Motor Trader caught up with Steve Beattie, deputy country manager of BYD UK, at the launch of the ATTO 2 DM-i in the UK.
BYD officially launched in the UK in March 2023 and experienced a 658% increase in volume to over 8,700 cars in 2024, making it the UK’s fastest growing auto brand. Now, the brand’s current UK lineup features 10 vehicles. The range is split across fully electric vehicles (EVs) and Dual-Mode intelligent (DM-i) plug-in hybrids.
The progress BYD has made in such a short period is impressive, reflecting the ambitions of the group.
“I think coming over to BYD, my biggest lesson was how fast BYD want to grow which is very different to what I’ve experienced working for other OEMs,” begins Beattie.
“I think pace was something that BYD had to work closely with the dealers with because of course we were one of the first new entrants to come and they had not experienced that pace because they had been used to legacy OEMs taking their time.
“I think that’s the biggest lesson, we need to be thinking ‘what do we need tomorrow?’ The biggest lesson was pace and if we could have done it all again, I’d love to have envisaged how quick we would have had to do things to deliver what we’ve delivered.”
The role of the BYD dealer
BYD is now in a place where it has extensive coverage of the UK market with a few slots to fill.
“I think we’ve almost got 98% of the network covered. We’ve got 142 sites now live. There’s a couple more that will be live by the year end. We’re planning for about 165. If we look at some of our competitors, in terms of how many dealer sites they’ve got for the volumes that they do and where we want to be, that’s probably where we need to be,” says Beattie.
“We’ve probably got about 20 open points left. I’m definitely open to doing the core sites but if my dealer network would like to, and it doesn’t affect other dealers, then of course we’ll look at doing some satellite sites to support the UK economy with resource, with staffing, with people. We’ve seen two of those actually. One of those is in Uckfield (EMC), 20 miles outside of Eastbourne. And then one of them is in Morpeth (Vertu).”
Beattie emphasises the importance of having a mixture of dealer groups, not targeting a specific ‘type’.
“To have a successful dealer network, you have to have a mixture of everybody. What you can’t do is go ‘well, we’ll go for the biggest groups’ or ‘well go for owner drivers’. Each dealer offers a really different value to you as an OEM, but also to the customer, because whether I want to buy a car in one way, someone else will want to buy it a different way. I think that what we’ve got is a real good balance of dealer groups and also some owner drivers. It’s really good to see the synergies between them and how they are delivering for our customers.”
Sales performance
BYD is using all the market channels to drive sales and also build up a fledgling used car presence at dealerships.
“If you look at the 35,000 cars that we’ve done today, there’s about 1,000 in Motability, and there’s about 4,000 that are in rental,” says Beattie.
BYD rental vehicles are all on a six-month buyback. Beattie explains the benefits of going into the rental channel.
He says: “Firstly, it’s free test drives. The great thing is, you know how good our product is. The ultimate thing I want to do is get more and more people driving it and it’s almost like a test drive whenever the vehicles are being loaned out or rented to different customers.
“We decided we needed to get in there to really get exposure to our brand to other customers. The second part, which was really important, was that I didn’t sell them on risk I bought them back as buyback cars so then I could remarket them to our dealer network.
“We’ve got a strong used car programme. There are bonuses available to the dealers. There are great finance offers and all those vehicles will be marketed back to our dealers on an auction that runs every two weeks.
“We’ve got a buy it now platform so if a customer walks in, we’ll have all of our stock on a buy it now and the dealer can access that and then talk to the customer about the car. Used cars is hugely important to us and our dealer network.”
Understanding the customer
In May, BYD became the UK’s best-selling electric vehicle (EV) brand, surpassing Tesla, KIA, BMW and Volkswagen.
UK customers have been receptive to BYD’s line-up from early on in the brand’s journey here.
Beattie says: “I think being a new brand, and being quite a cool tech brand, we’re not pigeonholed whereas with a legacy brand depending on where the brand is its ‘oh, that’s a premium brand or that’s a non-premium brand, or that’s a value brand’. We’re not there, which is great, and customers are still making up their mind where we fit.
“I think that’s quite exciting because as a brand, what you try to do is say to the customer, ‘this is where we are’. The refreshing part about BYD is the customers will tell us where we are. We’re lucky that the product is great. It is built really well. I remember when I moved from another brand and came into this brand, the first thing I felt was ‘Oh my God these cars are built really well’.”
“The CEO of one of the biggest dealer groups in the UK, who is obsessed with data, who has got six BYD sites, told me that 81% of his part exchanges are from premium brands. So, we’re also resonating quite well with the premium brand sector.
“It’s a real difference of customers. We will see young families that will come in to look at Seal U. We will see a different type of person that comes in for Atto 2 DM-I but what has really sort of astounded me is how much the younger generation is interested in Seal.
“For example, my son is 23. He’s just getting his first company car and so are all his peers. They are all getting their first company cars or company car allowances. And I think three out of the four that have got their company car allowances or the cars have chosen a Seal. It looks cool and it’s obviously quick and it’s that whole, ‘is it premium, is it not premium’ in terms of where it sits. I think it’s resonating really well with young people.”
Atto 2 DM-i
The Atto 2 DM-I, a compact hybrid SUV, offers a mix of an EV driving experience and real-world combined range of up to 1000KM. Atto 2 DM-i makes ‘Super Hybrid’ (Dual Mode-intelligent) technology accessible with prices starting from £26,995 OTR for the Active trim and £29,995 for the Boost trim.
There are two configurations of Super Hybrid powertrain available in the ATTO 2 DM-i. In Active spec the Blade Battery capacity is 7.8kWh and the maximum system power is 166PS (122kW). This version has a WLTP pure-electric range of 40km and an overall WLTP combined range of 930km.
The ATTO 2 DM-i Boost takes the battery capacity up to 18.0KWh and increases the system power output to 212PS (156kW) – enough for a 0-100km/h time of just 7.5 seconds.
The larger battery delivers a WLTP pure-electric range of 90km, along with a WLTP Combined Range of 1000km.
A 6.6kW AC charger allows the bigger battery to be recharged from 15% to 100% in three hours when connected to a 32A three-phase AC power point.
The ATTO 2 DM-i is available in four colours, including a new Midnight Blue finish that is unique to the Super Hybrid models.
The new model will come with BYD’s usual warranty package – a six-year manufacturer’s warranty and eight years’ cover for the drivetrain and battery.
Beattie says: “I took the Atto 2 DM-i home a couple of weeks ago and I’d gone straight from a Sealion 5. This felt really premium. You know, the Sealion 5 is doing a great job, and it does what we need to do in that segment but this car is one of our newest models that has just come out.
“The quality, it’s really nice to have a little bit of acceleration to go there. And then, finally, the tech. You know having Google, having all the tech, and they are standard. There is so much spec on this car as standard.”
Navigating the pace of EV adoption
“The last couple of months have been electrifying. They really have. What we’ve really seen, there’s a couple of things in terms of EV adoption,” starts Beattie.
“Predominantly, EV adoption has been taken up by the fleet customer because when you’ve got really strong incentives from a company car tax it makes perfect sense for you to have an EV. So, it’s been incentivising fleet customers to then look at an electric vehicle, whether it’s a Seal or Sealion 7 because of the cost implications.
“However, what we’re seeing in BYD. Out of our 35,000 cars, we’ve done just under 10,000 that are retail. If you think about that, the Seal 6 is really tiny volume plug in hybrid so we don’t really sell much of that. We’ve only got Sealion 5 and Seal U so our dealers do an incredible job of selling EVs to customers. What we’re really concentrating on is trying to get the likes of a Dolphin Surf, a small EV, Atto 2, and trying to get those vehicles at a really competitive rate out to customers.
“We’re starting to see retail customers now move into EVs, and certainly the smaller electric EVs. We’re positioned quite well. You’ve got the small electric vehicles for our retail customers, and we’ve got our big electric cars that end up being fleet customers.”
EVs typically cost more to insure than Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles. However, BYD is confident it can support its customers.
Beattie explains: “There’s always lots of work that we have to do with insurance companies. We’ve just launched a body shop programme and in fact, on Thursday, we’ve got a number of insurance companies down with our body shop programme to talk them through how it works, how we have to look after them.
“It’s really the OEMs job to support the insurance industry in lowering the premiums. We need to give them confidence in the parts, in the repair network, and then that will support us then lowering insurance costs. We’re so competitively on payments, if our insurance is sometimes a little bit higher, it’s probably not too bad.
“I do think that if you do shop around, there’s definitely some real competitive quotes that you can get on BYDs. There’s definitely some insurance companies that are targeting BYD because of the growth and the opportunity for them.”
The Road Ahead
“I talked a little bit earlier about the dealer who said that 81% of his vehicles are premium. What we need to do is stand out BYD to be different to any of the other new entrants because the challenge for us is that customers could potentially put all of the new entrants in the same basket but each one of them will stand for something different,” says Beattie.
“As we talk about BYD, we’re a tech company first and then we started to move into cars. What Bono talked about during the press conference was the whole EV ecosystem, and you’ve got battery storage over there and we talk about this whole ecosystem where you can farm the electricity, put it into the storage, and then you can use it.
“We need to make sure that we’re not just being seen as a car company. We’re a tech company, and we’re also an electronic company in the things that we can do, and we also sell cars. The quality of the product is so good, we just need to make sure that customers really are happy and understand the value in our product as well.
“We’ve got an ambition to grow volume. We would love to be in the top three or four of the manufacturers in the SMMT figures. I think that we will grow volume, we will grow the customer base, we will start to renew that, and we will bring out more exciting cars.”
