BYD Atto 3 Review & Prices

When BYD — yes, it really does stand for Build Your Dreams, but don’t let the chintzy name lull you into underestimating this massive Chinese car maker — first arrived in the UK, it arrived with this, the Atto 3, a compact all-electric SUV that seemed affordable, and even a bit high-tech, at the time.

Now, though? Others have caught up with, and even passed by, the Atto 3. It’s a bit like someone who was brilliant on primary school sports day, but who came up against proper athletes in secondary school.

BYD has also expanded way beyond the Atto 3, with more sophisticated models such as the Seal and Sealion 7, while the likes of the Kia EV3, Skoda Elroq, and MG S5 have arrived on the scene to drink the Atto 3’s milkshake.

You can tell that the Atto 3 is an older BYD model, because it still has the full ‘Build Your Dreams’ spelled out in chrome letters on the boot lid. The more recent BYD models have dropped that rather cheesy effect, and just have a subtle BYD acronym badge. The rest of the Atto 3’s styling is bland and inoffensive to the point of invisibility. It’s an SUV-shaped blob without any real sense of character, but at least it’s not ugly nor too challenging.

BYD Atto 3: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 261 miles
Efficiency: 4.0 mi/kWh
Battery size: 60kWh
Max charge speed: 88kW
Charge time AC: 9hrs 42mins, 0-100%, 7kW
Charge time DC: 44mins, 10-80%, 150kW
Charge port location: Right front
Power outputs: 204hp

Inside, though? Inside, BYD’s designers were clearly let way off the leash, and decided to go for broke. While most mid-sized electric SUVs have fairly plain, predictable cabins, the Atto 3’s interior is way out there with dual-tone man-made leather trim (OK, vinyl) for everything, swoopy shapes all across the dashboard, and details like guitar string door pockets (yes, really, see more on those below…) and the roll-back door handles are either intriguing or just a bit weird.

Wait, there’s more — quite apart from the massive gear selector that looks like someone’s nicked the throttle lever from an Airbus, the Atto 3 was the first car to arrive with BYD’s now-familiar rotating touchscreen. The 15.6-inch infotainment screen spins from portrait to landscape mode and back again, which is a bit of a gimmick, and annoyingly you can only have it in landscape if you’re using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

The big screen works OK, just about, and recent software updates have made it a bit better, but the driver’s instrument display looks rather cheap and a bit overwhelmed with information. At least the front seats are comfy (could do with more lumbar support though) and the three-spoke steering wheel feels a bit more expensive than the cabin around it. Oh, and the big screen gets a built-in karaoke mode (mics are optional) which is great in traffic jams.

The Atto 3 is fairly roomy, with plenty of storage space in the front of the cabin, and decent legroom in the back, although rear headroom is a little bit tight. The boot, at 400 litres, is fairly generous for this class.

The Atto 3 comes with just the one battery option, and it’s BYD’s own in-house lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) ‘Blade’ battery. That LFP chemistry means it’s cheaper to make, and more robust, but it holds less energy so the claimed 260 mile range is more like 200 miles in real-world driving, which ain’t great. At least the DC fast charging speed has improved a bit.

Keep it in town, and the Atto 3 is fine, with good visibility and a standard 360-degree parking camera (which even has an ‘invisible bonnet’ mode). Thanks to soft springs, the Atto 3 rides bumps nicely, but it’s noisy at motorway speeds, and feels out of its depth on a twisty road.

The Atto 3’s biggest problem is not just that it feels a bit out of date already within BYD’s own product lineup, but that other car makers have caught up and passed it out with their own compact electric SUVs. Added to which, the Atto 3 just doesn’t seem like it’s all that well priced anymore.

Check out new BYD Atto 3 deals on Carwow, or BYD Atto 3 lease deals to get one on your driveway without paying a hefty lump sum. There are used BYD Atto 3s available through our network of trusted dealers, and other used BYD models available if you want to browse their full range. Carwow can even help you sell your car when it’s time to make the switch.

The Atto 3’s price is becoming a problem, especially when it’s a car that can offer only a claimed 260 mile range (which turns into 200 miles in real-world conditions). A basic Kia EV3, which is only slightly less roomy in the back, now undercuts the Atto 3 by around £4,000 while offering slightly more range.

The incoming new Renault 4 E-Tech isn’t as roomy, but matches the Atto 3 for real-world range (slightly better, actually) and is bursting with character. A basic Skoda Elroq is just as spacious, has a nicer-looking cabin, and at least as much real-world range for as much as £6,000 less. Ditto an MG S5 EV. Aged and over-priced, the Atto 3 is out on a bit of a dangerous limb these days.

The Atto 3 is comfy and manoeuvrable around town, but motorway runs are far too loud, and winding roads are no fun

In town

The Atto 3’s suspension is nice and soft, so around town it irons out lumps and bumps in a very comfortable fashion. Forward visibility, thanks to the low-set dashboard, is very good although if you have the screen in portrait mode it gets in the way a bit, but the small back window means that the view rearwards is much less impressive.

There is a reversing camera, but it’s too easily caked in road grime, and doesn’t have its own washer system. The image is high-quality though, and there’s a useful 3D all-round view, as well as a ‘transparent bonnet’ view should you need to pick your way over rocks or something, even if it’s hard to imagine any Atto 3 driver heading seriously off-road. Meanwhile, the fat front windscreen pillar means that your view into corners and junctions isn’t great.

It’s easy to manoeuvre; the steering is light, and the 10.7-metre turning circle means that flitting around tight roundabouts and pulling U-turns isn’t much of a problem. However, the ‘woooo’ of the pedestrian warning hum, made so that people can hear the car coming, is a constant low-speed companion and makes it sound like you’re being followed by the souls of the undead. It’s a bit eerie.

On the motorway

The Atto 3’s 204hp electric motor makes getting up to motorway speeds a piece of cake; it picks up smartly and accelerates briskly. However, there’s a big problem when you get above 60mph and that’s wind noise. There’s lots of it, especially around the wing mirrors. It’s like being on holiday in a caravan on a Welsh clifftop.

Efficiency is okay, but no more than that. We averaged 3.3 miles per kWh on our test against BYD's claim of 3.8 miles per kWh, which equals a real-world range of 190 miles, against the claimed 260-mile range. It’s not the worst, but you might expect better from a company that makes lots of noise about having started as a battery manufacturer, and which designs and builds all its batteries in-house.

On a twisty road

There is a sport mode for the BYD Atto 3, which you activate with a little toggle switch on the centre console. However, it doesn’t actually seem to do anything other than light up little green ‘SPORT’ letters in the instrument panel. No sharper steering. No more oomph from the electric motor. Just…why?

That soft suspension, which works so nicely around town, is much less welcome here as the Atto 3 just never seems to settle down properly. It’s constantly moving about, like someone trying to walk on hot sand on a beach holiday, and it makes for an uneasy sensation on bumpy roads.

There’s an odd feeling with the regenerative braking too, where if you press the brake pedal lightly and then lift off the brakes, the braking effect seems to continue for a couple of seconds. There’s quite a bit of throttle delay too.

The steering is very light and remote. It’s almost like steering the Mars Rover by remote from Houston. It’s a shame, as the Atto 3 actually corners quite well by medium crossover standards, it’s just that there’s no communication from the road to the steering wheel, so you never quite trust it. An MG S5 EV is way better to drive.

It is at least quite quick. The Atto 3 will pretty easily equal, even beat, its claimed 7.3sec 0-60mph time, even with a little touch of wheelspin, if you floor it from a standstill.

The Atto 3 is generally practical, but bootspace and rear headroom are lacking compared to some of its EV SUV alternatives

The front of the Atto 3’s cabin is packed with storage solutions; a space under the front armrest, a pair of big cup holders in front of that with an adjustable base and a storage space in front of the gear selector with a wireless phone charger built in. The glovebox is decently sized, and there’s a useful open storage area under the centre console where you’ll also find USB sockets  — one of which is a very powerful 60-watt Type C socket — and a 12-volt connector.

It would be a crime not to mention the door pockets, which are reasonably big but come with four elastic strings to hold things in. These strings look like a guitar, and BYD has styled the door panels and stereo speakers to amp that effect up; the strings are actually taut enough that you can strum them and pick out a bass-line. Odd, but also oddly enjoyable if you’re bored in traffic.

The front seats are comfy but strangely, although they’re electrically adjustable, there’s no lumbar support adjustment which could spell backache on long drives.

Space in the back seats

Space in the back of the Atto 3 is mixed. There’s lots of room for legs, knees and feet and the flat rear floor helps if you’re trying to squeeze someone into the centre rear seat. Headroom is a bit too tight, though, especially with the panoramic glass roof, which comes as standard. Conversely, the roof helps a bit if you’re trying to go three-abreast, as opening the sunblind actually offers the person sat in the middle an inch more headroom. It’s a bit of a squeeze even so; the Skoda Elroq is a better bet for rear seat space.

However, there are some handy seat-back pockets which are subdivided so that there’s a big space for a tablet or a magazine, and then two smaller parts for phones or sunglasses. Another bonus are the coverless ISOFIX anchor points (with more ISOFIX points in the front passenger seat), so it’s easy to click baby seats into place. The guitar-string door bins make another appearance in the back (an encore, perchance?), but imagine what will happen when your kids realise they can be plucked…

Boot space

The Atto 3’s 440-litre boot is decent, but the MG S5 EV gives you an extra 10 litres for considerably less cash, while the Kia EV3 has 30 litres more than the BYD. At least the Atto 3 out-points the Peugeot e-2008 and Vauxhall Mokka Electric's respective 408 and 310 litres. On the upside, the loadspace is square and flat, and there’s no load lip so it’s easy to get heavy, bulky items in and out.

The rear seats fold almost totally flat, and while there are no handles in the boot to tumble them forwards, it’s easy enough to lean in and flick the release catch. There are no retainers for the rear seatbelts though, so they’re bound to get caught or stuck behind the seatbacks. Oh, and the low-set boot release button gets covered in road grime, so you’re going to end up with messy fingers.

On the upside, there’s a false floor under which you can store your charging cables and, fortunately, enough room to tuck the rigid luggage cover away when you don’t need it.

There’s no front-boot in the Atto 3, which is odd as there’s a recessed space above the front-mounted electric motor that easily swallows a squashy bag or a backpack, yet BYD has chosen not to put a lined storage space in there. Pity.

There's some clever tech on-board the Atto 3, but the busy interior design won’t be to everyone’s tastes

The Atto 3’s interior is far removed from its plain exterior, and in some ways it’s quite over-styled. The design is, apparently, supposed to mimic a gym. Yes, actually. The big, chunky air vents are supposed to look like dumb-bells - though the swoopy dash shapes remind us more of some of the supporting cast from Return of the Jedi. The gear selector too, which looks like the throttle lever of an Airbus, could easily have come from the Millennium Falcon.

What’s less questionable is the excellent 15.6-inch touchscreen in the centre of the dash. The screen is responsive, and the smartphone-style menu and icons work well. Appropriately, you can connect via Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to mirror your phone.

The screen’s party piece is that, at the touch of a button (either a physical one on the steering wheel or a virtual one on the screen) the whole screen rotates from a horizontal landscape layout to an upright portrait layout, or vice versa. Portrait mode is arguably better for sat-nav but it does take away some forward visibility.

If you’re wearing polarised sunglasses though, the screen basically disappears in portrait mode (something to do with the angles the screen’s pixels work at) so bear that in mind, and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto don’t work in portrait mode. Shame.

The little screen behind the wheel, which is your instrument panel, is tiny compared to the big central screen, and although it’s clear and easy to read, the one on our test car did appear to be sitting at a slight angle, which doesn’t say much for the Atto’s build quality.

The material quality of the upper parts of the cabin is very good, with lots of soft-touch surfaces and plenty of buttery-soft vegan leather. Lower down though, the plastics get very hard and rough-edged, so much so that you can easily get grazed when using the steering column adjuster.

There are some more odd touches; the interior door handles are big, flat rocker switches which rotate around the little stereo speakers. Those speakers have inset LED lights which can be made to pulse to the beat of whatever you’re listening to, and there’s even an optional karaoke system built into the screen…

The front seats are very comfortable, and the imitation leather looks and feels nice, but the vinyl feels oddly rubbery to the touch and some might find them to be a little too soft at times. A bit more lumbar support would be helpful for longer journeys.

Being electric, the Atto 3 is only subject to the minimum road tax rate of £10 for the first year and £195 per year thereafter. It also scrapes by in avoiding the luxury car tax supplement, even in higher-spec Design trim. If you’re a company car driver, you’re only going to get stung for two per cent Benefit in Kind (BIK) tax which means monthly BIK costs start from as little as £19 per month for anyone in the 20% tax band.

The range, as we’ve mentioned above, isn’t great. In theory, you should be able to get 261 miles out of a full charge, but in the real world, that’s closer to — even under at times — 200 miles, which is not brilliant.

At least the DC charging speed has increased a little. Originally, the Atto 3 would charge at a maximum of 88kW on a high-speed charger — hardly impressive coming from a company which prides itself on its batteries. Thankfully, that’s now been raised to 110kW, which cuts the 10-80% to 35 minutes, which still isn’t stellar. A Skoda Elroq can charge at 145kW on DC power, and can spend as little as 25 minutes on a charger to get to 80%.

For slower charging, basic Atto 3 models will charge at 7.4kW from a home charger, but you can optionally boost that to 11kW. This makes better use of kerb-side chargers, but is still well behind the 22kW AC charging offered by Renault and Nissan.

To be honest, given BYD’s battery expertise (the battery in the laptop or phone you’re reading this on is quite likely to be made by BYD) we’d have expected better on this front.

One nice feature, though, is the bi-directional charging, which allows you to use the Atto’s battery to charge other things, such as an e-bike or e-scooter, or even in extreme circumstances another electric car. It also means that if you have a smart electric meter at home, you could use it to power your house in the event of a power cut.

The Atto 3 was crash-tested by Euro NCAP in 2022 and scored a full five-star rating, with a 91 per cent adult protection score, which is right at the top end of its class. Child occupant safety came in at an impressive 89% too, which is very reassuring for families - especially with the Atto 3’s trio of ISOFIX anchor points.

All versions of the BYD Atto 3 come with plenty of safety tech, including blind spot detection, traction control, adaptive (that is, radar-guided) cruise control, traffic sign recognition, automatic emergency braking, lane-keeping steering, and rear collision warning.

The Atto 3 is a fairly new car made by - relatively speaking - a car maker in its infancy, so we simply don’t have a good fix on how reliable it might be yet. The Atto 3 hasn’t had any UK recalls, although the equivalent model in China was recalled for possible battery fire risk — something that didn’t affect UK cars. No BYD finished in the most recent Driver Power Top 50 Cars To Own list, but this is likely more down to not enough owners responding to the survey, rather than any particular problem with the car. Atto 3s tend to be popular with taxi operators, which might well speak to the car’s reliability.

In general, electric cars are more reliable than their petrol or diesel equivalents, owing to their simplicity, but the Atto is electronically complex and some of the build quality in the cabin is less than perfect, which could be a worry.

The Atto 3 comes with a six-year, 93,750-mile warranty for the whole car, which is extended to eight years and the same mileage for the electric motor and its control unit, and eight years and 125,000 miles for the battery pack.

That’s not too bad, considering most of its European alternatives only come with three-year, 60,000-mile cover. Still, Toyota and Lexus lead the warranty way with up to ten-years or 100,000 miles of warranty cover with regular main dealer servicing.