Is the BYD Seal the EV you didn’t know you wanted?
Byd is still an unfamiliar brand to most people in Europe but not for much longer the Chinese maker has been forging into Europe in the UK for over a year now it’s already got three models on sale and this is the latest the seal watch
Out Tesla China is coming for you or to be more precise and might already have you after all byd became the biggest electric car seller in the world at the end of 2023 it sold over half a million EVs and actually toppled Tesla for the
First time I mean 8 years uh it wasn’t Tesla that was the biggest electric car manufacturer in the world so that is something and it shows that byd is not messing about and if you want a model to show that they’re not messing about it’s this the seal cuz it’s a much more
Convincing thing than the AT3 and the dolphin both of which you can see videos of on the cargo’s UK YouTube channel of course but they’re completely different all the cars that byd has released in the UK uh it’s like they’re from different manufacturers altogether but of all the cars that byd is releasing
From the great randomizer in its r R&D house well this is the best now the seal it is a Tesla Model 3 rival and uh it looks great doesn’t it I think there’s definitely more than a little bit of Porsche tyan at the front bit of highend
Ey about the whole thing a sprinkling of Tesla and you get a really sort of chic modern smart looking car the seal starts at just under £46,000 for the rear wheel drive 308 brake horsepower model or the dual motor all-wheel drive model that we’ve got here is closer to £49,000 and
Gets 523 brake for a very spritely n to 62 mph of 3.8 seconds both get an 82.5 KW battery for a wltp range of 354 and 323 Mi respectively and a more affordable smaller battery seal is likely to join the lineup later in 2024 and just in case you do forget how
Fast your dual motor byd seal is they’ve written it on the boot here just in case there you go 3.8 seconds you can show it to everybody more importantly how big is the boot well it’s about 400 L to be precise but it is a saloon boot just like you get in
The model 3 it’s not a bad aperture so it’s reasonably deep but obviously you get big kind of letter box shaped boots so that’s not ideal if you got big stuff to load even so pretty decent space and you’ve got like a sort of Triple Decker underfloor storage we’ve got all the
Cables in there and then underneath here there’s even more storage still a little bit anyway and on top of that you also get some storage in the nose of the car so so that’s pretty good actually there’s plenty of space in the rear seats too more in fact than you get in
The model 3 which isn’t surprising as the seal is a bit bigger it splits the difference in size between the model 3 and the model S Plus that ful length glass roof is standard and makes it feel really Airy and spacious back there in keeping with there being absolutely no
Continuity between byd’s various models the seal has got a completely different interior to the ato3 or the dolphin uh and uh that is to its benefit because this is a really nice interior the materials feel nice and dense it’s a smart architecture without being too
Kind of iny face and it all just feels really kind of well finished and comfortable and kind of on point really so I have to say I mean you might say this is a bit frightening or otherwise you might say this is just good news but I actually think that this interior is
Better quality than the Tesla Model 3s it’s well equipped too you don’t really have many options to choose from other than paint color and interior finish there is a darker more conventional option than this slightly blue tinged interior that we’ve got here so the leatherette upholstery 360° parking camera semi-autonomous drive mode it’s
All standard as is the head-up display digital driver display and 15.6 in touchscreen with the trademark rotating party trick I have to say I don’t think that the screen is quite as intuitive as the um system that you get in the Tesla but the screen response times are really
Good um it does have some really good features it’s got pretty much everything you want on there apart from from it doesn’t have Android auto it does have apple carplay but you have to have the phone plugged in uh so you know that’s a bit of a shame cuz I’m quite used to
Wireless these days as there’s a lot of people I’m sure you do get two wireless phone charging pads that’s pretty cool isn’t it and when you put your phone on it here you go it actually comes up with a thing you go wireless charging in progress which is pretty cool actually
So you know that the phone is charging but it can be annoying if the phone shifts around and then that pops up and you kind of lose whatever’s on the screen while you’re looking at it but it’s not too much of an issue um I have
To also say that the light sensors on the car are really sensitive so if you’re uh sort of driving around and especially in this kind of flat light that you get a lot in the winter in the UK it’s never quite sure if it’s going
To have its lights on or off and so this system kind of goes Bing or dark or Bing or dark and that’s kind of annoying you can turn that off uh but that’s another sort of small niggling kind of irritation and there are kind of a few
Of those about this system but I mean I have to say it’s still pretty good and you do get used to it you’ve got all your drive features in here um I can’t find anywhere in here to turn off the speed limit warning which is really
Annoying uh and I do really wish that the heated seats and everything were a bit easier to access so they seem to be there quite a few prods into the screen to turn your heated seats and steering wheel on you can use the voice control of course generally really pretty good
But there are definitely still some improvements that could be made charging speeds are up to 150 KW which is on a par with Rivals from Volkswagen if not as fast as the Tesla Model 3 or kia ev6 it’s still good for a 20 to 80% charge
In around 20 minutes though and when you plug into your 7 kwatt home wallbox you will have a full charge from nearly empty in around 13 Hours so how does the seal Drive do you know what it’s pretty good I actually really quite like it I’m going to start talking about the ride so I do think the ride is a little bit lumpy because the car feels quite stiff now that’s not a bad thing because
It means that it also feels very controlled so you don’t get much wallowing a little bit of body movement but everything feels quite sort of Tau and I like that about it but it does mean that over potholes and some big undulations and things you can really
You know feel the car move about a bit part of that is actually because of the battery and the way this car is made so this has got the uh byd blade battery which sounds sort of like a Marvel comic hero or something but it is in fact a
Lithium ion phosphate battery or lfp for short and that is different to the standard lithium ion technology that you get in most EVS these days um byd famously actually hammered a nail through the blade battery uh at a press conference to show that it’s safer so it’s diff it’s different technology it’s
Different cell layout different cell chemistry and to be honest I think it’s probably up there as arguably the best battery chemistry in the world at the moment so byd really are not hanging about on that front and it’s a real Bon bonus to this car that it has that
Technology and that is also part of the structural Integrity of this car that whole kind of battery pack and that’s one of the reasons why it feels quite stiff and that means that it handles quite well it does like I said mean a slightly lumpy ride but it also means
That it handles pretty well now if you’ve got it in normal mode the acceleration actually feels pretty muted um you really do have to put it in sport mode youve got a little uh scrolling button down here to do that I wish it was a bit bigger it’s a bit tiny and a
Bit fiddly that and then you’ve suddenly got ridiculous acceleration you get a proper kind of punch of acceleration if you want it and it just keeps going as well it really is fast this car it’s got some pretty sharp steering I do think that in sport mode the throttle if
Anything is a little bit too sharp you can sort of back off for a corner and then you get back on the throttle as you go on as you go round and it just feels a little bit sort of a bit a bit too
Sharp you can kind of jerk a bit and on that note I would also say that perhaps the sort of uh setup for the brake regen could be a little better as well so you got two levels of brake regen which you have to access through the screen I
Don’t like that either I’d much rather have control of the brake regen on paddles on the steering wheel I don’t want to have to go through the screen to change the Adaptive Driving stuff really um and uh so you go onto the screen and you’ve got all your vehicle settings and
Things and youve got Comfort or sport mode for the brake assist but even in Comfort mode when you come off the throttle just in the normal eban flow of driving even at Town speeds you have to have quite precise throttle control to be able to make that a smooth transition
From accelerating to the brake regen kicking in so I think there are other EVS out there Tesla included and you know the Volkswagen group cars this kind of thing who’ve got a much better sort of bleed in for their brake regen systems so that’s a really tiny kind of
Niggle that I think is again something to work on but that’s a feature of this car I find that’s what I’m feeling about the whole thing is that it’s really really good I really enjoy driving this car it’s got real composure to it you can fling it through corners
If you want it’s got all the performance you want it feels properly high-tech things like the head-up display is really crisp and sharp all the readouts are really good um the steering wheel feels nice it feels really together this car but there’s just all sorts of little
Niggles um that could be worked on largely to do with the assistance systems and various of the other interfaces but it really is it’s a properly good thing as for the real world rang in the byd we are seeing around 300 miles despite the freezing conditions that we’ve been filming in we
Would expect that to drop on a longer Motorway Journey as we were in mostly slower conditions but it does promise that you might even see close to that wltp claimed figure when it gets to warmer summer temperatures the other thing that you might notice the moment
You get into the seal is that the indicators and windscreen wipers are on the opposite sides of the steering wheel to what you normally get in most other cars these days so the indicators and lights on the right hand side which actually traditionally decades AO go is
What you would want uh for a rightand drive car so that you can do the indicators and change gear with your manual gear lever but of course these days everybody else has it the other way around cuz it’s all from left-hand drive cars so you’ll have to get used to that
Uh I have already wiped my windscreen wipers furiously going around corners a number of times but you do get used to it anyway what do I think about the seal overall then well I think it’s pretty remarkable actually byd’s uh barely been in the UK for year and yet here we are a
Car which has got uh you know it feels very European to be honest the interior is great it feels like it’s been around for ages it feels very familiar the tech is brilliant this is a really really good car and I don’t think it’s just going to be taking on Tesla I actually
Think they’re probably going to be beating Tesla quite soon head to cargo. for a whole host of fantastic used cars including loads of electric options and while we’ve got you please do like the video subscribe to the cararo UK YouTube channel and ring that little bell so
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The BYD Seal is a fully electric saloon car that rivals the Tesla Model 3, BMW i4, Polestar 2 and Mercedes EQE, among others. It costs from just under £46,000 and offers an official range from a single battery charge of up to 323 miles for the dual motor all-wheel drive model, or up to 354 miles for the single motor Seal.
Straight line performance is impressive, with the dual motor able to accelerate from 0-62mph in just 3.8 second. However, the Seal is no one-trick pony. In this CarGurus UK review, Vicky Parrott assess how this Chinese EV rivals models from Europe and the US, examining its space and practicality, its design, interior quality, technology, charging speed and how it drives. Would you consider a BYD over a Tesla Model 3?
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