► We switch Seals this month
► And get the whole dealership experience
► It’s in a lush Shadow Green
Your closest car dealer could soon well be one selling BYDs. The Chinese brand’s expansion across Europe and the UK is showing no signs of slowing down, helped by spending big on raising its profile by being a primary sponsor of the Euro 2024 football competition.
Even with incoming tariffs and rival EVs hitting the market from all corners, BYD is confident it will keep growing. BYD’s launched four EVs (the Dolphin, Atto 3, Seal and Sealion) and a PHEV (the Seal U DM-i) in less than two years, looking to hit the most popular car-buying segments.
Bono Ge, BYD’s UK director, says: ‘We definitely want to grow our network. By the end of Q1 2025, we should have 80 dealers and by the end of the year we should have 120.’ He adds: ‘A lot of people here [in the UK] have a real car culture. They want to experience the car, know the differences between them, care about driveability and handling… they love cars. We believe we have big potential here. It’s really important that we have this network, because those who have bought our cars care about that aftersales support.’
The deep car knowledge among Brits he refers to means many buyers of combustion cars have a firm attachment to a more established manufacturer – but when it comes to EVs, they’re more open minded.
The Seal seems to be the sweet spot, from BYD UK’s perspective. The car has been positioned to tackle some of the most serious and accomplished competition – not least the Tesla Model 3 – and is competitively priced rather than cheap.
For the preceding three months, I’ve been finding out exactly what it’s been like to run a Seal in powerful all-wheel drive tech-fest Excellence specification. It’s integrated into my life very easily, which says a lot about what BYD has prioritised to get people used to a ‘new’ brand quickly.
Ge runs a Seal himself when he’s in the UK, rather than the Netherlands, his other base. ‘We’ve studied how competitors make better cars and learned from them, so much so that a Japanese institute bought a Seal, dismantled it and wrote a book on it,’ he claims.
It’s true: A Thorough Disassembly of China’s BYD Seal was published by Nikkei Business Publications and goes into detail about the car’s construction, impressed and baffled in equal measure as to how BYD has managed it.
As part of my deep dive into the BYD experience, I’m changing cars halfway through the long-term loan, swapping my Ice Blue Excellence for the cheaper, longer-legged Design version. On paper, it’s a little slower, with a single electric motor driving only the rear axle, and you lose a head-up display, but not much else is different. Its list price is £3k cheaper and, at the time of writing, around £100 per month cheaper on a personal lease. It also promises a slightly longer range.
You can see why I’d be keen to give that version a try. Naturally, the best place to do that is at one of BYD’s many new dealers – and the closest (for now) to my Peterborough home is Mantles BYD in Royston.
On the way south, a mix of motorway miles and zippy single- carriageway A-roads, my Excellence is as neat, speedy and well-behaved as it’s been from the start: well-finished interior with those super-soft light blue leather seats; I easily get 300 miles out of a charge; and it’s fun for a blast. And all the cabin tech works seamlessly… or almost all the tech. The cross-traffic alert still gets twitchy at roundabouts even after a software update, and the quick-setting menu for the infotainment screen is a fiddle to get open.
Mantles BYD in Royston is a cosy space, filled to the brim with new BYD models; the floor is sparklingly clean and huge windows let in loads of light. There I meet Muadh Hussain, Mo Miah and Shona Hewitt, and I’m given the full dealer experience: hot coffee, big smiles and plenty of pristine new metal to look at.
When I arrive, the dealership is only a couple of weeks old, having opened with a launch party that coincided with celebrating BYD’s 30th anniversary (it started as a battery maker in 1995 in Shenzhen; cars followed in 2003). As I walk through the dealership sipping a strong coffee, I tick off an Atto 3, a Dolphin and a gargantuan Yangwang U8 SUV, a range-extender G-Class rival from BYD’s luxury sub-brand that’s not yet launched in Europe. And then I see my name on a plinth next to a car under a cover.
As Muadh unveils my new Seal Design, the obvious detail that hits me is the interesting new colour: Shadow Green. I’ve previously only seen it on the online configurator, where it actually looks a little drab, but in reality it’s a metallic hue with subtle sparkles hitting the sunlight. It has just 87 miles on the clock when I’m handed the key.
Out on the road for a quick back-to-back blast with my outgoing Excellence, the early signs are… business as usual. That’s not a complaint. The interior is all black, with some satin grey panelling (much less black gloss, hurrah!) on the dashboard. In the real world, it’s also not that much slower than the Excellence – Eco mode does dampen power output much more than in my outgoing car, but there’s still plenty of shove.
Not having a second motor makes the Design a smidge more playful in the corners, too. The traction control is a buzzkill but, being on eco tyres, you can get its backside to pivot under power a little more than in the all-wheel-drive version.
And what about the anticipated bonus range? It’s early days, but BYD claims a boost of 50-ish miles, which will come in handy. I’ll find out what that figure really equates to in the weeks ahead. After swapping keys, I’m still enjoying life with the Seal. It’s a car that may look unassuming out on the road, but one that packs in plenty of contemporary tech, and has been put together to a high standard.
BYD means business and, says Ge, isn’t going to slow down: ‘We’re telling our retailers we want a 10-car showroom. We’re preparing some product at the moment, with Sealion on the way and two, maybe three more products that are being considered.
There are still some [market] segments where we don’t have coverage yet that we want to cover.’ My time so far with the Seal, in two guises, gives no reason to doubt him.
Logbook: BYD Seal Excellence AWD
Price £45,695 (£46,571 as tested)
Performance 82.5kWh battery, one e-motors, 308bhp 5.9sec 0-62mph, 112mph
Efficiency 3.4 miles per kWh (official), 2.42 miles (tested)
Range 354 miles (official), 342 miles (tested)
Energy cost 22.7p per mile
Miles this month 1095
Total miles 1182