BYD Sealion 7 SUV (2024 - ) review

BYD has yet to announce the exact prices of the Sealion 7, but has said the entry-level model will start at just over £45,500 and the mid-range all-wheel drive version will cost just under £50,000. This slightly undercuts the Tesla Model Y and other coupe-styled SUVs like the Ford Capri and Peugeot E-3008. Yet, the Sealion 7 provides more power and features as standard than its rivals, which on paper makes it impressive value for money. As with other electric cars, running costs should be reasonable, particularly if you are able to charging at home. Additionally, company car drivers will benefit from the lower Benefit In Kind. The rear-wheel drive car version has an official WLTP range of just under 300 miles and this increases slightly for the all-wheel drive models with a bigger battery. We didn’t get enough time to fairly test its energy consumption as most of our test route included unrestricted German autobahn, and we hope the Sealion 7 would prove more efficient on slower UK roads than it initially indicated. When you do need to charge though it shouldn’t take too long, with BYD claiming it can go from 10 to 80 per cent in as little as 24 minutes.

Despite being a new player compared to legacy manufacturers, BYD has seen a rapid growth in sales over recent years and its background in battery technology is certainly reassuring. To increase peace of mind the Sealion 7 comes with a six-year manufacturer warranty with a separate eight years of cover for the battery and motors. However, on the launch event we joined four of the Sealion 7s weren’t working, so we had to share our test car with two other journalists, and we didn’t get to spend much time behind the wheel. Not the most promising first impression and on this we would be cautious of BYD’s claim you can leave your Sealion 7 parked up for months and it will still start without issue.

The Sealion 7 comes with nine airbags, plus a suite of standard safety systems using radar and cameras to monitor your surroundings. This includes blind-spot monitoring, lane departure warnings and emergency braking systems. All-wheel drive models will also get a system to control the amount of power allocated to each wheel helping to improve stability. As is increasingly common in modern cars, most functions are accessed via the giant central touchscreen and, although things like heating controls are pinned to a shortcut bar at the bottom, the driver attention monitor would repeatedly scold you for interacting with it. We didn’t get a chance to fully test the adaptive cruise control, but we did get a bit of a shock when we pressed what we thought was a steering assistance button and the car started accelerating to overtake a line of traffic by itself!

There will be three levels of trim available on the Sealion 7, starting with rear-wheel Comfort grade and adding all-wheel drive for Design and top of the range Excellence models. All trims come with luxuries such as electric front seats, a heated steering wheel and heated outer seats in the back, while the Excellence cars swap vegan leather for the real thing. It all looks plush from a distance but, up close, cheap materials on the door handles and harsh plastics on some of the buttons end the illusion. There is undoubtedly a good amount of space with a flat floor in the back allowing for ample legroom, and there’s also decent size storage spaces and a large boot with extra space under the floor. Under the bonnet you will find a front storage space (or ‘frunk’ in the EV vernacular) with enough room for cables or a small suitcase. However, even with our brief encounter we were disappointed with the amount of noise from the motor, wind and tyres at speeds over 60mph. The seats were not particularly supportive either, and despite driving on the smooth Frankfurt tarmac you could feel every bump. We imagine the ride quality on British roads might be even more unsettling but will get to test this theory soon when cars arrive here in the new year.

The Sealion 7 is packed with the latest tech and an array of features, including a crystal-clear sound system, impressively intuitive voice control functionality, a 360-degree camera and a massive panoramic roof. All models get BYD’s signature rotating central infotainment screen, with its party piece transformation from landscape to portrait. You also get Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) capability allowing you to charge up other devices from the battery and a heat pump to improve battery efficiency in colder weather as standard. Moving up the Design trim will get you red brake calipers, and range-topping Excellence grade adds a head-up display projecting driving information onto the windscreen.

Entry level Sealion 7s come with rear-wheel drive and around 300 horsepower, but the top two grades have all-wheel drive and up to 530 horsepower. We tested the latter but the scope of the launch event meant very limited time at the wheel, so we’ll caveat our impressions with that for now. From what we could tell straight-line acceleration was undeniably impressive but the car became increasingly twitchy above 60mph with the steering needing constant inputs and minor corrections to hold a steady course. While there wasn’t opportunity to compare the Eco, Normal, Sport and Snow driving modes we did experiment with the two levels of regenerative braking. You can toggle between Standard and High using a switch on the central console, but there wasn’t much difference in how much the car slowed as you eased off the accelerator, and it is a long way off the ‘one-pedal driving’ we’ve enjoyed in other electric cars. We expect you’d get used to this in time, but the brakes seemed much less responsive than you would expect, which was disconcerting in a car weighing nearly 2.5 tonnes. For all BYD’s focus on 0-62 times, we suspect the less powerful Comfort grade Sealion 7 may provide a better blend of comfort, range, and performance, but we would need to spend more time in both to draw a definitive conclusion.