BYD Dolphin unplugged

BYD’s smallest electric car has a few musical tricks up its sleeve – as we found out when we went in search of Manchester’s finest bands

Words Tim Pollard | Photography Charlie Magee

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go down a musical memory lane with the BYD Dolphin in Manchester, England.

The sound of silence. It’s one of many reasons why electric cars rock – the hushed quiet of their drivetrains making every journey peaceful and relaxing. It also makes for concert-hall audio, so you can hear your own music more clearly, free from the clatter of combustion. To prove the point, we took the new BYD Dolphin on tour to a city with a rich musical heritage of its own: Manchester.

With Oasis-mania sweeping the UK as the Gallagher brothers put aside their bust-ups for a reunion next summer, the northern musical powerhouse seemed like the perfect destination for our electric road trip. It’s a city that’s spawned more of my favourite bands than any other – and I jumped at the chance to take the Dolphin on a pilgrimage to visit the birthplace to some of my guitar heroes.

Our journey from CAR magazine HQ in Peterborough is 157 miles, a doddle on the 60kWh battery of our top-rung Design model. Its WLTP-rated combined range stretches to 265 miles, meaning it’s our bladders that force a stop en route, not our batteries. The infotainment system is our juke box, abetted by a choice of CarPlay, Android Auto and Spotify integration; if you can stream it, so can the BYD.

With She’s Electric by Oasis playing over the six-speaker stereo, we admire the A1 and M62’s architectural backdrops as we glide by – Britain’s geology on parade as we pass through the honeyed limestone of Lincolnshire, gently giving way to Yorkshire’s grey brick and red Manchester stone, each county’s DNA worn proudly by its urban façades. The Dolphin is at home on longer journeys, the hushed refinement matched by a pliant ride and comfortable seats, whiling away the three-hour journey.

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DESTINATION: THE SMITHS

Our first stop is instantly recognisable: the terracotta-terraced charm of Salford Lads Club. Immortalised by The Smiths, who posed there for a band portrait on their seminal 1986 album The Queen Is Dead, the club sits on the corner of the original Coronation Street in Ordsall. ‘If Morrissey really is the “Pope of Mope” then, to his followers, Salford Lads Club is his dedicated Vatican,’ wrote biographer Simon Goddard and – sure enough – we spy two couples who’ve made the journey here to touch the doorway and take a few snaps.

We do the same, admiring the wistful air of the place. It was opened in 1903 by Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement, as a place to provide wholesome activities for young boys and keep them out of trouble. Its charitable work continues to this day and, as with everything in Manchester, it’s modernised and today rebranded as Salford Lads and Girls Club.

We soon head off to explore the legacy of another Mancunian band with links to The Smiths. When the indie four-piece broke up in 1987, guitarist Johnny Marr formed Electronic with Bernard Sumner of New Order and Joy Division, two hugely significant bands that forged the city’s signature sound.

MADE FOR THE CITY

The Dolphin whispers through the labyrinthine city road network, its 150kW electric motor providing plenty of zip to nip into gaps in traffic and pull onto the raised ring road that bisects the city. Sophisticated satellite navigation is standard on every model and proves easy to operate, quick in action and sensible of route. We’re impressed with the swivelling 12.8-inch infotainment screen, which rotates from landscape to portrait at the tap of the screen. It cleverly lets you choose which format is best for the task in hand: watching a movie when parked up? Go landscape. Navigating around an unfamiliar city? Upright is best.

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It's a pared-back, uncluttered dashboard with a clever floating centre console for storing phones, loose change and snacks. The simplicity of the design makes for a calm ambience.

Our Design spec model is well equipped with many luxuries you might expect from an executive car, not a humble hatchback, and it’s bristling with features that make everyday life easier: the reversing camera is standard on every model and is worth calling out for its crisp, high-definition imagery and clever 360deg bird’s-eye view. It makes manoeuvring around tight urban car parks a doddle.

We’re heading deep into the city centre in search of one of the UK’s best-known nightclubs, which became a hothouse for the experimental Manchester music scene. Local impresario and boss of Factory Records, Tony Wilson, teamed up with New Order in 1982 to open The Haçienda on Whitworth Street West.

JOIN THE CLUB: HAÇIENDA HYPE

It quickly became an influential venue for gigs and raves, as the city’s pared-back guitar legacy was joined by electronic beats amid the late 1980s acid house revolution. The redbrick warehouse closed in 1997 and was demolished soon after, making way for a block of nondescript flats on the south side of the Rochdale Canal. Today, a metal plaque denoting James’s gig in 1982 is the only sign of its musical heritage.

“The haçienda became a hothouse for the experimental manchester music scene”

Many of the musical venues in the city have been redeveloped and the panoramic glass roof makes it easier to spot some of the towering buildings that soar above the city-centre skyline: we drive past the site of International 1, where The Stone Roses used to rehearse and played their first Manchester gig in 1985 (now a supermarket), the house in Longsight where Liam and Noel Gallagher grew up (since pulled down) and the Lesser Free Trade Hall where The Sex Pistols played one of the most influential gigs of all time. It stands on the site of the Peterloo Massacre and is now a Radisson Hotel.

BYD’s KARAOKE party piece

Manchester is developing at a furious pace and the Dolphin feels like a fittingly New Wave kind of electric car with innovation aplenty. We download the Stingray Karaoke app from the BYD appstore with more than 100,000 tunes in its library and sync the BYD’s Bluetooth mic, letting us sing along to tunes wherever the road takes us.

Lyrics flash up on screen when you’re parked up, turning the cabin into a Tokyo karaoke bar – and when you’re driving along, passengers can scan a QR code and continue to read the lyrics from their phone.

We request Champagne Supernova to mark the reunion of Oasis and can only apologise to the startled shoppers in the Northern Quarter for your correspondent's amateur crooning. We could probably deploy the Dolphin as band transport: there’s ample space for a five-piece in here, with impressive legroom in both rows. Thanks to BYD’s e-Platform 3.0 and Blade Battery design, there’s a totally flat floor without the need for a transmission tunnel to pinch room for back-seat passengers’ feet.

The 345-litre boot’s a decent size, too, swallowing our overnight bags and photographer’s clobber with ease. Special mention to the removable floor which can be used to create a hidden cubby below – handy for city-centre security.

Stopping at The Night And Day Café on Oldham Street, we wonder if we might be mingling with the rock stars of tomorrow: the Northern Quarter is teeming with creatives, musos and trendsetters.

The Next Big Thing is often hiding in plain sight – a point rammed home when we’ve finished exploring the bustling cafés and record shops, jump back in the Dolphin and set off for home, confident in the knowledge we have range aplenty and enough tunes on board to while away the hours on our long drive back home.

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“The Next Big Thing is often hiding in plain sight”

FACTS & FIGURES: BYD DOLPHIN DESIGN

What’s the line-up?

The Dolphin range is straightforward: there are four models to choose from, starting with the Active model which kicks off at £26,195, rising through Boost, Comfort and top-spec Design trim, the model we took to Manchester. The first two trims come with the smaller 44.9kWh battery which has a correspondingly lower range of around 200 miles, whereas Comfort and Design have the larger 60.4kWh cells for an extended 265-mile WLTP-certified range.

The smaller-battery duo have a lower 65kW charge rate on a DC rapid charger, compared with 88kW peak charging on the bigger-batteried cars. Because of the difference in battery size, it means the time taken to charge from 30-80% is almost identical, at just under half an hour.

Every BYD Dolphin is well equipped, with even the cheapest Active model coming with metallic paint, LED headlamps, alloy wheels and vegan leather upholstery, while niceties such as satellite-navigation and the swivelling 10.8in touchscreen are standard across the board. Stepping up to the higher spec models brings features including our Design model’s panoramic glass roof, upgraded stereo and wireless phone charging.