BYD Seal Excellence review: bestseller potential?

The Chinese manufacturer may have made a big hit with the BYD Seal. But does it deliver driving performance and, above all, does it deliver electric car-specific performance? We drove it for two weeks in everyday use and came to an exciting conclusion.

Who knows BYD, Bitt or Bütt anyway? To clarify the whole thing once and for all, BYD is selectedprochen, each letter for itself in English. Anyone who watched the European Championship this year will have heard this name a few times on the sidelines or during half-time advertising. BYD is a Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicles, trains and even commercial vehicles. In fact, they have been around since 1995, starting with the production and development of solar cells and storage options for PV systems.

In the meantime, they have largely withdrawn from the PV business and are fully focused on their mobility division. BYD stands for "Build your Dreams“ interesting, this is supposed to be the motto of the company, or something that the CEO took as a model when it was founded. After they became successful with combustion engines in China, however, a rethink took place. With the new brand motto “Cool the Earth by one degree“When choosing a drive system, you should pay a little more attention to what might be better for the earth. That is why they no longer build pure combustion engines, but rather PHEVs and pure electric cars.

The so-called NEVs in China, the abbreviation for “New Energy Vehicles” is not a term that is used in Europe, we simply do not know it. Therefore, BYD should perhaps stop using this foreign term in its marketing material or advertising to avoid possible confusion.

tl;dr: BYD on the offensive in Europe

BYD has been in Europe for over a year now. With big headlines that they are shaking up the European market because a large ship with lots of vehicles has docked in a port. You don't notice much of it yet, but the strategy is not that bad. They are not setting up their own service or dealer network, they are entering into partnerships with Mercedes dealers in Germany. Among other things, the SENGER Group BYD has been running this service in its various locations for some time now. Anyone interested in a BYD car can take a test drive there or order it directly.

This also means that if there is a problem with your car, you can simply drive to the BYD service at the nearest partner to have the problem solved there. The partners will also grow strongly in the next few years, or at least that is our own forecast. But now enough about the brand, we are actually here because of the BYD Seal.

BYD Seal a really well-rounded package

With the Seal you not only get a large sedan with plenty of space on both rows of seats, but in the AWD Excellence version you even get around 530 hp and an acceleration of 3,8 seconds from 0 to 100 km / hBYD apparently liked this so much that they had to stick the time directly onto the tailgate using metal numbers. A cool detail, we thought.

The chassis of the version we tested has adaptive dampers and active roll stabilization. These ensure safe and, above all, sporty handling even during sporty driving. But if you like comfort, you'll also get a good everyday chassis here, where you won't immediately notice every bump in the ground. Only the opening for the trunk could pose a problem when transporting taller items, but this is a general problem with saloons that affects many manufacturers. It could have been solved by making the rear window part of the tailgate. But that's just complaining at a high level.

We were also surprised by the charging performance with a peak of up to 150 kW and the software. We didn't expect much. The software runs smoothly, and if you like, you can switch the display to portrait mode to see more of the map. Or you can simply connect your phone wirelessly via Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but this only works in landscape format. We also have to say that this integration is very good and leaves nothing to be desired.

The Seal really does offer very good interior quality if you ignore the glossy plastic and look at the other well thought-out features. There was little to complain about. Nothing creaked in the vehicle when driving, there were no annoying wind noises either, it was extremely quiet, in fact.

We can really recommend the Seal to almost anyone who is looking for an alternative to the Tesla Model 3 or BMW i4. If you don't place a lot of value on many functions in the software, such as camping mode or dog mode, and primarily use your phone via CarPlay or Android Auto, you will have a lot of fun with the Seal in everyday life.

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Design: Very beautiful and above all sporty

The Chinese are definitely doing a lot of things right with the design of the BYD Seal. Even if we can see some familiar design elements from other manufacturers here and there. For example, the headlights at the front are somewhat reminiscent of the Porsche Taycan, aren't they?

But that's not a bad thing, we think the design, which is supposed to be reminiscent of the ocean, is pretty successful. The rear diffuser exudes additional sportiness, and the taillights with their "raindrop"-like elements look very classy and good at night. There is a useful "frunk" under the hood at the front, where you can also store the charging cable.

The trunk does offer a lot of space, but the opening typical of a sedan means that there is only a limited height for loading. The seats can also be folded down in sections to create more space. The Seal normally offers 425 liters of trunk space, and with the seats folded down, you can use 1440 liters. This is actually quite acceptable for this class of vehicle.

With a length of 4,80 m and a width of 1,87 m (without mirrors), it also excels in city traffic. It is not too big and offers more than enough space in both the rear and front seats. Five people can ride comfortably.

Infotainment: Can be better

The infotainment is located on a large 15-inch screen in the middle of the vehicle. Similar to TeslaHowever, the display can be moved to a portrait position using a button on the steering wheel. This means you can basically choose whether you would prefer the display to be portrait or landscape. This can also be done while driving and will amaze those who are not familiar with it.

But this function is not really practical, of course, we have used it from time to timeproEffectively, we would mostly use it sideways. But this function is not only reserved for the BYD Seal, all other models can do it too if you want.

The infotainment system itself runs a fairly simple Android system. Over-the-air updates are supposed to come regularly and sometimes offer good new features or bug fixes. The system runs smoothly and offers a fair number of apps. The coolest thing about it was the ability to display Android Auto or Apple CarPlay wirelessly across the entire display. This connectivity also worked satisfactorily so far.

The rest of the system is largely unexciting and works as intended. But if you're looking for lots of graphic gimmicks and functions like a camping mode, you won't be so happy, as the system doesn't offer these functions at all. The system is designed more for functionality and not for "beauty". We definitely think the systems from NIO or Tesla are better in this respect. In general, however, we were very satisfied and surprised at how well the system in the BYD Seal worked in everyday life.

In addition to the Driver Display, our Excellence Seal also includes a head-up display that is integrated directly into the windscreen. proUnfortunately, there is very little information. As of now, only speed and assistance are shown there.

Driving & Charging: Updates & Sportiness

As for charging, the Seal can officially charge DC at up to 150 kW, which is solid for this vehicle class and price. Unfortunately, it could hardly reach this charging power until BYD released an update. They have now released the full charging power and did so in our test. We often saw it at 30-40%, still at 148 kW on a corresponding fast charger. The BYD Seal supports AC 11 kW three-phase as standard.

However, from around 75% the charging curve drops. It then continues charging at around 80 kW. But that's not bad at all, because on long journeys you usually don't charge beyond 80% anyway.

Disappointingly, you still can't use charging route planning with the internal BYD navigation system. We weren't told whether this will be added at a later date. We find this very unfortunate, even if you could now solve these things using Android Auto via "A better Route Planner", for example, a native solution in the system would certainly still be the best approach.

In terms of consumption, we got a good 17 to 18 kWh per 100 kilometers in our everyday test. This is a good value considering the performance and size. On the highway, the car was at 130 to 19 kWh with cruise control at 20 km/h.

Driving: Dynamic and sporty

This is more or less how we felt driving the Seal on a daily basis. The chassis with adaptive dampers was quite comfortable. However, if you switch to sport mode and activate the sporty steering, you can demand a little more driving dynamics from the sedan. Thanks to roll stabilization, it remains very stable even in curves and did not threaten to break out in our driving.

When it comes to driving, the Seal was a lot of fun and showed that BYD is perhaps the only Chinese company that doesn't offer the best software, but when it comes to the actual topic of a car, namely driving, it is definitely ahead of Tesla or the German manufacturers. However, they set a limit at 190 km/h and you can see that the acceleration is more geared towards the lower values ​​up to 125 km/h.

Prices: Price-performance winner?

The BYD Seal with rear-wheel drive and also a large 82,5 kWh Blade battery (BYD's own development, should be even safer and no longer flammable) is available from 44.990 Euros (incl. 19% VAT) this version actually has everything except the all-wheel drive and the head-up display. The Allrad Excellence version we tested is priced at 50.990 Euros (including 19% VAT). A few colors (not all) cost an additional 1000 euros.

It's definitely a lot of money, but you get a lot for the BYD Seal. For most people, however, we would recommend the normal rear-wheel drive model, which goes further and offers you more than enough power for everyday use. In terms of range, our test car managed a good 400 km on the motorway and in everyday use it manages its real range of 450 km.

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