BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle company that debuted in Australia last year with the competitively-priced Atto 3 SUV, has just opened the doors of its global Megastore, based in Sydney, in an attempt to woo potential buyers. It’s the first ‘megastore’ BYD has built, and it shared equal DNA with, for example, one of Polestar’s experience stores, and a theme park.
“The Megastore’s only comparison would be the mass-scale automotive exhibitions in Shanghai or Germany, which are held every few years”, CEO of BYD Australian distributor EV Direct Luke Todd said. “As global demands pivot towards cleaner, more sustainable models of transportation, BYD’s Megastore emerges as an architectural and educational marvel, offering an immersive brand experience for all who enter.”
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves; it’s a bunch of set pieces built into Alexandria’s Gardener’s Place shopping centre, located in inner Sydney. It shares a shop front with an Omf and a Fantastic Furniture.
My personal favourite decoration was… Whatever fresh hell this is.
The implications of Mother Nature having an ‘official sponsor’, frankly, scare me to death, but this is just one part of the huge space.
This store is built to wow people, and it certainly tries hard – it’s filled with robots, holographic art, and teardowns of the BYD platform (including the brand’s signature blade battery).
Did I mention the robots? Sorry, they were really in abundance – I must have counted three or four rolling around the store, offering drinks, snacks, and trying to not bump into people as they swivelled around like bollard-sized Roombas (the specific model is the KettyBot). Seriously, in speaking to Todd, the robots must have almost bumped into me about eight times. They’re cute, but go for a walk guys, I’m not grabbing a water right now.
There are also robotic arms that greet you at the door, but it looked like what was appearing on their displays wasn’t loading at the right resolutions (apart from the cheeky one on the end). These were less annoying, but were exceptionally strange.
Keep in mind that this is a car store. BYD sells cars, they do not sell robots. Actually, the company did have a new car to show off – the Seal, the company’s first electric sedan to come to Australia.
Here’s the rear. Very happy to see the spelled-out ‘Build Your Dreams’ gone. It took three tries, but BYD finally has an Aussie car with a rear-end that isn’t ruined by weird lettering.
It’s gorgeous, and it would have absolutely been the highlight, had I not been accosted by robots for the entirety of my visit. No pricing or specific release date was announced for this thing, but this particular model was AWD, and could reach 0-100km/h in 3.6 seconds. With these things in mind, it likely won’t be low-priced like the BYD Dolphin.
Anyway, back to the Megastore, here’s a waiting room filled with holographic wall art and light-up flooring. BYD calls it the ‘Earth Walk’.
Todd told Gizmodo Australia that the store won’t have any salespeople, but will instead be staffed by technicians, eager to answer questions customers may have. On top of this, the store will be stocked with 60 cars on any given day, with test drives available from the car park below the Gardener’s Place shopping centre.
You can obviously purchase a car there on the day, but you’d be ordering one through the BYD Australia website.
The BYD megastore is open now, and the brand is hoping to open similar spaces in Victoria and Queensland next. The BYD Dolphin will arrive in Q4 2023. If you’d like to visit the Megastore, it’s located at 494 Gardener’s Road, Alexandria NSW.
Image credit: Zachariah Kelly/Gizmodo Australia
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