“Is that a new Tesla?” was the most common question I got asked when driving the BYD Seal. It’s an interesting response to this sleek four-door saloon.
It suggests this newcomer is what people imagine a newer, fresher Tesla Model 3 should look like. Yet it also points to the fact that despite its ubiquity, there’s an essential lack of identity, a blandness, to Elon Musk’s brainchild. It’s just sort of there, doing electric car things. Granted, it does them extremely well, but beyond the early adopters and Teslascenti, is that enough to keep it as the default choice for buyers migrating from petrol and diesel to electric?
BYD hopes not. None of the people who asked me about the Seal were especially bothered that BYD was a nameplate they’d never heard of before; Tesla has already shown that a newcomer can make a big impact very quickly. Nor does anyone seem to care too much that it’s a Chinese car.
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Whatever its background, BYD wants to grab a slice of the new electric car market. It’s arriving here with a more conventionally arranged if peculiarly named line-up than Tesla, running from a small hatchback via several SUVs to the Seal.
The Seal has probably the toughest job of the lot. The Model 3 is the big fish, but there’s also the Polestar 2, BMW’s i4 and Hyundai’s Ioniq 6. There are no minnows here; these are all highly accomplished cars, each desirable in its own right.
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Nor is BYD relying on a bargain price tag to help it gain a foothold. It’s priced between £45,695 and £48,695, which is basically the same as its rivals. In fact, it’s the Tesla which undercuts the competition on price, with two versions of the Model 3 costing less than the cheapest Seal.
You can make the case that the Seal is the most upmarket looking car in this class. BYD’s lead designer is Wolfgang Egger, a German gentleman who used to draw for Audi (the R8 was his) and Alfa Romeo (the gorgeous 8C sports car is on his CV), and he should be pleased with how the Seal has turned out. Weirdly, perhaps, it looks less like what one imagines a ‘Chinese’ car should look like than just about anything wearing a BMW badge, including the i4, these days.
BYD also designs and produces its own batteries. This would seem to be a crucial advantage over rivals who have to buy them in. The Seal’s 82.5kWh battery pack also forms part of the car’s structure, helping make the car stiffer.
You can have your Seal in either rear-drive single-motor or four-wheel-drive dual-motor guises. The single-motor car has a healthy 308bhp, a 0-62mph time of 5.9 seconds and a claimed maximum range of 354 miles.
Spend an extra £3,000 for the twin-motor car and you’ll have 523bhp at your disposal, a dramatic 3.8 seconds 0-62mph time (with that time emblazoned on the boot lid) and a claimed range of 323 miles. The more powerful car, which I tested, also gets a more sophisticated suspension set-up. Tickling the throttle, my best real-world range was 270 miles.
As is the way with any of these ultra-rapid electric cars, the novelty of violent acceleration soon wears off, though the Seal doesn’t have quite the same sharp edge as a Tesla Model 3 Performance.
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These cars are at their best gliding along, surfing their motors’ effortless torque and the quiet refinement that comes with any well sorted EV. The Seal does all that, and more; though there can be a weird harshness to the suspension at lower speeds which can sometimes be felt through the steering wheel, the rest of the time it glides over bumps and undulations. It’s actually reasonably good fun to drive, which can’t be said for all EVs.
The accelerator isn’t quite as responsive at the start of its travel as you might expect, though, and it’s disappointing that there’s only two regeneration modes, neither of which are strong enough to make the Seal a proper single-pedal car, if that’s your thing. Others do this far better – Hyundai, for example, lets you flick between different regeneration settings using steering wheel paddles.
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The Seal’s interior quality is consistent with its price. Diamond pattern seats - trimmed in vegan leather, apparently – are a plush touch and it is very well equipped, from seats that are heated and ventilated to wireless charging pads. The stereo is brilliant, there’s a glass roof and you get a surround view camera.
There is a ‘but’ though, and it’s found in the massive 15.6-inch touchscreen which dominates the centre of the dashboard. Unfortunately BYD has decided that practically every function should be controlled through it.
The screen can rotate from portrait to landscape. It’s difficult to know why they bothered. The time and energy would have been better spent making the maze of features more accessible rather than buried in multiple layers of menus.
You would no doubt get used to it, but it is stupid to have to flick this way and that and prod at a screen multiple times to change the temperature or radio. Voice control, as it almost always is, is a waste of time, though there’s the jeopardy of accidentally phoning your mother-in-law when all you wanted to do was turn the temperature down.
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Another weird decision BYD has taken is to fit air vents which can’t be adjusted. The boot has a relatively narrow opening and at 400 litres is much smaller than that of the Model 3′s huge 594 litres, should ultimate volume matter to you.
A strong plus point is that BYD offers a more generous warranty than competitors: up to six years or 93,750 miles, with an additional two years for the motor and battery. The battery is also covered up to 125,000 miles.
Against that, however, is its high insurance group. The rear-drive car is in group 48, well above its rivals. It’s the same story with the four-wheel-drive Seal, which is in group 50.
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The Seal is a highly credible addition to the competitive EV saloon market. It looks great, is well built, drives very nicely and, touchscreen misgivings aside, has a comfortable, well equipped interior. It’s difficult to think of a more complete car from a Chinese manufacturer on sale today, which is sure to have caught the attention of the European and Korean car-makers, as well as Tesla.
Whether the Seal also catches the attention of buyers remains to be seen, but BYD looks certain to become a name to be reckoned with.
