Tesla) M3’s biggest competitor. They’re suggesting an M3P equivalent for similar price to the RWD,” said another.
“If they can do that and back it with service centres and techs then they will be in a very good position,” said a third.
In fact, EV Direct has cut a deal with mycar servicing centres to provide delivery, servicing and maintenance for all BYD customers.
According to EV Direct boss Luke Todd, whose direct-to-consumer business model has cut a world-first exclusive deal with the China EV giant to allow the company to avoid costly middle-man costs of dealerships, the right-hand drive Atto 3 and other BYD EVs will be built on a dedicated assembly line for the Australian and New Zealand markets with market-specific specifications.
BYD Atto 3. Source: EV Direct
The BYD Atto 3 will also be priced so as to benefit from the $3,000 grants from the Victorian and New South Wales governments.
But to further incentivise those looking to transition to an electric vehicle, BYD and EVDirect are launching what they describe as “the country’s biggest market-driven EV stimulus” – $500 million worth of low-interest consumer green financing through EVDirect Finance.
According to EVDirect’s press release, “This will allow you to drive away with a new BYD with zero dollars upfront and enjoy an interest rate as low as 3.81% and from day one this means massive savings, as with EV’s you can save thousands of dollars on fuel which offsets your upfront purchase price.”
Keyword: BYD to launch Atto 3 electric crossover in Australia