BYD e6 is now Oz's cheapest electric car

 I talked here about BYD's mini van, which is cheaper than its petrol equivalent, and here about the sedan that BYD will start distributing in Australia later this year.  The BYD e6 is a "people carrier".

From The Driven

What is now Australia’s cheapest electric passenger vehicle – the BYD e6 electric crossover – is now on sale from just $39,999 through Nexport subsidiary EVDirect, and odds are its newly won status won’t last long.

That’s because there are currently just 15 units of the new e6 currently in Australia. But, as reported by The Driven in July, if interest is high, Nexport CEO Luke Todd says there will definitely be room to import more.

Made by the Warren Buffet-backed Chinese EV and battery maker BYD, the e6 is one of a series of electric vehicles planned for import by Nexport. It joins the T3 electric commercial van which is also now available and is officially Australia’s most affordable EV including commercial and passenger vehicles at just $34,950 before on-roads.

Several thousand BYD e6 vehicles are currently in operation as taxis in China, and the e6 is billed as a family-friendly people mover. At first glance it would seem perfectly suited to toppling the MG ZS EV off the “Australia’s cheapest EV” post – which is exactly what it has just done.

Undercutting the $44,990 driveaway MG ZS EV by several thousand, the BYD e6 is a 4.7m long, 1.93 tonne five-seater with a 71.7kWh BYD Blade battery.

There are some questions around its driving range – the Chinese BYD site lists it with 402km maximum range while the EVDirect site states 522km. On the front page it says this is according to WLTP rating, however on the specifications page it states in the fine print this is the NEDC rating. We’ve reached out to Nexport to clarify. Either way, it outdoes the MG ZS EV which has a real world range of about 230km.

It is inevitable that Chinese EV manufacturers who produce cars more cheaply than in other countries were soon going to start selling their cars outside China.  Australia is being used as a testing ground to find out what tweaks are needed to sell EVs in the US.  Expect the global sales of EVs to just keep rising exponentially.