Six months with a BYD Seal: It’s not what we expected!
Ah, hello. You joined me on one of my favorite days, recording one of my favorite videos. I love doing a long-term review because I have been living with this, the BYDC or all-wheel drive excellence for about 5 months now. I’ve done around 6 and a half thousand miles. So, I’m going to tell you everything I know about this car. If you are considering one of these, this is the video to watch. Right, first things first. It looks great. I mean, the thing is, we’ve reviewed this car a few times on electrifying, but I didn’t actually get to live with one. You’d borrow one for like a week or so, but actually having this for the last 5 months, this thing is genuinely turning heads. Everyone is interested in this thing because it looks really stylish. It’s 4.9 m long, it has a really low nose, so it makes it more aerodynamic. I quite like the black, but I do need to point out it gets dirty very easily. So, maybe coat it with something that might make it less filthy. The tires. So, what I’ve got here, I’ve got the 19in wheels, which are the biggest size that you can get. But what I do like is the chunkiness of the side of But what I do like is the chunkiness of the sidewalls because yes, it is a performance car, but these don’t look performance because this makes it squish, makes the ride that much nicer. Now, down the side, you do have flush door handles that do go in once you’re driving. And yes, you do have keyless entry. So, if you got your key in your pocket, you basically just press the little button on the thing and then the door handles come out and it’s nice and easy to open. Love that. For me, down the rear, you’ve got the tinted windows down the back and on the back window as well. So, it looks so stylish and it looks so cool and I just I really really like this car. Round the back. Simple, simple. The lights when they’re lit up look so nice at night and they are very, very proud of its performance. That’s why they put 3.8s on the back, which a few people have gone, “Oh, what’s that? What does that mean? Is it like 3.8 liter?” No, it just means 3.8 seconds. That’s the naugh to 62 time. They’re so proud of it that they put it on the back of the car. And then you have the issue I had in the Tesco car park. That I think someone hit it with a trolley and it really annoyed me because I came out and there it was. And you can see the line of where they’ve gone boom and boom here as well. Hit it with a trolley. I’m absolutely livid about that because I can’t not see it. Every time I come out, there it is. We have a saloon shaped boot because this is a saloon car. So, if practical stuff is really important to you, this might not be the car for you, but I’ve actually really got used to the shape and the size of this boot. It’s 400 L. You do have lights under here, which makes it slightly easier to see your things. And there’s a bit of space under there. It’s where I keep my wellies and things and all my muddy stuff underneath there. And there is a frunk that’s uh 53 L that I just keep my charging cables in and my uh my windscreen wash. That’s what I put in the frunk. So, but look, it’s deep. Huh? No. Night. Oh, okay. Bye. You’re okay. Right, folks. Here is where the party’s at. And when I say party, that’s because it has a party trick. Yeah, the classic BYD party trick where you can spin the screen. And honestly, you’re going to go, “Oh, look. It can do that.” And then you’ll put it back again, and you’ll never do it again. You’ll just leave it like that cuz that’s what I did. Okay. So, I got this car about five months ago, and it was all very different software. And literally 3 weeks ago, they did a major software update and now it looks so much better and has more funky things involved. So if you were to get one now, it would have this software built in. Now everything you can do within this screen can be personalized, which is what I really, really like. So you’ve got a 15.6 in screen. It’s absolutely massive, but you can chop and change everything to be as close or as far away as you need it to be. So the software update happened, right? And I went, “Oh, okay. There’s a nice background because yeah, you can now choose themes. So, you click on the little star and you can choose different backgrounds. So, you can have a nice Should we go for a moon? Let’s have a moon. Ah, apply. Ooh, planets and nice things. You can chop and change things. But then I was like, how do I find my Apple CarPlay? That’s my one thing that I use religiously every single day. And I was like, how am I supposed to find that? So then eventually I found this button down here, which is where your sort of menu is. And I was like, “Oh, there it is.” Now, just a heads up, CarPlay and Android Auto, which I know from other people that have used this car that have borrowed it for a couple of days or whatever, doesn’t connect every single time. You have to kind of go into the menu to connect it, which might become a little bit annoying, but once it is connected, it stays connected. But the best way to do this is to alter the menu at the bottom. So, I’m going to take you back home, right? And all of these widgets can be moved and customized. So, if you just kind of touch one of them and hold it down, you can add. So, you click on add, and that’s where you can add CarPlay. What’s that? It’s on the other side of the screen. Not a problem. I can move that closer to me. Put it in the middle. So, I can go boop, I want CarPlay. Done. Lovely stuff. And you can do exactly the same with this menu down the bottom. So, say, for example, you want your heated seats closer to you. So you can hold down the seat button and you can move that left or move it right and just chop and change everything to how you would want to use the car to how close you want everything to be. It’s so easy to use. And then you’ve got the voice control which again works every time. So you can go, “Hey BYD, open my window.” I have tried this over and over and over again and it works every single time. Never let me down. It does. Oh, although she does keep listening. Shush. Um, every time she can do your heated seats, your ventilated seats, which are in the front. You don’t get those in the back, by the way, but you can use it all the time, which is so so handy. I’m going to do that up cuz it’s a little bit chilly outside today. You’ve also got some more menus to swipe down from the top. There you go. So, you can either use one or two fingers and it will swipe down from the top and that’s why you have more things and you can chop and change things to suit your needs. Now, when I first started this car, I had the mode on sort of automatic and then I changed it to dark mode because I prefer dark mode. So, during the day it would be on light mode and then everything would be white and then at night time it would turn dark. But, I just prefer things dark. I don’t know if you’re the same on your smartphone, but it’s just how I like it. So, I’ve kept it to exactly as I like it. I also have the head-up display, which is at the perfect level for me and just looks great. You’re probably thinking, “This is a really positive review so far.” I do have a couple of things that I do want to pick up on. First of all is the wireless charging. So, you got two of them. There’s actually two. Both of these are wireless charging for your phone, but they’re not quite powerful enough. Um, if you put your phone on and it’s got like 40%. It just kind of keeps it at 40%. It doesn’t charge it any faster. So, say you’re doing a long journey, by the end of it, your phone will be at exactly the same battery level and it will be really, really hot cuz it’s not ventilated in this bit. So, your phone will be boiling hot and the same level of percentage of battery charging or whatever. And then what was the other thing I wanted to moan about? This Your cup holders are quite interesting. So, they go deeper than what you think they might, but now I don’t know how to put them back up again. So, I did it and then I pushed them in and I went, “Oh, wow.” But now they’re too deep and now my cups get too deep, but I don’t know how to bring them up again. Oh, maybe if I press that. I’m really annoyed at that. I’ve been living with this car for so long and I didn’t know how to do it. I think cuz from here you can’t see that button. And it’s only because I’ve looked round and now I see the button. So you can push that deeper and then put it back up again. I wish I knew that earlier. That’s really annoying, but I’m pleased I found it. Then you got this here, which is gloss black, which is just a full-blown fingerprint magnet, which is the button that you touch all the time because it’s your stop start button, and it’s just collecting all my fingerprints. No matter how many times you wipe it, those fingerprints will come back again and that becomes annoying. I do like the gear selector cuz it looks sparkly and diamondy. You got a bit of storage in here, which isn’t that much storage, but it’s pretty good. So, you can keep some snacks and stuff in there. Uh, bit of storage in this sort of handle there. Door bins are pretty good as well. So, that’s really nice. Again, gloss black on your windows, so you’re going to get all your fingerprints there. This is going to sound really niche. If you have an issue with holes like I do, it’s a thing called trip like trypophobia or something where you know like people will look at a crumpet and see the holes and it makes them feel sick. I get that feeling with this with this up here and with the speakers here. It makes me feel icky and makes me feel sick. So if you also suffer from the same situation, you will feel the same as me. It just every now and again you’ll get a reflection and it’s like don’t like the look of that. Makes me feel awful. Driving position is really nice. It’s We’re in a world at the moment where everything is kind of an electric SUV and it’s just really nice to sit in something low down fast but still with great visibility. I know there’s not a rear wiper at the back and that has been annoying on some mornings where I need to clear it. But again, I can just go into the menu and clear it. And if I wanted to clear it all the time, I would just put it down in my main menu there and then it’s just a touch of a button. I thought having climate controls and everything in a screen would annoy me more, but it hasn’t. And things that you do change like your driving modes, etc. are all on a little toggle there. And your volume is there. So, you’re not having to do everything in the screen. You’ve also got the same on the steering wheel. It’s pretty bloody good once you kind of get used to where everything is. It’s great and everything feels really nice and it’s really squishy. Again, this is going to be really niche. But on the doors, this is going to People are going to think I’m crazy for saying this. You know, occasionally you get a bit of road rage. This bit here is squishy on the top, but you can really squish it down. So, it’s a bit like a stress ball. And there has been a few occasions where I’ve been driving and someone’s annoyed me and I’ve gone and it feels really nice to squish it. So, that’s just a little tip from your old pal Nickeola. Okay. In the rear seats, I’ll be honest, uh, not many humans have been back there because that’s mostly where my dogs sit in their hammock. But there has been one occasion where my mom has sat in the back. And she said, and I quote, “Oh, it’s quite nice back here, Nick.” So, there we go. Nice insight there from mom. But I can tell you, it is perfectly spacious. You can fit tall teenagers back there. So, perfect as a family car. Right, before I set off, I have one story to tell you. There was one occasion where I got in the car, I turned it on, it turned on perfectly fine like it normally does. I put it in drive, it said drive, I put my foot down, and it didn’t move. It just did. It just didn’t move. But I turned it off. I turned it back on again, and it was fine. And it’s never done it since. It was one occasion. But I need to tell you these things because you know I’m living with it. I’m being honest with you. So that’s a that’s a true story. So there we go. All in all, it’s a great car to drive. It really is. And I do think that is largely because of the the big chunky tires that it feels quite smooth. I mean, occasionally you’ll whack into a a pothole, but that’s the road’s fault. That’s not the car’s fault, is it? But going over speed humps and things like that, it seems to cope with it pretty well. It does. Indicators, in my humble opinion, are a bit too ticky for me. Bit ticky. Not the nicest on the ears, but I feel like I can forgive it. If they could maybe do some gentle boop boops, that would be much nicer. But yes, those indicators do irritate me a little bit. There are some lovely buttons that I need to tell you about. Uh so the adaptive cruise control is a big plus from me. It works really really well and you can set the speed and it will go up in fives. It doesn’t go up in single miles per hour. It goes up in 5 miles per hour. So you set it, you go on the motorway, you set it at 70 mph and then you can adjust your distance using the buttons here to where you are to the car in front. And it is lazy driving at its finest, folks. Yes. If you’re doing a really, really long journey, adaptive cruise control is your friend. It really is. You can also press the steering wheel and lane keep assist button and it will keep you in the center of the lane and will make sure that it’s kind of keeping you concentrated. Is that the word I’m looking for? Making sure you’re focused. Let’s go with that. That noise, by the way, if you heard that bloom, that is the noise of the speed changing. So, you’re if you’re going from a 30 to a 40, it will go plum as a little nod to your speed is changing. You need to go faster or you need to go slower. The other bing bongs aren’t too intrusive. So, actually, I don’t mind them. When you’ve got the radio on and it’s coming out of the 12 speakers in the car and you’re having a good sing song, it doesn’t sort of butt into any of that. So, it’s not too irritating. doesn’t bother me that much, which makes me very happy. But you’re here for numbers, right? Okay, so we’ve got an 82.5 kWh battery. Now, that is good for WLTP range of 323 miles. Now, here’s where the maths isn’t quite nothing. Now, if I’m driving this while I’m at home, say I’m just popping to Tesco’s or say I’m, you know, popping down the gym or something like that or just doing kind of little local city driving, I’ve been getting around 4.3 miles per kilowatt hour. Well, I did the math on that and that equals like 354 miles, which is more than the WLTP number, which doesn’t make any sense. motorways, I’ve been getting around 3.1 3.2 miles per kilowatt hour, which is around 255 milesish, which isn’t bad at all. I mean, I did a really long road trip in this up to North Wales. It made it all the way there, and it was really comfortable the entire time. And I’ve done long road trips in lots of different cars, and this one was very comfortable, and it made it there with no stress whatsoever. It’s been very impressive, but the biggest number is probably the horsepower. 523 horsepower, which is a stupid amount of power. It’s stupidly fast. I mean, that 3.8 second naugh to 62 time is something they’re very proud of. That’s why they put the numbers on the back of the car, but it is stupidly quick. And I’ve probably put it in sport mode maybe 10 times over the last five months. mostly just to show people how fast it can go. Cuz the rest of the time in normal mode, it’s powerful enough. You don’t need it to be any faster than that. But if you do put it in sport mode, which I can do right now, I got a minute. Sport mode. I’ll come to a stop. I have to put the brake on because the regen braking won’t bring it down to a stop. And then I launch it like this. Now, okay. The stuff the stuff in here moved a little bit. That was the noise you heard. It’s more of a gentle pull away. If I was to do that in a Tesla, you get whiplash. It’s too instant in a Tesla. Whereas this feels more polite. Like it feels fast. It’s very fast, but it’s more of a gentle pull away. It’s not to whip your head back, make yourself feel horribly sick. It actually does it really nicely. It’s like, “Oh, you want to go fast? Well, here we go.” That’s kind of how it delivers the power, which I really like because some there are some EVs that are just like it’s it’s too instant and it’s too too quick, too fast, and it makes your stomach go funny. Whereas this doesn’t make my stomach go funny. This makes me go, “Ah, I’m going fast. I have one at every traffic light.” You know what I mean? I’ve put it down to eco mode twice where I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m going to make it back.” But I did make it back anyway. That was when I really first started with the car because I wasn’t so sure how efficient the battery was going to be. But actually, yeah, it was within the first month of me having that car. I put it in eco mode a couple of times cuz I was like, “Oh, I’ve got to do like 200 miles. I don’t know if it can do it.” But now I know it can. So, I’ve never put it back in eco mode since. So, this is me telling you, you don’t need to worry about eco mode because this will do the distance. It will. It will. I mean, it’s got the LFP blade battery that BYD are known for, which is like the safest battery ever because they test it by putting a whopping great nail through the middle of it. And it means you can charge it faster. Charging in this thing is fairly decent. You’ve got 150 kW rapid charging. So, that’s all nice and nice. And then AC charging is 11 kW. Lovely stuff. Regen braking. You’ve only got two options. So, it’s like uh high or standard. I always have it on high because I prefer a little bit of feedback when I lift off the accelerator. I want it to break a little bit. But even the high isn’t that powerful. I prefer it to be a little bit more powerful than that. And I would like to have one pedal driving, but this doesn’t have one pedal driving. So, if that’s what you like, maybe this isn’t the car for you. But if you can kind of get over it and deal with a little bit of braking, you’ll end up getting used to it. It’s actually quite nice. There’s one other thing that I’ve picked up on from living with this car, and that is the badge on the steering wheel. Um, it’s shiny, which means every now and again you will notice a reflection of yourself. And it’s not the kindest angle, just so you know. So like you’ll look down and then it’s there’s my face and all of my chins. I feel like I can see just all of the chins from this angle. So just a bit of a heads up. You’ll kind of go, “Oh, oh, steering has a nice bit of weight to it. I feel connected to the wheels when it’s in eco mode sometimes or like if you put it on sort of the lighter mode, it feels extremely loose, but I always like to have it on a setting that makes me feel completely connected to the car. And it does feel great. It does feel great. It does. Yeah. It’s a It’s a very impressive thing. And if you ever get the opportunity to test drive one of these, I can pretty much guarantee you, you’re going to be impressed right from the get-go. You’re going to go, “Well, this is pretty blooming good and it Nicola was right.” Cuz I’m always right, right? This is what I love about long-term reviews, okay? cuz sometimes we go on a car launch, we’ll drive a car for a couple of hours or we’ll borrow something for a week or so and then you can have a kind of opinion. But to see what it’s like to live with with this car, genuinely, I’ve grown to love it more and more and more. Whereas when I had the BYD dolphin, if you go and watch that back, it was actually the car I grew to hate. But this car, in my humble opinion, is the best car that BYD make. Genuinely, I have loved every second of having this car. Yes, there are a few little niggles here and there, but in my eyes, that’s banging. If I was to buy my own EV, I’d get myself one of these genuinely. I mean, price-wise, so if you were to go for this particular version, you can get it for £48,695 for all your bells and whistles and all that kind of thing. I’ve had a chat with Tom Barnard. He’s given me a Barnard’s bargain. Um, so if you were to put down monthlies for 8,000 miles a year, six months down over a threeyear period, £432 a month. If you’ve got that money and you want one, get one. It’s as easy as that. True story. Stopped in a car park. Guy next to me had the exact same car, got out the car, looked at mine, and went, “Good car, ain’t it?” I went, “Yeah, it’s a good car.” Yeah, it’s a good car. Cuz it is a good car. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone. I’ve loved it so much. It’s just it’s just great. I’ll subscribe and things, but I mean it’s just it’s really great. It really is. This is not sponsored by BYD, by the way. It’s just a great car.
Six months with a BYD Seal: It’s not what we expected!
After six months behind the wheel, Nicola Hume reveals what it’s really like to live with the BYD Seal, the electric saloon that’s been making waves as a serious Tesla Model 3 rival. Has this newcomer from China lived up to the hype, or has the shine worn off after half a year of real-world driving?
In this long-term review, Nicola dives into what the Seal is like to actually live with day-to-day, from charging, comfort, and build quality to tech, practicality, and real-world range. Is it as efficient as BYD claims? How does it handle long motorway trips? And crucially, should you pick one over a Model 3 or Polestar 2?
Join Nicola as she gives her honest verdict after six months of commuting, road trips, and everything in between, the highs, the niggles, and whether she’d keep the keys for good.
#BYDSeal #EVReview #LongTermTest #ElectricCar #BYD
Read the reports: https://www.electrifying.com/long-term-reviews/BYD-reviews/seal/report
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