BYD Sealion 7 review

Chinese giant aims straight at the Tesla Model Y with its new electric family SUV

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What do you call a bigger, taller Seal? A Sealion 7, apparently.

Taxonomies of the animal kingdom be damned, the BYD Sealion 7 starts a new naming strategy for this Chinese car brand.

In future, new SUVs will all be called Sealion, saloons Seal and hatchbacks Dolphin, each with a number to indicate its relative positioning in the range. But none of the current crop is being renamed and the Atto 3 is staying put, because renaming that would be confusing – obviously.

So the Sealion 7 is the SUV version of the Seal saloon (what the Tesla Model Y is to the Model 3). It’s not to be confused with the Seal U, which is a slightly smaller SUV that’s mechanically completely different. 

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DESIGN & STYLING

BYD SEALION 7 01

It’s available in three flavours. There’s a standard-range battery of 82.5kWh, which you can have with either a 308bhp single rear motor or an extra 215bhp front motor for a total of 523bhp.

The single-motor car is rated for 300 miles on a charge, the dual-motor car 283 miles.

Despite increasingly sophisticated technology for the drive batteries, EVs have tended to stick with old-school lead-acid batteries for the 12V system, but the Sealion switches that to LFP too. It comes with an eight-year warranty and shouldn’t run down when you leave the car stationary for long periods of time.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

For even more range (312 miles), there’s a 91.3kWh battery, which always comes with the dual motors.

Versions with the small battery can charge at up to 150kW, those with the big battery can reach 230kW.

As with the Seal saloon, the Sealion 7 is based on BYD’s e-Platform 3.0 and uses its own lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries.

INTERIOR

BYD SEALION 7 12

As BYD matures, it seems to be moving away from the zany, wacky interiors and towards something with more conventional shapes and subdued colours. The result is a bit forgettable, with generally good perceived quality but lots of gloss black plastic.

Cars on the launch event were in Excellence spec, so had the big battery, dual motors and the highest level of equipment. That includes nappa leather, which is pretty nice and gets rid of the unpleasant chemical smell found in other BYDs.

BYD is clearly listening to feedback when it comes to its infotainment. Hence the permanent shortcut bar and the addition configurability. Apple CarPlay is now also more integrated into the native interface, so music shows in the standard media player. All positive steps, but there's still a long way to go.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

As with other BYDs, the interior is dominated by an enormous rotating touchscreen. It runs a new generation of software, which is prettier, and – praise be – now has a permanent bar at the bottom with a bunch of shortcuts and basic climate controls. Much better, but it’s still pretty dreadful. It’s riddled with wonky translations, unfathomable menus and wasted space, and on my test car, I couldn’t get Apple CarPlay to work, either wirelessly or with a cable.

Practicality is decent. Rear passengers have acres of leg room but not the most comfortable seating position, because the floor is high. The boot has exactly the same volume as the Hyundai Ioniq 5's and is similarly shallow, and there’s a useful 58-litre frunk that’s slightly fiddly to access.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

BYD SEALION 7 08

Driving the Sealion 7 is a relatively simple affair. There are drive modes and two levels of regenerative braking, but they don’t make all that much difference. You put it in drive, press the right pedal to go faster and the left one to go slower.

Despite a kerb weight of near-enough 2.5 tonnes, 523bhp makes the Sealion 7 very quick, and its power delivery and braking are nice and smooth, with no notable quirks.

There's a bit of lag when you floor the accelerator and the brake pedal is slightly spongy, but overall drivability is well-resolved
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

That isn’t to say that there’s no typical new-brand weirdness about the Sealion 7, though.

It starts with the assisted driving features, which are diabolical. The overspeed warning doesn’t just bong, it also dims your music, and turning off the audible warning (pretty easy) also turns off the visual speed-limit indicator. There are two stages of lane keeping assistance to disable; one is so constant that it feels like you’ve got a flat tyre. The driver monitoring system will nag you if you look in the mirrors. Sometimes but not always, weirdly, a voice will tell you “ACC actived [sic]” when you turn on the cruise control.

RIDE & HANDLING

BYD SEALION 7 03

You would expect at least a bit of handling talent to back up the generous power, but the Sealion 7 doesn’t have any. As with other BYDs, it's very softly suspended. Combine that with very light, remote steering and you end up with a car that inspires no confidence in the bends and actually has pretty poor directional stability.

When you get on the power out of a corner, you can feel it start to send power to the rear axle and start to rotate, which would be a good thing in a car with more control and feel but in this case just feels disconcerting.

My test car was on winter tyres but high-quality Pirelli ones, so I don’t expect a set of summer rubber to cure all the Sealion 7’s ills.

But at least it’s a comfy cruiser, right? Well, sort of. Although the driving position perches you over the controls somewhat, the seats are soft yet supportive, and other than a bit of wind noise, the car is pretty quiet at a cruise. But despite the soft springs, there’s still a weird knobbliness to the otherwise floaty ride. I’d rather have something more consistent.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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UK prices haven’t been confirmed yet. Orders will be taken from later in the year and deliveries start in February 2025.

BYD expects the single-motor car to start from about £46,000 and the dual-motor from about £50,000. No word on the Excellence, but our bet would be about £55,000 for that.

With plenty of autobahn miles and country roads, it was hard to get a read on real-world energy efficiency, but even the WLTP figure is rubbish, so I wouldn’t expect more than 3.0mpkWh in any version.

VERDICT

BYD SEALION 7 06

Until now, every BYD I’ve driven has felt like a noticeable step up from the last, and apart from the dreadful touchscreen interface and poor ADAS, I found the Seal quite an agreeable thing, but this Sealion 7 doesn’t fit in that series.

It’s bland, not very nice to drive and not particularly efficient, and while its user interface is a step forwards, it’s still not good.

Unless it turns out to be heroically cheap to buy, it’s hard to see why anyone would get one over a Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5 or Renault Scenic E-Tech.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As part of Autocar’s road test team, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews, comparison tests, as well as the odd feature and news story. 

Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s eight-page road tests, which are the most rigorous in the business thanks to independent performance, fuel consumption and noise figures.