BYD Dolphin Surf Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

If you're after a brand-new EV and price is high on the agenda, absolutely. Yes, you can pay less on something like a Dacia Spring or Leapmotor T03, but there are some quite hefty compromises in doing so. Conversely, you could spend more on a Citroen e-C3, but other than a better-known badge, you're probably not getting much in return for the additional outlay. 

Ideally, you'll be driving mostly urban miles, especially if opting for the base Dolphin Surf with its smaller battery. Along with a modest range and a slow recharge rate, the Dolphin Surf also isn't the quietest thing at speed, which could grate on long journeys. That said, the occasional trip up to see relatives shouldn't be too painful, particularly if the bigger battery is specced.

We often recommend swerving the base version of a car, but the Dolphin Surf Active has enough standard kit for most. It all comes down to whether or not you need to extra range. If your Dolphin Surf is to spend almost all its time as an urban runaround, the Active will be more than adequate. It’s quite a big jump in price to the Active, so you’re only going to want to spend the extra if absolutely necessary. 

It’s a fairly big hop again to the Comfort, the main benefit of which is a more powerful motor. We can’t say for sure if it’s worth it, having not driven it just yet. The lower output motor is pokey enough, though, we just wish it had a little more zip off the line. 

You might assume the most similar would be the BYD Dolphin. But no. Although the cars share a platform as well as a name (partly), the Dolphin Surf is an entirely different model that's targeting a different bit of the market. 

Cheap electric cars include the Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03, although both are quite a bit smaller than the BYD. The Citroen e-C3 and Fiat Grande Panda Electric are probably the closest rivals, and it's also worth considering a Hyundai Inster if the Dolphin Surf is on your radar.

There's an air of cheapness when you climb aboard most cars costing around the same as the BYD Dolphin Surf, EV and otherwise. It's a pleasant surprise, then, to see that the Surf feels quite premium inside, with a nice blend of different materials, including a light, fabric-covered section of the dashboard. 

We'd be a little worried about how good that'd look after a few years and a few thousand miles of use, but generally, the cabin feels like it's built to last. Plus, for once, we don't have to moan about scratch-prone 'piano black' plastic, which is mercifully absent here. 

Even though the Dolphin Surf is the cheapest BYD, it doesn't miss out on the company's signature rotating touchscreen infotainment system. We've never really been sure what the point was, though, given that it can't rotate while Android Auto or Apple CarPlay is used, and because all of these screens feel like they work better in landscape mode. 

This is especially true of the Dolphin Surf's display, which is more modest in size at 10.9 inches (some BYD models use 15.6-inch screens). Rotating it to portrait, which can be done either by pressing a button or using a voice command, also makes some of the climate icons along the bottom disappear, because there's insufficient space for all of them.

Yep, that's right, you'll need to use the display for the climate controls, which is a faff, particularly as the shortcut buttons for them are quite small. That's a general theme with this display, really. Generally, though, it's fine. It's responsive enough, and although there's the odd bit of lag, we've experienced worse in much more expensive cars. 

There's an old-style USB-A socket plus a USB-C in the front, between which is, curiously, a micro SD port. The sound system is perfectly adequate for the price. 

The Dolphin Surf is slightly shorter than a Citroen e-C3, but the boot space is near enough the same at 308 litres. It's not a particularly long boot, but it is quite deep. The rear seats fold flat in a 50/50 arrangement, opening up 1,037 litres of total space. Elsewhere in the cabin, there's 20 litres of storage space split between different areas, including a deep storage tray beneath the front armrest. 

Unlike the Citroen but matching the Hyundai Inster, the narrow Dolphin Surf can only seat four. Rear legroom is decent, considering the car's small footprint.

There are two motors and two battery sizes available, but only three possible combinations of them. The base spec battery is 30kWh, and can only be combined with an 88PS, 175Nm motor. The 43.2kWh can be combined with that same 88PS motor, or if preferred, a more potent one putting out 156PS and 220Nm. 

Our only experience thus far has been with the Boost. By combining a larger and therefore heavier battery with the least powerful motor, it’s inevitably the slowest Dolphin Surf, managing 0-62mph in 12.1 seconds. 

We don't normally pay much attention to the 0-62mph times of cheap, low-powered EVs, because the instantaneous availability of their full torque figures usually means they're quite enthusiastic off the line and up to 30mph. In a city-focused car like the Dolphin Surf, that's much more important. 

However, the Surf is weirdly lethargic off the line. It feels like it takes an age for the motor's full output to arrive and the car to actually get going at any real pace. And if you are accelerating up to 60mph, it never feels like in a particular hurry. The lighter base version won't be much better, managing 0-62mph in 11.1 seconds. 

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The Comfort should feel quite a bit peppier - it does the same in 9.1 seconds. If you're likely to be taking your Dolphin Surf out of town a lot, it's likely the one to go for. 

The range of the smaller-battery model is, as you’d expect, fairly limited at just 137 miles. The cheaper Dacia Spring can go further (albeit only three miles) according to the official number. Efficiency is good, though, with our test car showing over five miles per kWh, so for once, you actually stand a decent chance of replicating the WLTP figures away from a lab. For the bigger battery, it’s 200 miles in the Boost version, with the Comfort dropping to 193 miles due to its larger motor. 

At this price, something usually has to give, and in the case of the BYD, one of the ‘somethings’ is the noise levels. Get it up to 50mph and beyond, and there’s quite a lot of wind noise, although you don’t get so much from the tyres, probably because their footprints are so small. We can’t single out the Dolphin Surf for this, though, when the Citroen e-C3 and Fiat Grande Panda Electric also get a bit rowdy at cruising speeds. The Hyundai Inster isn’t a whole lot better, either. 

There’s no Euro NCAP rating for the Dolphin Surf just yet. The Dolphin achieved the full five-star rating when assessed in 2023, which might give some comfort, given that it uses the same platform, but it’s no guarantee the Suf will manage the same, especially because it’s a smaller car. 

You get plenty of safety systems as standard. All versions have automatic emergency braking, speed limit recognition, lane-keeping assistance, and a driver alertness monitor. The final item isn’t great, though. Several times during our test drive, the car would angrily tell you, “eyes on the road,” even when they very much were. 

It's too early to judge how the Dolphin might fare in terms of long-term reliability, but it likely helps that it's an EV. Fewer moving parts means there's less to go wrong, after all. 

In terms of warranty, you get six years or up to 93,750 miles of coverage, with the battery covered for eight years and the same mileage.

 The Dolphin Surf Active and Boost models each sit in insurance group 14A, while the Comfort is in 19D.

Unfortunately, EVs no longer escape paying Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), so from year two onwards, you’ll have to cough up the same £195 as drivers of any other kind of car. 

All versions of the Dolphin Surf are well equipped, with the base Active ticking all the major boxes, including a 10.1-inch infotainment system, electrically adjustable and heated wing mirrors, artificial leather seats, air conditioning, rear parking sensors with a reversing camera and adaptive cruise control. 

Boost includes all of the above plus a larger battery pack, 16-inch alloy wheels, electrically adjustable front seats, electrically folding door mirrors and rain-sensing wipers. Finally, the range-topping Comfort adds a more powerful motor, a 360-degree camera, LED headlights, tinted rear windows, puddle lights, heated front seats and a wireless smartphone charging pad.