First snowstorm experience with the Dolphin (450km drive)
This post is about heavy snow, but not super-low temperatures. I'm on a weird place in Japan where it snows heavily but the temperature is almost never negative. During this drive the temperature stayed between -2°C and +3°C. The drive consisted of about 80km in heavy snowed local roads and city at low speeds, and about 370km on a well plowed highway between 50 and 90km/h (video: [https://youtube.com/shorts/sGHkecI0Qz8](https://youtube.com/shorts/sGHkecI0Qz8)). The Dolphin is actually my first 2WD car, but I have driven other 2WD cars in the snow (from friends, family, etc). **- About the heavy snow part (local drive):** The Dolphin handled it pretty well considering it was with all season tires (Michelin CrossClimate 2). It is still far from a 4WD, even a "bad" 4WD, but it is better than other heavy 2WD. The snow mode makes the car incredibly slow when accelerating, but it does a very good job at avoiding wheel spin. It is incredibly smoothly without having the traction control kicking in all the time. The car is heavy and that does not help when starting from a stop or braking on a hill. Also forget regen braking since the regen turns off at the smallest sign of wheel lock. The AC works fine, and preheating the car is a godsend. Very comfortable. Driving over heavy snow means a huge hit in range, expect less than half the summer range (not due to the cold, but because of wasting power "compacting" the snow under the tires). I drive fast even in heavy snow and slide a lot. The Dolphin weight balance is really good! This was a huge plus. The car feels much more controllable sliding in the turns on the snow than the average front-engine combustion car. **- About the highway drive (still snowing heavily, but on plowed roads):** No complaints about handling at all. The car handled the plowed highway wonderfully. I felt very safe at all times. One small annoyance was that the front radar has no space between it and the lower lip of the bumper. So snow tends to accumulate there and then you can't use cruise control after a while when it's actively snowing. This looks like a design flaw, there should be either some space for the snow to "fall" below the radar, or it should have been actively heated. Range was as expected, at least at those slow speeds on plowed roads: about 250km from 100% to 20%. **- About charging:** Now this is a real pain with the Dolphin and BYD in general. I have complained about this in the past and now again: the car charges too slow when it's cold! With the battery lowest temp at around 5°C (outside temp 0°C) and charging from 50%, the charging power was never above \~25kw! It takes ages! And when I charged from 20% the power was at around 40kw until around 60% and then started decreasing after that despite the battery being at 17°C already! I have no idea why! The Dolphin has no battery pre-heat at all. It has a battery heater, but it's very underpowered and only turns on after the car has already started charging. I think it was initially only meant to maintain battery health in cold weather rather than speeding up charging. Overall this meant I spent 2h charging on a 480km trip, a huge waste of time and money if using chargers that cost by time rather than kwh. **- Extra notes:** I'm very happy with the all season Michelin CrossClimate 2 tires. The highway staff were conducting tire-checks on the highway on a point that had a strict snow-tires only requirement and they let me pass with the all-seasons. The car handled fine even in heavy snow. But keep in mind this is not an endorsement for the tire behavior on frozen roads. Like I said, it was heavy snow but I have not encountered black ice or any frozen patch at all. Last year I drove at -5°C with no snow and, although the difference from -5 to 0 is not that much, charging was a much worse experience than this time. Sometimes not going beyond 12kw! The car has had 2 OTA updates since then and maybe that could have improved a bit, but it is still infuriatingly slow.
