After a whole year, driving 17,500 kilometres, completing two scheduled maintenance, finding faults and solving them, it has given me a whole new perception of the car and the brand. I’m sure it will be helpful for you to judge whether the Han is a car worth buying or not, and whether BYD as a brand is trustworthy or not. Here are the top three pros and three cons of the BYD Han DM-i that I found.
Advantage one
This car is very spacious and is definitely a great tool for families on the go. With a wife and kids in the back, even with the addition of a very space-consuming child seat, there’s no problem with comfort, convenience, or quality.
Advantage two
The cost of the car is manageable. If you say that this car has very low fuel consumption, it is not. When the battery is dead, the fuel consumption in a traffic jam is six to seven litres per 100 kilometres. But the advantage is that it can be driven purely by electricity or purely by oil, and I can switch between them. I don’t have a private charging post at home. If there are conditions for charging, such as time or an unused commercial charging post nearby, I will switch to EV mode. The cost of use is ￥1.30 per kWh. When I drive it, I can run five to six kilometres per kWh on pure electricity at a cost of ￥0.2 to 0.3 per kilometre.
Advantage three
Maintenance cost is not high and after sales service is pretty good. Just had my second scheduled maintenance some time ago. Unlike what the internet says about hybrids being more expensive to maintain because they have an engine, my second scheduled maintenance used a foreign brand of oil and the total was only $107. I asked the 4S shop and if I use BYD’s own oil, I can get the second scheduled maintenance done for under $69. I drove it myself without noticing the difference between BYD’s oil and a foreign brand, so next time I have it serviced, I’m going to switch back to BYD’s oil. BTW, some time ago I had a rattle in my passenger seat and went to the 4S shop to have it repaired. The 4S shop quickly replaced the headrests and fixed the problem for free.
Having talked about the three advantages of the BYD Han DM-i, let’s move on to its three drawbacks.
Drawback one
Turning radius. This is one of the bigger issues that I noticed when I first started driving this car that affects the driving experience. Two lanes are not enough when you want to make a U-turn while driving the Han DM-i. This makes it more awkward when we are in a traffic jam or going to a narrow place. It takes a long time to look to the right and left when turning around, and you’ll be honked at by the car behind you.
Drawback two
The rear view mirror doesn’t work well. To be precise, the mirrors don’t have the feature of blind spot monitoring, which results in the mirrors not working well. It is more difficult to see oncoming traffic from the side and rear, and on roads where traffic is very complicated, turning your head to see will be more hasty. Even if I add the convex blind spot small round mirror to the rear view mirror, I still can’t see the car behind me on the side without lights on when it’s raining or at night when the light is low.
Drawback three
The car’s engine is very slow to update and the system is buggy.Compared to other EV brands, which have frequent OTA updates, I’ve been driving the BYD Han DM-i for a whole year and have only had one update as far as I can remember. Even when I asked the 4S staff when I went for my second scheduled maintenance, they told me that my car’s system was up-to-date and didn’t need to be updated. The navigation in the car is not as accurate as the one in my mobile phone because it has not been updated for a long time. Sometimes the roads recommended by the car’s navigation are not the quickest.
In addition, the automatic switching between black and white modes on the driver’s screen and the centre console screen is out of order. You have to switch manually or by voice when switching between day and night, and it’s useless for you to select its system default auto mode, which doesn’t do the job of automatically switching between day and night modes.
Summary
I’ve had the BYD Han DM-i for a year now, do I feel it’s worth it? Overall I think it’s worth it. There is no such thing as a perfect car in the world, and I think it’s acceptable with these minor drawbacks as opposed to the pros. After all, this car is already full of value for money when comparing this price and the features offered. In fact, what do we value more? It’s the convenience, comfort, economy and predictability of daily use of this car after I buy it. That is to say, the cost of daily use of the car is not high and controllable, and the manufacturer will endeavour to solve the problems when they occur. In all of these areas, I think BYD has delivered.
