This is a BYD Seal, one of China’s best-known electric sedans in the world. And for some good reason. The BYD Seal is a highly advanced electric vehicle that sells for a surprisingly low price. I saw this ‘Aurora White‘ example on a rainy summer day in south Beijing.
The BYD Seal is a masterfully designed vehicle. It has a super streamlined body with a drag coefficient of only 0.219 Cd. Yet it looks modern, cool, and sporty. The light units are darkened, it has faux air inlets in the bumper, and a wonderful power bulge on the hood.
The Seal is long and low, with the wheels pushed far into the corners, making the absolute most of the BYD e-Platform 3.0 electric car architecture. It has darkened windows, pop-out door handles, and racy design details like the ‘air vent’ in the front fender and the aero bits under the passenger door.
The interior of the BYD Seal is impressive, with a 15.6-inch rotatable touch screen and a 10.25-inch instrument panel. It has all the modern luxuries like heated seats and wireless charging. Still, the owner of this particular car thought it needed a bit more stuff, so he added a large neck pillow, a back pillow, wires with an unknown function on the center tunnel, and a super large steering wheel cover. This kind of cover was common in northern China in the 1990s and early 2000s in the winter when the temperature regularly dropped to minus 20 Celsius, but I haven’t seen many in modern times, let alone in a brand-new electric car. Perhaps the owner came from southern China, feeling cold in Beijing, even in summer.
BYD is short for Build Your Dreams and every new BYD has that name in full on the boot lid. There is a lot of debate about this, in China and export markets, but I kind of like it. It’s their name, right? So why not show it off? On the left side the Chinese name of BYD (比亚迪, Bǐyǎdí). Below that is a small EV badge. Today, BYD only makes New Energy Vehicles (NEVs). These are divided into EVs, PHEVs (including EREVs), and FCEVs. BYD always puts an EV badge on their full-electric cars. They used to have PHEV badges as well, but in recent years they stopped doing those.
On the right side, with raindrops on all sides, the Chinese name of the Seal: 海豹 (Hǎibào).
The Seal is available in five trim levels. Four are single-motor RWD, one is dual-motor AWD. The car we have here is the top-spec RWD Champion Edition. The output of the electric motor is 313 hp and 360 Nm, good for a limited top speed of 180 km/h and a 0-100 of 5.9 seconds. Electricity is stored in an 82.5 kWh LFP BYD Blade battery. Energy consumption is 13 kWh per 100 kilometers for an impressive CLTC range of 700 kilometers.
The darkened light units with a shiny strip in the middle look fantastic. The BYD Seal RWD Champion Edition as it stands here costs 232.800 yuan or $32.7K. That’s the price in China. In most export markets it costs around $45K, due to transport fees and import duties. No matter that, the BYD Seal is a truly impressive electric car from China, and it will only get better in the near future.