BYD Dolphin review

It’s quite quirky in here, and certainly more interesting than the exterior. You get the impression that the interior designers were given a blank canvas and told to go nuts. And they haven’t done a bad job, truth be told.

The swooping dashboard is designed to look like waves, which means there’s barely any straight edges in sight. There are also a couple of nice Easter eggs including the door handles which are shaped like a dolphin’s flipper. One gimmick that works.

All versions get a vegan leather steering wheel and seats, and though there’s a fair amount of hard plastics, the overall finish is pretty good too. There’s a Mini-esque sense of fun to it all, it’s not trying to take itself too seriously.

That screen looks quite a serious bit of kit, though…

Yup. It's a 12.8-inch whopper, and a button on the steering wheel, or using the screen itself, allows you to electrically rotate it from landscape to portrait and vice versa. You’ll probably do it once and leave well alone.

The screen itself works reasonably well, almost like your smartphone in fact. On start-up the home screen displays three configurable widgets. Swiping right brings up the rest of your apps. Swiping down brings up more customisable shortcuts. Down the bottom there’s a row of permanently displayed climate controls. It initially all feels rather complicated, but once you’ve got your head round it there’s logic here. 

Oh, and there’s also a split screen layout that allows you to display two of the satnav, Spotify, and, er, karaoke apps at the same time. Again, little use in reality.

Directly in front of the driver sits a 5in LCD screen, which displays your speed, range, power indicator. It’s similar to that you find in electric VWs, Skodas and MGs, and it’s a similar story here as it is there. Limited, but has all the essentials.

Notable you haven’t mentioned any physical buttons yet…

Wait, there are some. Firstly on the steering wheel, where you’ll find the usual audio and cruise controls. Why couldn't the button to rotate the screen silence the driver assist systems instead?

Below the screen there’s also a rotating scroll bar of buttons for the gear selector, stereo volume, climate controls, regen level, drive modes, and hazards. Useful, but feels a bit over-designed.

How much space is there?

Plenty. The bucket-like front seats really are very comfortable, and don’t impede on rear legroom too much. You can fit three back there reasonably comfortably, though any six footers may struggle slightly for headroom. We thought the big panoramic roof on the top Design trim might have improved things here but it rather abruptly stops about a foot in front of the rear passengers. Still nice to have, mind.

Meanwhile everywhere you look there’s storage space, from the two-tiered centre console (though shame the big storage bin underneath isn’t rubber lined) to the door bins. BYD reckons there’s 20 storage spaces, we… lost count.

The boot meanwhile measures 345 litres, which expands to 1,310 litres when the seats are folded flat. That’s actually pretty average – both the MG4 and VW ID.3 offer more – and we’d have liked a split folding boot floor to offer easier access to the storage space and any charging cables that’ll likely sit below.