BYD Seal Review

BYD Seal dimensions, design and practicality

Although BYD insists that any similarity between the Seal and the Tesla Model 3 are purely coincidental, a quick look at the dimensions suggest otherwise. The Seal is 4.8 metres long, 1.9 metres wide and 1.5 metres high, making it almost identical to the Model 3 and the 2023 World Car of the Year the Hyundai Ioniq 6.

If you’re playing in the premium market it makes sense to hire a designer with experience of premium cars. And that's exactly  what BYD have done. The previous Audi head of design - who designed the first Audi e-tron, along with the Audi R8 - now heads up the brand's design team and they’ve come up with a handsome looking car. The Seal is sleek and low to the ground, with nice features like the retractable door handles helping to make it aerodynamic. 

All models get the panoramic sunroof fitted as standard and come in a choice of four standard colours, with a couple more available at an additional cost.  If you’re comparing it with the Ioniq 6 or Model 3 - its most direct rivals - then I think it wins on the design front. If you’re a bit of a details nerd then you’ll certainly find plenty of elements that have been ‘inspired’ by existing models. The headlights bear more than a passing resemblance to a Porsche Taycan, for example. Thankfully, there are enough BYD-specific design touches to help give the Seal its own character. These include a rather strange cheese-grater graphic on the rear D-pillar, complete with sharp raised dots. 

Existing BYD fans may notice that something is missing from the rear of the Seal, the inspirational ‘Build Your Dreams’ quote which features across the brand's models has been removed to give it a sleeker look. The brand told me it listened to customers and journalists and has also removed it from all Atto 3 cars sold in the UK and Europe. We’re a cynical bunch in the UK aren’t we?

Inside, the Seal looks and feels like a premium offering. If a Model 3 is a little too austere for you (it’s hard to think of a car with a more soulless cabin) then BYD’s more-is-more approach may well appeal. If there’s a single straight line or plain surface in the Seal then I must have missed it. It’s like the interior design team took every good idea they had and ran with the lot rather than refine them down. But there’s no complaints about the quality of the materials or the sturdiness of the build, both of which impressed me.

But while it’s a busy place to spend time, it’s also a comfortable one. The seats (double stitched with diamond patterns, obviously) are supportive and generously padded and come with eight direction adjustment and four-way adjustable lumbar support on higher spec models. If, however, you’re a fully paid-up member of the long leg club (6ft 5in and over), you may well find the corner of the infotainment system tapping away at your knees - especially when going round a corner. 

In the back, the Seal is something of a mixed bag. There’s no questioning the opulence and high-end feel, but if you’re looking for limo-like space, the BYD falls short. Like the Model 3, the Seal’s front seats are mounted very low on the floor. This means that you can’t really slide your feet underneath them to gain a few extra inches of legroom. That’s fine if you’re only carrying kids - who will love the view afforded by that full-length panoramic glass roof -  but if your passengers are strapping six-footers, don’t expect a glowing review. Other than extra room for your toes, knee room is good, the width of the interior means you’ll comfortably fit three in the back, there's a nice flat floor and headroom is plenty even if you’re over 6ft.

Like the Tesla Model 3 and the Hyundai Ioniq 6, the Seal is a saloon - which means that it comes with all the limitations of having a boot rather than a hatchback. There’s a decent 402 litres of space on offer, a fraction larger than the boot of the Ioniq 6 but less than the 425 litres you get with the M3.  Even with folding back seats, just like those two cars, it’s not going to be possible to fit anything larger or awkwardly shaped in there due to the small opening of the boot. Thankfully, frunk fans are catered for thanks to an additional 53-litre storage area under the bonnet.

BYD Seal technology

Inside the switchgear is all logically placed and, like the Atto 3, comes with a combination of physical buttons on the centre console and touchscreen controls on the infotainment system. The latter (which is housed in a 15.6-inch screen) is fairly intuitive to use and comes with BYD’s party trick of being able to rotate through 90 degrees. I like the option of having my screen in portrait mode, although its irritating that if you're linked to CarPlay and receive a message it overrides the inbuilt sat nav to revert to the Apple menu and automatically switches the screen back to landscape mode.

Hopefully this is a glitch on early models that BYD will fix and given that the company builds half of Apples iPads then it gives confidence in the quality of its tech. I found that the infotainment software reacts quickly and once you’ve worked out where all the main controls are (a long drive will help with that) then the system is easy to live with. Like other BYD models, the Seal comes with a secondary 10.25-inch display behind the steering wheel that shows important driving info such as speed and range and I like the ‘remote control’ style bank of switches in the door, which means that  the key function to lock, unlock and open windows are all within easy reach.

BYD Seal battery, range and charging

The Seal will be offered in the UK in two versions - rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive, badged Design and Excellence. The rear-drive version comes with 308bhp while the all-wheel drive version offers 523bhp. Which is a lot. The rear-drive version can go from 0-62mph in 5.9 seconds, while the all-wheel drive one does the same in 3.9 seconds. The AWD model’s straight line acceleration feels every bit as quick as those figures suggest. 

Both versions come with an 82.5kWh battery as standard which uses cobalt-free LFP chemistry and BYD’s blade design that places all the cells into thin ‘blades’ that allow for a higher density of energy.  The Seal also features what BYD calls Cell to Body construction. That’s a fancy way of saying that the battery is used as part of the structure of the car rather than just being bolted in. 

BYD claims that there are three advantages to this. Firstly, it saves a bit of weight because you don’t need a frame to mount the battery in. The second advantage is strength. As the battery pack (which has a high torsional rigidity thanks to the blade design) is part of the car’s structure, it makes it stronger and more resistant to flex or damage. The third advantage is packaging. By removing the need for a containment frame, BYD has been able to lower the cabin floor by 150mm compared to a non Cell to Body design (like the Atto 3). 

Range? Well, the rear-drive is the more efficient of the two and has a provisional WLTP figure of 354 miles. The all-wheel-drive offers 323 miles on WLTP, which isn’t bad considering the performance on offer. We’d expect that to equate to between 320 and 290 miles in terms of real world range. It’s hard to tell real-world efficiency from a quick test like this but we saw 3.2 miles per kWh in the all-wheel-drive version, a modest drop from the claimed range. We’ll need to spend longer in the Seal to fully assess that but the early signs are that it can’t match the Model 3 or Ioniq 6 when it comes to real world efficiency.

It also can’t match them when it comes to charging. The DC maxes out at 150kW, which is a little disappointing when you compare the Seal to what will be its sector rivals. The Tesla Model 3 peaks at well over 200kW while the Hyundai IONIQ 6 can take charge at up to 230kW. All Seal models will come with 11kW AC charging as standard. 

BYD Seal driving

Our first drive on a combination of roads shows that the Seal has a comfortable, supple ride. Using the BYD blade battery - which is made without using cobalt or nickel - as a structural component makes the car stronger and stiffer, enhancing the Seal's cornering ability.  The all wheel drive version gets frequency selective damping, which basically allows the dampers to adjust to the changing road conditions. All of this combines to deliver an impressive ride quality which strikes a great balance between control and comfort. 

You won't be struck by how sporty the seal feels when you push it hard as you do in the BMW i4, but I drove the Seal on a busy, wet A-roads and it was noticeable how steady, quiet and comfortable the ride felt in such bad conditions. The all-wheel-drive model has stacks of grip - particularly comforting in the wet - and given its  0-62 time of just under 4 seconds you’ve got plenty of punch to nip in and out of lanes of traffic. While the dual motor version feels fast, it doesn’t have the feeling of extreme acceleration that you get in some electric cars, delivering a more measured approach to its speed.

Get the Seal out on country roads and it’s a really enjoyable, nicely balanced car to drive. As you’d expect there are options to alter the steering and suspension set-up to suit your preference and you can also tweak the steering inputs. While Sports mode makes the steering feel very direct I preferred the standard setup which suits the more relaxed feel of the overall drive. 

The steering generally has a nice balance to it, although there is an unusually high amount of feedback through the wheel. While this is generally considered a good thing, it is unusual in a car like this and can become wearing over time when you feel every bump and grumble as the road surface changes. 

Given that the Seal weighs in at around two tonnes there’s very little body roll into the corner thanks to stiffer body, whilst that measured throttle control makes the Seal feel very agile. If regenerative braking is your thing then you can also play around with that, but even in the strongest setting I wasn’t able to get true one pedal driving, which was a disappointment.

Our only other comment is around the brake pedal. On the car we tried it has a slightly soggy feel, with a surprising amount of travel. It never felt unsafe, but took some getting used to,

BYD Seal pricing and availability

BYD knows that in order to hit the really big numbers, it has to take on Tesla.  While the Seal may share the same e-Platform 3.0 with the Atto 3 and the Dolphin, that's where the similarities stop - because BYD has gone premium with the Seal. It’s feels luxurious, is well equipped and spacious, which inevitably means the Seal comes with a premium price. 

UK pricing starts at £45,695 with the dual motor performance version costing £3,000 more. So while the entry level Seal is a chunk more expensive than the cheapest Model 3, the all wheel drive version undercuts the dual motor Model 3 by several thousand pounds. It doesn’t have quite the same punch as the Tesla, but the rear-wheel-drive version is actually quicker than a base-spec Model 3.

That brings it neatly in below the Hyundai Ioniq 6 which is another of this car's main rivals. While that’s not a bad place to be, given Tesla’s penchant for lopping thousands off list prices at a whim, BYD may need to look carefully at its UK prices to give it an edge. 

That's especially true with the finance. According to our sums, the entry level Model 3 is around £160 per month cheaper than the cheapest Seal on the same terms over a three year PCP. That's big enough to make a difference.