Renault 5 vs BYD Dolphin

Kudos to Renault, for mounting a genuine challenge, to a Chinese EV, in terms of sheer value for money. Well, except for one drawback. But, we'll come to that a little later. First and foremost, let's start with the price! Renault has achieved, the unachievable, by giving a bigger battery, at a lower price, than big boss BYD. Of course, you will have to carefully pick-out the right variant, called the techno 52. If you do it correctly, then you get a 7 kilowatt hour bigger battery, and 96 kilometer more range, than the Dolphin's Boost variant. And yet, save two hundred quid against it. You do lose out a bit, in terms of performance, with 24 h-p less power, than the Dolphin Boost. But the difference in acceleration is just half a second, from zero to sixty miles per hour. In terms of size, the Dolphin is 11 inches longer, but the difference in boot space is only 19 liters. However, the Dolphin does have a noticeable advantage, when it comes to rear-seat space, especially the rear leg room. Renault has also kept the weight in check, with the top-end Renault 5, being 200 kilos lighter than the top-end Dolphin. Even the 45 kilowatt-hour models of the Dolphin, are a hundred k-g heavier, than the range topping Renault, which has a 7 kilowatt-hour bigger battery. That means, the Renault 5, definitely has more advanced chassis than the BYD. Surprisingly, the Renault also charges faster than the BYD, which means its electrical architecture, is also more advanced than the Dolphin. In terms of the interiors, both cars have their own quirks. But the Renault still has a bit of catching up to do, when it comes to the features. Check out the pinned comment, for a detailed comparison, between the identically priced variants, of both the cars. Coming to the final point, where BYD has just blown away the competition, throughout the World, which is it's new self-driving tech. BYD's God's eye system, which will be coming to all the Dolphins, within a couple of months, will enable, L2-plus autonomy to all its vehicles. L2 -plus capability includes supervised autonomy on highways, without any driver intervention. The Renault 5 does not have such self driving capability, neither does it have the hardware necessary for enabling it in the future. However, for most of the car buyers today, it is not such a big deal breaker. For them, the Renault 5's bold styling and bright color options, already have them gravitating towards the little French run-about.