Long-term test: BYD Sealion 7

Verdict

Good parking cameras and a spacious cabin don’t make up for the BYD Sealion 7’s poor ride and handling. The lack of any European tuning means it’s just not set up for the intricacies of our roads, or the speeds that we do on them. When a car offers good value, this matters less, but the Sealion 7 isn’t cheap. So far, this BYD has a long way to go to win over my affections.

• Mileage: 1,604 miles
• Efficiency: 2.8mi/kWh

Progress among Chinese brands such as BYD has been nothing short of astonishing. In terms of tech, model reach across segments and profitability, there’s a lot for legacy brands to learn. But when it comes to the driving experience – something that’s hard to fully appreciate over a 10-minute test drive – our BYD Sealion 7 has some issues. 

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The general response I get from people is: “Oh, you have a BYD. Can I have a look?” And generally, their first reaction is: “It’s big, and nice inside.” Yep, indeed it is. Then we move on to: “And it’s electric, right? What’s it like to drive?” Ah, yes, well, about that…

First of all, I find the overly soft seats to be uncomfortable after only 15 minutes on the road. The general driving position doesn’t help, either, due to the almost bus-like angle to the steering wheel. I sometimes catch myself doing a bus-driver-like wheel shuffle when going around sharp bends. 

Put the Sealion 7 into drive and it’ll creep forward, but press the throttle pedal and not much happens. Response from the electric motor is painfully slow, to the point where one has to take this into account when pulling out of junctions or overtaking. It’s not a ‘drive mode’ thing, because there’s no discernible difference between Sport, Comfort and Eco. 

Yet in complete contrast, the brakes are incredibly sensitive. This makes driving at low speeds a frustrating exercise. It also makes you look like a total amateur when parking, because the brakes easily snap on, causing the whole car to rock back and forth. It’s no better on faster roads, because the spongy pedal makes the level of braking you apply hard to modulate and maintain. 

Then there’s the ride and handling. The suspension is soft, but it’s not a comfortable car. I’m no chassis engineer, but even I can feel that the spring rates – that’s the firmness of the springs – are far too low in relation to the dampers, which are too firm. The Sealion 7 rolls into corners, yet seems able to find, transmit and magnify every bump in the road. Along complex or uneven surfaces, the suspension gets so befuddled that it feels like the Sealion 7’s body is trying to emancipate itself from the suspension. 

The harshest of potholes are generally absorbed by the relatively high-tyre profiles on our 19-inch wheels – dual-motor models swap these for 20s – but the lack of body control is an ever-present annoyance. The suspension hardware itself also makes quite a racket, constantly grumbling away in an otherwise quiet low-speed driving experience. 

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There are problems at motorway speeds, too. The steering, which is generally inert but not annoying around town, needs constant micro-corrections to keep the car straight when driving at more than 50mph. Without getting too technical, there needs to be a touch more ‘toe’ on the front wheels to keep the car from wandering inside its lane. 

In combination with the sluggish throttle control and a surprisingly high level of wind noise, driving the Sealion 7 over long journeys isn’t as relaxing as it should be. Chinese motorway speed limits are quite a lot lower than those in Europe, and you can certainly tell from the way the car is set up. And on more challenging British B-roads; the Sealion 7 is simply not the tool for the job. 

This would be more acceptable if the BYD was more affordable than its rivals, or if it had class-leading efficiency and range. But it doesn’t. We’re still seeing around 2.9mi/kWh in mixed city and country driving, but on motorways it’s more like 2.5mi/kWh. 

This means it’ll struggle to top 200 miles from a charge on a long trip. And at my local street-lamp charging rate of 52p/kWh (off-peak), motorway driving costs around 20.8p a mile. At current average fuel prices, you’ll need to be driving a petrol car that does less than 33mpg for it to be more expensive. There are definitely some impressive elements to the Sealion 7, it’s just they just seem to evaporate once you select Drive. 

BYD Sealion 7: first fleetwatch report

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BYD’s aquatic EV has a clever and easily accessible camera system that makes parking a doddle

Our BYD has a couple of aces up its sleeve when it comes to managing its width in tight spaces, but the main one is a superb camera system. It offers a range of views, including clear and perfectly-aimed vision of the front wheels. This makes parallel parking or navigating width restrictions easy; there’s even a dedicated button for it on the steering wheel. If only there were more of these controls for other, even more useful, functions. 

BYD Sealion 7: first report

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Will the large SUV buck the trend and demonstrate that Chinese cars come with a soul?

• Mileage: 588 miles
• Efficiency: 2.9mi/kWh

If 2025 proved one thing, it’s that Chinese car brands are deadly serious about becoming the biggest player in global sales. But despite having driven the vast majority of the new offerings on sale in the UK, no Chinese-branded model has really taken my fancy so far. 

This isn’t about brand snobbery or politics, but the fact that Chinese cars often feel more like a product than a car, so often missing the soul that turns a car from a tool into something worth cherishing. So to challenge this notion, I’ve got my hands on China’s biggest manufacturer’s largest EV for the next few months to try to convince me otherwise. 

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This is the BYD Sealion 7, a chunky electric SUV with a sloping roofline and a high-performance powertrain. It can be a little hard to grasp just how big it is from the pictures, but the 7 is around 250mm longer than a Volkswagen ID.5 or Skoda Enyaq Coupé – two cars that, despite this discrepancy, act as key rivals across most other metrics. 

BYD says the Sealion 7 is all about breaking with clichéd notions of ‘cheap’, and it certainly does that when you read the price. Our car, in base Comfort trim, starts at £47,000. Its £1,100 of optional white paint results in a £48,100 on-the-road price.

Like lots of Chinese cars, it’s not short of equipment. Comfort trim comes with a 15.4-inch touchscreen, panoramic roof and heated and cooled front seats, with the rear bench and steering wheel also heated. A high-spec 12-speaker Dynaudio stereo, 360-degree camera system with sensors all-round and 19-inch wheels complete the kit highlights.

In fact, the only things this version lacks are the head-up display, real leather seats and larger 20-inch wheels found on higher specs. But there are a few elements missing across the range that could be expected at this price point. Matrix or adaptive headlights beyond just automatic full-beams are a notable miss, as is any form of massaging seats or autonomous parking assistance. 

In contrast to the upper two dual-motor models, Comfort comes with a single, rear-mounted motor producing 308bhp. It derives its power from an 82.5kWh battery pack, and BYD quotes a 0-62mph time of 6.7 seconds. That ‘Blade’ battery is capable of up to 150kW charging speeds, which should get the battery from 10-80 per cent in around 32 minutes. Range is quoted at 300 miles.

But hold on a second. Aren’t high-end Chinese cars meant to be breaking the internet with their incredible charge speeds, performance and technology? A Volkswagen ID.5 isn’t just £10k cheaper, but it’ll also do an extra 45 miles on a charge and match the BYD for performance and top-up speeds. The flagship Ultimate model ups the range and charging to 329 miles and 230kW, but at £59,000 it’s hot on the heels of BMW’s new iX3 with its 500 miles and 400kW peak.

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You sit high in the BYD’s driver’s seat, and the relatively low dashboard only accentuates this. The sloping roofline and tiny rear window don’t give it a particularly airy feeling – but the panoramic roof helps. 

Connectivity has its highs and lows. The screen is relatively fast to react and has no problem maintaining a solid wireless connection for Apple CarPlay. But simple tasks are buried in multiple menus. You can also rotate the screen in a typical BYD way, but I find this utterly pointless. 

We’ll go into more detail about how the Sealion drives and the sort of efficiency we’re getting over the course of the next few months, but at the moment it’s doing around 2.9 miles per kWh. This is less than what BYD quotes and is the result of largely urban driving so far, but that’s not such a bad number considering the recent cold weather.

The BYD will have to prove it’s worth the ambitious price tag by driving, cosseting and reassuring us to the levels we expect of its legacy-branded rivals that offer very similar, if not even better value. Only time will tell.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.

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