The Small EV Showdown – The Ford Puma Gen-E vs BYD Dolphin!
We are here at FarmBra just ahead of the start of our Everything Electric live show and we have taken the opportunity to put two EVs that you might have in your hypothetical shopping basket headto head. We have the BYD Dolphin and the Ford Puma Gen E. And to make this comparison, I’m going to call upon our friends from Octopus Electric Vehicles. Welcome to Everything Electric. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun-packed Test Drivetastic events in the North, West, and Greater London, and our events down under. Next up, Everythingele Electric Sydney 2026. Plus, check out everythingleelectric.store for merch and much more. Back to the episode. All right, Alvin, you know a lot about cars, but can you tell us why you know so much? what do you do? So, I’m procurement director at Octopus EV. Um, which basically means I I I look after and buy all of our products for our customers uh that we obviously lease out. Um, so I’m very fortunate. I get to travel the world and I get to drive and test lots of early cars ahead of time to make sure they’re the right fit uh for our customers. So, you are precisely the right person to be helping us pick between these two cars that we have here. So, I think we should start with the headline figures for these cars because they are truly the least interesting things about these two cars because there are so many hidden stories that we are going to get into in a moment. And of course, if anyone wants to see the full episodes and the full reviews, they of course on our channel. But headline facts. So, we have the Ford Puma Jenny. I’m consulting my bit of paper here. Has a battery of between 55 to 58 kwatt hoursish, a range of around 234 miles. Cool thing is it can charge from 10 to 80% in 23 minutes. Yep. Really cool. Over here we have the BYD Dolphin which has a battery of about 60.5 kW hours. A range of 196 to 265 mi depending on the specification. 35% to 80% which is a strange stat in 41 minutes. So slightly slower. Slightly slower. Um pricewise similar. Yes. Sub30. Yep. Um, and of course that’s going to be fairly reasonable when it comes to a monthly leasing price as well. Now we’ve got those out of the way, tell us why this car, we’ll start with this one, is an interesting proposition. So I think do you know what the the Puma journey sort of follows on from the already so successful Puma. Um, and it was the the Puma was the number one selling car and now it’s just electric. Um, so I think what what’s really cool about this actually is when you look at both cars, both look very very similar. um if not almost identical. Um and you get all of those benefits, but now with obviously a much cleaner, greener electric motor. What do you think about how it looks? I quite like it. I um again, like I said, it follows the ice design. Um and like the the sort of like the bubble shape on the front. Um it’s weird like when when manufacturers name cars and you sort of think, well, actually, does it like can I see a Puma? And you you kind of can like the the the lights. It does it does give off those vibes. So, I’m going to say it does give a little bit of puma, but it also gives something of a chihuahua. I’m going to say, especially given the sort of slightly bulbous headlights. So, it’s got that kind of slightly playful, slightly small, cute. It is quite Yeah, it’s very cute, bubbly uh car. Small, cute, and bubbly, but actually surprisingly spacious and quite practical, especially if you’ve got a young family. Yeah. Tech features in here. What your thoughts? Really like it. Again, I think like what the the Ford system and and what they have, what they’ve done is it’s it’s actually it just works. And I think actually that’s what’s really been good about what Ford product is. It’s it’s uh it’s not overly complicated, but it does exactly what it needs to do and and still great pieces of tech in there considering obviously the price point. Does what it needs to do. Looks quite cute, quite small, quite bubbly. Same pair of pants. Very efficient. This here however has something rather exciting when it comes to V2G. So being able to not only charge it up but give that electricity back to the grid. Can you tell us a little bit more? Yeah, so actually it was really exciting. So earlier on this year we announced that um this is the the first real proposition for V2G for customers. So effectively not only can you charge your car up, you can also discharge the car, send the energy back to the grid. Um so essentially what we’re telling you from if you’re an Octopus uh electric vehicle customer and Octopus Energy customer, you lease this car from us and you have free energy, free driving, free charging. Uh God, it sounds too good to be true. Yeah, it’s it’s one of those propositions when you think actually uh when you when you want to think about innovation and what we’re doing in that space and and thinking outside the box like great, get a car, go fill it up, still have to charge it, but actually now you just don’t pay for it. And you know, that’s the thing because this car I would say it’s not particularly exciting when you look at it. It’s a practical small car. It looks pretty good, but it’s not going to blow your socks off. However, when you think about that seismic shift, that paradigm shift of being able to enable V2G, this then becomes so extremely exciting. Um, and that’s where we can get such more equity in terms of electricity prices. And I guess we should say that this isn’t saying it will drain your battery completely. These are incremental little tiny bits of energy. Yeah. And actually, and I think the great thing about the way the program is, you can set the amount of energy you want it to discharge. So, it will always leave you with a minimum amount. So, if of course there was an emergency and you had to go and drive somewhere that you you’ll never completely drain your battery. Um, but what it will but also if you knew in the morning you you want to make sure you’ve got at least this or you never want to drain past a certain amount, you can set that within the app. Um, and it will only take that amount and then obviously then we recharge back on on clean green energy overnight. Um, which is how you get to the the free energy portion of it. It’s great. Bring the worlds of energy and mobility together. It’s what we love especially here on the Everything Electric Show. Um, but beyond vehicle to grid, what else do we like about this car? So, actually when we talk about namesakes and you obviously you mentioned around like the Pumin and how that looks, the Dolphin, it really does embody uh like if you when you get inside the car, you look like the the door handles, they are flippers. The middle console is the dolphin fin. Uh, so they have really embraced and obviously you got like the little waves and stuff inside the car. So, from a like actually it’s called a dolphin and you can you can kind of see why they call it a dolphin. I quite like that. I quite like the fact that it is part of their ocean lineup which is why you’ve got things like the dolphin the sea and sea line all around that sort of ocean like theme. Some people roll their eyes when they hear the naming convention at BYD. But they do really call it out on those design features and I and I like that consideration and that attention to detail. I think it’s really nice and particularly at a car at a price point that doesn’t always get given that same kind of consideration to design. So top points for them from that side. 100% practicality. what we talking. So, I like it. It’s I mean, again, you’re not going to fit loads of people in, but again, similar to the Puma, you get four people in this comfortably. It is a five-seater. Um, but you I think you’d struggle to fit I mean, you won’t fit three of me in the back, but but you probably get me and you in the back, which Yeah. Which is which is all you need really, isn’t it? Yeah. And often with these cars, you know, maybe you have very small children, in which case these cars are absolutely fine. Or if you have got adults in the back, it’s likely for those just picking someone up from the station. It’s it’s those short journeys. It’s not those great long journeys where you have lots of people in. So, and that’s I guess that’s what they’re designed for, right? The small city like drivers that occasionally will need put some people in the back and some stuff in the boot because the boots are again that you still get a decent amount of space. We’re not saying that these things are tiny. Yeah, these are still weekend away kind of cars that you can have for your family. Absolutely. Uh so I think I know the answer because VTG is pretty compelling. But what clinches it for you and why? I think you just said it, didn’t like I mean if you could if someone said to you, hey, here’s a car that you can have or you can lease and actually the you don’t have to pay anything to to drive it and it’s free driving. Why why wouldn’t you? You’d be like number one, is this a scam? Yes. Number two, count me in. Yeah. And I think also as well like from if you think from an innovation perspective um those that are really into like the technologies and and and actually as you say what electric vehic ve vehicles can unlock into the future um I actually think that the the BYD dolphin is that first step into pulling together that whole ecosystem outside of it just being an electric car. If they were thinking hm this looks quite compelling but you know Ford is a much more familiar brand to me Chinese EVs I’m not sure how I feel. What would you say to to put them at ease around different sorts of brands and particularly the Chinese ones? So I think if you look at if you look at the tech and actually if you think about like the amount of tech that’s that’s manufactured, built and designed, uh where does most of it come from? And actually if you think about like what is the EV like if you to take away take away the fact that it’s a car really it’s it’s a battery with wheels. Yeah. And and what you want is that tech um and all the cool tech that comes with it. Now, I’m not saying the Ford doesn’t have that cuz they 100% do. But I think if you’re if you’re worried about, well, do I go into a Chinese Chinese brand or do I stick with the the the sort of traditional manufacturer? I think they both have their pros and cons. In particular, for this for this comparison, I think obviously it’s really difficult for to find something that will beat the Dolphin in this in this instance because of the fact you get free charging. So, yeah. So, I think both of them offer something like very different, very compelling and and ultimately like it caters to all types of customers. Yeah. Yeah, whe whether you want an incumbent or traditional brand, should I say, or one of the new upcoming ones, unless we forget, Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, has driven many training TVs and really sort of, you know, held them in very, very high regard, particularly the quality of of tech that they have. Okay, so in conclusion then, V2G recharging, hard to argue with. Yeah, safe pair of hands. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to what you need from your everyday city car. Great. Well, there you go. That’s it. Let us know what you think in the comments. Uh, please like and subscribe. And if you have been, thank you for watching.
We’re at Everything Electric Live in Farnborough putting two popular compact EVs head-to-head: the Ford Puma Gen-E and the BYD Dolphin to answer the question which one should you buy?!
Joining us is Alvin, Procurement Director at Octopus Electric Vehicles, sharing expert insights from testing cars for customers. The Ford Puma has a familiar, reliable driving experience, while the BYD Dolphin surprises with Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) tech that could even mean free charging…!
@octopuselectricvehicles | AD
00:00 EVs head to head!
00:21 Ad Break
00:44 Octopus Electric Vehicles
01:15 Stats!
02:20 Ford Puma Gen-E
03:31 Ford tech
03:56 BYD and V2G!
05:50 Flipper door handles?!
06:46 Practicality?
07:36 Winner?!
08:23 Choosing a brand?
09:42 Concluding thoughts
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