CarBrandLogos archive · BYD · 2008

BYDF3DM

The world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid, sold in Shenzhen before Detroit was ready.

Photo: Mariordo (Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz) · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in BYD history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the BYD F3DM, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

In December 2008, while General Motors was still developing the Chevrolet Volt and Toyota was insisting plug-in hybrids were premature, BYD put the F3DM on sale in China. It is generally recognised as the first mass-produced plug-in hybrid car in the world, and almost nobody outside China noticed.

Byd f3 dm · anthonares (Flickr User) · CC BY-SA 2.0

Design and engineering

The engineering reflected who built it. DM stood for Dual Mode: the car ran as an electric vehicle on a lithium iron phosphate battery pack BYD manufactured itself, with a 1.0-litre three-cylinder aluminium engine available to generate power or drive the wheels once the charge was depleted. The transmission was an electric automatic. Because BYD made the cells, it could put a usefully large pack in a modest saloon at a price no established manufacturer could match.

BYD F3M dual mode hibrido · User:albertma (Alberto Martinez) · CC BY 2.0

Hybride BYD F3DM voor het hoofdkantoor van BYD-2

In production

Sales were poor. Early cars went mostly to government and corporate fleets in Shenzhen, charging infrastructure barely existed, and consumers were unconvinced. But the F3DM established the Dual Mode architecture that BYD has refined ever since, through the Qin that replaced it in 2013 and into the DM-i system now fitted across the range — the technology that made BYD, briefly, the largest seller of electrified vehicles in the world.

Hybride BYD F3DM voor het hoofdkantoor van BYD-2 · Hybride_BYD_F3DM_voor_het_hoofdkantoor_van_BYD.jpg: Bert van Dijk derivative work: Mariordo (talk) · CC BY-SA 2.0

At a glance