BYD Seal (2023) Review

TWENTY eight years ago a Chinese entrepreneur and 20 of his mates started making batteries.

Today BYD employs 600,000 people, including 90,000 engineers, 80,000 boffins in research and development and 30,000 graduates last year alone, many at masters level. Annual revenue? £56bn. Considering you might not have heard of them, they have made 5.7m cars to date including 300,000 units last month.

I’d say that was a statement of intent. Europe and America, crunch those numbers, do not say you haven’t been warned.

What is also a statement of intent are the three models released this year into the UK market. BYD has 19 models at home, including a top of the range SUV which is amphibious. So the three vehicles which have just arrived on these shores are a mere toe in the water.

The tide (pun intended because they have an oceanic theme) started with a small but accomplished SUV called Atto3, moving swiftly into the city car genre with the hot hatch-like performing Dolphin and now the Seal, which is the clearest caution yet of just what BYD is capable of – look out Tesla.

Gone have the days where Chinese products could be dismissed as being cheap and cheerful, somehow poorer standard and low rent. Now, they are more than good enough – BYD makes a fifth of the world’s mobile phones and half of Apple’s iPads, so their technological knowhow is beyond reproach.

A petrol-head friend of mine asked me the other day whether there was any car on the market that I actually liked. I replied that I am paid to be a critical friend of the automotive industry and, thinking about it, there are very few models that are fault-free – and that’s at any price.

But as hard as I try with the new BYD Seal I cannot find a single bad thing to say about what is a phenomenal machine, offered to the world at an affordable price.

Where to start? Well it doesn’t really matter as every element of this vehicle is stunning.

Attention grabbing looks make you want this car on your driveway. It is sleek, beautifully proportioned and just plain pretty from any angle. The glass roof is amazing. How do they get it to be that shape? When you are inside the car, in the rear seats, it stretches back beyond your head giving you an open-top feel.

The cabin is glorious with high quality materials, amazing technology and perfect ergonomics. It is plush and well appointed, highly specified and pleasing on the eye and to the touch. The fascia is dominated by a huge 15.6in touchscreen which swivels from portrait to landscape, the choice is yours. It oozes class and quality and is just a lovely place in which to dwell.

The cabin is so accommodating because the whole car is built upon a flat pack battery – called the Blade. The honeycomb setup makes it incredibly strong and safe, passing the nail puncture and weight crush tests with ease. It also has longer range and lifecycle than traditional car batteries. It allows the cabin to be spacious, the car to have a low centre of gravity and the bodyshell to be incredibly aerodynamic – try 0.219CD drag coefficient for starters. It also means it has the same torsional stiffness of a supercar.

On the test track of world rally boss Malcolm Wilson, just outside Cockermouth, in Cumbria, I’m given my instructions by a professional driver.

The Seal ‘Excellence’ simply flies around the bends with no cabin roll and huge amounts of grip thanks to top grade suspension and all-wheel-drive. I come to a halt at the beginning of the main straight. I’m told to put my left foot on the brake and my right flat-to-the-floor on the throttle while he presses some buttons on the steering wheel to engage launch control. When it’s ready I lift off the brake and the car flies off the mark forcing my crash helmet back into the head rest with some force. In 3.7 seconds I have hit 60mph at which point I lift off, brake and pull into the pits – it was an incredible display of what 530PS and four wheel drive will do – even on a wet track.

Equally impressive on the road is the rear wheel drive ‘Design’ model which packs 312PS and a sprint time of 5.7 seconds. Under normal road conditions it is hard to tell them apart but only £3,000 separates the two so I know which I would go for.

There’s a 400 litre boot and 53 litres more under the bonnet for the cables or your shopping and the range is an excellent 354 miles for the rear-wheel-drive and 323 for the all-wheel-drive, so it’s practical too.

What’s not to like? Great looks, fabulous interior, breath-taking performance, stunning handling and decent range. It’s certainly gets my seal of approval.