BYD Atto 2 Review: Price, range and boot space

BYD Atto 2: Everything you need to know

It's getting hard to wrap your head around the ever-expanding BYD range, but the Atto 2 is a pretty easy one to understand – it's the little brother of the BYD Atto 3 and it's based on the same bits and pieces. 

We can also name-check some of the Atto 2's rivals to give you an idea of where BYD is taking aim. And on that front, there are plenty. The Skoda Elroq, the Volvo EX30, the Renault 4 plus the Smart #1 and Kia EV3 are among the mainstream alternatives. In other words, you aren't short of choice if you want an electric SUV of this size. 

Rivals for the Atto 2 DM-i plug-in hybrid are thinner on the ground though, with the closest PHEV in terms of price being the MG HS, although that's still a lot more expensive. 

Nothing about the Atto 2's specs stands out, with a choice of two battery sizes giving a range of up to just over 250 miles. In terms of looks, it's also pretty forgettable, lacking the visual distinction of some of the more stylish rivals, such as the Volvo EX30.

Meanwhile, the interior takes that oft-seen route for Chinese cars of whacking a massive screen in the middle of the dashboard and deleting a load of physical controls, while not really putting much effort into the design.

A Skoda Elroq has a more appealing cabin and it has a larger boot. So far, so underwhelming, but the rear legroom in the Atto 2 is outstanding. The cabin quality is good for the price, too. 

How we tested the BYD Atto 2

We've driven both the BYD Atto 2 Boost and the Atto 2 DM-i Boost, covering several hundred miles of driving, encompassing twisting country roads, dual carriageways and urban driving. We utilised all of the boot with the rear seats down and assessed the rear seats for leg and headroom. We also charged the car at both public and domestic charging points. 

Helping us put the Atto 2 in context, we've driven all of its main competitors, along with several other cars in the BYD range.

Is the BYD Atto 2 a good car? 

The Atto 2 EV is a good car overall, but one with a few annoyances that might prove off-putting. Its RRP isn't quite low enough to make up for these, plus its so-so driving attitude and general lack of desirability mean it might be worth looking elsewhere. That said, there are some great deals to be had, so if you're not paying the list price, the Atto 2 starts to make sense.

The Atto 2 DM-i comes with many of the same drawbacks, but makes for a much more compelling proposition given how cheap it is – at the time of writing, it was by far the UK's cheapest plug-in hybrid.

BYD Atto 2 Range/Atto 2 DM-i electric range

There's a pretty big jump in range between the two models, with the Comfort model going 47 miles on a full charge. In our time with the Boost model, we averaged 3.7 miles, which would make the real-world range just under 190 miles.

Be warned, though, because the predicted range is pretty far off the mark if you're doing a lot of motorway miles. We left on a 120-mile journey with supposedly 170 miles of range and only just scraped it back, despite sitting at 60mph for an extended period. 

To put the two models in context, an entry-level Kia EV3 can go up to 270 miles on a charge, while a Skoda Elroq 60 does up to 270 miles according to the official figures.

The electric range for the BYD Atto 2 DM-i plug-in hybrid is 24 miles for the Active model and 55 miles for the Boost. 

BYD Atto 2: Charging times

There's an even bigger gap between the Boost and the Comfort versions of the Atto 2 EV when it comes to charging. The Boost is capped at an underwhelming 82kW (we were able to get fairly close to this figure when testing, at least), meaning a 10-80% charge will take 38 minutes.

This looks poor when a Volvo EX30 manages 134kW, but the Comfort can take up to 155kW, cutting the charging time to 25 minutes despite the bigger battery. 

It would be just under seven hours to fully charge the Boost from empty and just over eight and a half hours with the Comfort. It'll be three or four times as long to top up if using a three-pin plug, which should be avoided if possible anyway. 

The DM-i Active charges at only 3.3kW, but as it has a small battery, you'll still be able to fully top it up from empty in under two and a half hours. The Boost has a better charging capability, but curiously, it still doesn't quite match the 7.4kW put out by wallboxes, capping out at 6.6kW. Fully charging its larger battery from empty to full will take well under three hours. 

The Atto 2 has a soft suspension setup, which means it rolls to a reasonable degree if you take a corner or a roundabout quickly. The payoff is a decent level of comfort, but the car's damping feels quite crude, so you can still get jostled around on rougher surfaces.

It does help the car's comfort that BYD has been remarkably restrained when it comes to alloy wheels, putting the car on 17-inch wheels with high-profile tyres. 

Levels of grip are perfectly adequate, although the front tyres and traction control system can struggle to tame the car's power output, with untidy wheelspin particularly prevalent in the Sport mode if you're trying to exit a side turning quickly. 

There's a sense of vagueness to the steering, but this is unlikely to bother most people opting for a car like the Atto 2. They'll be more focussed on refinement at speed, and on that front, the BYD is okay, with wind and road noise reasonably well suppressed. 

One area that could do with attention is the brakes. They work just fine, but the initial response from the top part of the pedal travel is very sharp, making smooth low-speed manoeuvring quite difficult. 

BYD Atto 2: Engines, batteries and motors

There are two battery and motor combinations available in the Atto 2 EV. The Boost model uses a 51.1kWh battery and a front-mounted motor that produces 177PS and 290Nm of torque for a 0-62mph time of 7.9 seconds and a top speed of 99mph.

The Atto 2 Comfort features a 64.8kWh battery and ups the power of the motor at the front to 203PS and 310Nm of torque. But because it has extra weight to cart around, the 0-62mph time is unchanged as is the top speed. 

So far, we've only driven the Boost version of the EV, which we found to offer sprightly performance, albeit after a slight delay when pressing the throttle, which remains there even in the car's Sport mode.

There's something generally quite mushy about the throttle response – if you lift off the throttle, the power bleeds off slowly rather than immediately, which can be a little disconcerting. 

The Atto 2 DM-i Active uses a 7.8kWh battery pack, with the Atto 2 DM-i Boost offering a considerably larger 18kWh unit. The 1.5-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine mostly acts as a generator to keep the battery topped up, which in turn powers an electric motor that drives the front wheels. 

Under heavy acceleration, the engine can directly power the wheels, but the system seems reluctant for that to happen. If you put your foot down, speed will build gradually from the motor, before the engine at last kicks into life, making quite an unpleasant racket in the process. We timed the delay at about 2.5 seconds, which feels like an eternity if you're trying to overtake something. 

Speaking of timing, there's a 0-62mph timer, which feels quite incongruous for a car like this. We weren't exactly blown away by the results when trying it on an Atto 2 DM-i Boost, either. It took a leisurely 8.3 seconds to do the deed, some way off the official figure of 7.5 seconds. 

To get there, the Boost has 212PS and 300Nm of torque to play with. In the Active, there's a more modest 165PS, but the same amount of torque. The 0-62mph time is 9.1 seconds. 

The Atto 2 hasn't been tested by Euro NCAP. Although it's no guarantee of how the car might perform before if or when assessed, it's reassuring that the related Atto 3 scored the full five stars. 

There's no shortage of safety systems as standard, with autonomous emergency braking, rear-cross traffic alert, blind spot warning, a driver attention monitor and lane keeping assistance. 

A lot of these can be enormously frustrating, though. It just seems to 'bong' all the time, not helped by the change of speed limit warning, which often picks up changes that are wrong.

The driver attention monitor is the worst culprit – you need only look away from the road for the briefest moment for it to go off. This isn't helpful in a car that's lacking in terms of physical buttons, meaning it's difficult to avoid looking at the central touchscreen every now and then to do things like change climate control settings. 

The sensor for this system also seems to struggle to see eye movements properly if the driver is wearing sunglasses, leading to erroneous warnings.

Unfortunately, the system defaults to 'on' at every startup and the option to turn it off isn't where you'd expect. Weirdly, it's under 'cabin perception' rather than the driving assistance menu. What's also strange is that the system seemed much better resolved on the Atto 2 DM-i, if still quite sensitive. 

The lane-keeping assistance struggles to smoothly keep the car in the middle of the lane, particularly on curved sections of road. There's a feeling of the car 'pin-balling' – straying too far to one side and responding with a fairly aggressive steering input. 

The Atto 2 has a maximum towing weight of 750kg regardless of whether the load is braked or unbraked. 

The 400 litres of boot space behind the rear seats in the Atto 2 easily bests the capacities of some rivals, including the Volvo EX30 (318 litres) and Smart #1 (313 litres), but is some way off the roomier options in the class, such as the Skoda Elroq, which gets a more impressive 470-litre load bay. 

There's a removable floor panel, which, when in place, gives a decent amount of storage space for a charging cable. It's also pretty much level with the boot lip, making loading and unloading items easier.

The rear seats fold in a 60/40 split rather than a more versatile 40/20/40, although leaving the aforementioned panel in place does mean that the 1340-litre load area this opens up is reasonably flat, albeit with the folded seatbacks angling upwards slightly. 

Where the Atto 2 stands out is in its rear legroom, which is very generous indeed. Passengers over six feet tall should have no problem with knee clearance even if a taller driver is in front and they'll find the Atto 3 has an abundance of rear headroom. A flat floor will make it easier for three-abrest seating in the back, too, if needed.

In terms of storage elsewhere in the cabin, the Atto 2 features a 'floating' centre console with a storage tray underneath and a double smartphone holder on top, the left-hand side of which features a wireless charging pad. Further back is a double cupholder and a storage area under the central armrest.

BYD Atto 2: Dimensions

The Atto 2 is 4310mm long, 1830mm wide (not including the mirrors) and 1675mm high. This makes it a fair bit shorter than the 4488mm Skoda Elroq, but longer than the 4214mm long Ford Puma Gen E.

On the face of it, the Atto 2 looks to punch above its weight in terms of its interior quality. The stuff at or above your eyeline feels surprisingly premium, but a little lower down, you'll find cheap-feeling hard plastics. The trim covering the sides of the boot load bay are particularly cheap-looking, as well, but at least you won't feel too precious if you mark them with luggage. 

All versions of the Atto 2 get a generously sized 12.8-inch central touchscreen. Unlike a lot of BYD infotainment systems, it's not able to rotate 90 degrees and is instead fixed in a landscape position. That's just fine by us – where used, the feature always felt like a gimmick with little practical use. 

It responds quickly enough to touch and the navigation is fine, if not good enough to stop many ditching it for something like Google Maps or Waze, which can easily be used thanks to the inclusion of wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as standard. 

It's frustrating having to use the touchscreen for so many functions, though. You do get a shortcut for the climate control temperature permanently displayed along the bottom, at least, but it's not that big, making it a tricky target to hit on the move.

There's a shortcut for the heated seats, as well, but it brings up a sub-menu which then requires further screen prodding. It can prove quite distracting. 

Behind the steering wheel is an 8.8-inch digital instrument cluster. Like so many Chinese cars, it devotes a massive portion to a digital representation of the road, showing other cars picked up by the Atto 2's various sensors.

We're not sure what the point is, given that you can see a better version of that by just looking at the road ahead. It means the speedometer is quite small and unceremoniously shoved to the top of the screen.

These are the latest On The Road (OTR) prices for the new BYD Atto 2 as of May 2026 – prices can change, so please use these as a guide before checking BYD's latest price lists.

Is the BYD Atto 2 good value compared to rivals?

Starting at just under £31,000 and coming with a generous amount of equipment as standard, the BYD Atto 2 initially looks like very good value when you consider it's more like £33,000 for the most basic versions of rivals, including the Volvo EX30 and Skoda Elroq.

However, the Elroq is eligible for the Band 2 government electric car grant, dropping the price by £1500, while the Ford Puma Gen E gets the full £3750 Band 1 discount, giving a starting price of £26,245. The BYD isn't eligible for either. 

The range figure of the entry-level Atto 2 Boost is nothing special either and is bettered by the Skoda. More mainstream rivals are generally better to drive and have less irritating driver assistance systems, so there is a sense of getting what you pay for.

That said, the Atto 2 starts to look like much more of a bargain if you opt for a lightly used or pre-registered example. At the time of writing, we spotted a pre-registered Atto 2 Boost with a whopping £8000 lopped off the RRP. 

It will cost you just over £13 to fully charge the Boost model from empty, based on a typical electricity tariff, and more like £16 for the Comfort. That alone makes for cheap running costs, but you can slash those figures by getting a dedicated EV tariff and timing your charging sessions to coincide with much cheaper off-peak periods. 

With the EV exemption for VED car tax a thing of the past, you'll need to fork out the same £200 every year as everyone else, starting from the second year of ownership. At least all versions are well below the expensive car tax supplement threshold, which has risen to £50,000 for EVs.

Insurance groups are on the high side considering the Atto 2's price and performance. It sits in groups 30-32, whereas the Skoda Elroq starts from only group 22. The high-performance Elroq vRS is only two groups higher than the Atto 2 Comfort.

Coming from such a new brand in the UK, it's hard to say how the Atto 2 might work out in terms of reliability, but as an EV, it has fewer moving parts than a petrol, diesel or hybrid, so there's less to go wrong.

Reassuringly, BYD's warranty is better than average, lasting six years and 93,750 miles. The battery warranty also exceeds what's mandatory by 24,000 miles, offering eight years and 124,000 miles of coverage

BYD Atto 2: Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between a BYD Atto 2 and BYD Atto 3? 

The BYD Atto 2 and Atto 3 use the same platform, but the Atto 3 is larger and features a different battery pack. The Atto 3 Evo is a different car entirely from these two, superceding the Atto 3 on a completely new platform.

What does BYD stand for? 

Although BYD sometimes puts 'Build Your Dreams' as a slogan, that's not where the name comes from. Its Chinese name is Biyadi, which is derived from its original company name, Yadi Electronics, which came from the road in which it was originally based. The first bit was added so it appeared further up the alphabetical order in trade show directories. 

Is the BYD Atto 2 available in the UK?

Yes, the Atto 2 is part of BYD's UK line-up and is available to order from BYD dealers. 

The Atto 2 EV is available in two forms – Boost and Comfort. Along with a larger battery and a more powerful motor, the Comfort also comes with additional equipment over the Boost.

The BYD Atto 2 Boost comes with the following equipment fitted as standard:

• 17-inch alloy wheels
• Heated steering wheel
• Artificial leather upholstery
• Electrically adjustable and heated front seats
• 360-degree parking camera
• 12.8-inch infotainment system
• 8.8-inch digital instrument cluster
• Electrically adjustable heated mirrors
• Wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay
• Adaptive cruise control
• Keyless entry and start
• Heat pump 

The BYD Atto 2 Comfort upgrades the above spec with the following kit:

• Electrically folding mirrors
• Driver's seat electric lumbar support
• Additional electrical adjustment for front passenger seat
• Voice control

The Atto 2 DM-i has a slightly different trim structure comprising Active and Boost.

The BYD Atto 2 DM-i Active comes with:

• 16-inch alloy wheels
• Electrically adjustable and heated mirrors
• LED headlights
• 8.8-inch digital instrument cluster
• 12.8-inch touchscreen infotainment
• Apple CarPlay/Android Auto
• Rear parking sensors 
• Rear parking camera
• Adaptive cruise control

The BYD Atto 2 DM-i Boost upgrades the above spec with:

• 17-inch alloy wheels
• Panoramic roof
• Electrically folding mirrors
• Artificial leather heated steering wheel, 
• Electrically adjustable driver's seat
• Heated front seats
• 360-degree camera
• Front parking sensors