BYD Seal review: Time to Seal the deal?
BOMBING down a slippery racing circuit at the wheel of a 530 hp car from China, smack in the middle of a typhoon, might have seemed like an iffy idea once. But not when the car in question is a BYD Seal.
The sleek, powerful sedan might be the Tesla-killer that global carmakers have been falling over themselves to come up with, in the ongoing scramble to unseat Elon Musk’s company from the top of the global electric vehicle (EV) league.
The Seal ladder has three rungs, starting with the Seal Dynamic, which currently costs S$241,888 with Certificate of Entitlement. Its 61.4 kWh battery gives up to 460 km of range; and with a 203 hp motor driving its rear wheels, it swims to 100 kmh in a brisk 7.5 seconds.
Above it, the Seal Premium (S$251,888) has a 82.6 kWh battery that can cover 570 km. It gets a nice bump in power to 313 hp, along with a 0 to 100 kmh time of 5.9 seconds – fast enough for things to get interesting behind the wheel.
Add a front motor, and you have the remarkable Seal Performance, which has all-wheel drive and 530 hp – the kind of oomph once reserved for Ferrari and Lamborghini drivers. The car may be named after a marine animal, but it’s more like a torpedo, blasting to 100 kmh in only 3.8 seconds.
That was the version BYD rolled out for the press and dealers to drive during a showcase event at the Zhuhai International Circuit earlier his week.
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But the weather gods had other ideas, and decided to dump rain over the proceedings. Yet, all that water merely revealed that for a powerful sports sedan, the Seal Performance is incredibly easy to drive. It dealt with the Zhuhai track’s flowing corners with surprising deftness, its inherent balance and sharp, feel-laden steering making it easy to hit every apex spot on.
Its all-wheel drive system simply laughed off the rain-slicked surface, propelling the Seal out of bends in such a sure-footed way that the traction control system only ever had the odd wiggle from the car’s tail to deal with.
Granted, BYD kept journalists behind a pace car; but in such slippery conditions, any other car with that much power might have been all white knuckles and clenched buttocks. The Seal simply took to wet weather like, well, a seal to water.
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If anything, the speediest Seal is almost too benign. It’s so measured about the way it doles out its power that it doesn’t actually feel like a car endowed with 530 hp.
Still, it has plenty else going for it. The interior is mighty impressive, with quilted leather upholstery, soft plastics, gentle lighting and a crystal-like drive selector all helping to create a luxurious ambience. The panoramic clear roof lets light pour into the cabin to give it a sense of airiness, too.
It’s reasonably spacious in the back, with plenty of leg room for passengers and just about enough headroom for most adults to feel comfortable.
Not having played with the 15.6 inch touchscreen at all at Zhuhai, I’ll have to reserve judgement about how user-friendly it is, but it rotates 90 degrees at the touch of a button – which seems gimmicky but is a BYD signature.
An invisible but more important BYD touch is how the Seal uses its battery pack as part of its main structure. The brand says this cell-to-body construction method adds stiffness, which in turn boosts safety by improving the strength of the car’s main structure. Ride and handling also benefit, because vibrations are quelled.
BYD’s real party trick is that it can build cars more cheaply than others. Analysts from UBS, a Swiss private bank, recently dismantled a Seal and concluded that because it keeps production of battery cells, powertrain components and electronics in-house, BYD has a sustainable cost advantage of around 25 per cent over rivals.
UBS put the Seal’s gross profit margin at 16 per cent, roughly how much legacy carmakers currently make from combustion cars. If the bank is correct, then even though the Seal invites comparisons with other EVs such as the excellent Hyundai Ioniq 6 and its sister car, the Kia EV6, the more salient threat could be to combustion cars such as the Toyota Camry or Volkswagen Passat.
The Seal does have a plusher interior and calmer suspension than Tesla’s Model 3, but its real accomplishment would be to propel BYD past Musk’s company in global electric car sales. Third-quarter numbers put Tesla ahead by just 4,000 cars, with some 435,000 deliveries.
Taking the EV crown now seems inevitable for BYD, but few will have seen it coming early on. Certainly not Musk, who laughed derisively when asked by an interviewer what he thought of BYD’s cars a dozen years ago, and understandably so. No one who got up close with the Seal would laugh now.
BYD Seal performance
Motor power / torque 530 hp/670 Nm Battery type/capacity Lithium-ion/82.56 kWh Charging time 15.2 hours (7 kW, AC), 32 minutes 30 to 80 per cent (150 kW, DC) Range 520 km 0-100 kmh 3.8 seconds Top Speed 180 kmh Efficiency 18.2 kWh/100 km Agent E-Auto Price S$283,888 with COE Available Now
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