Autotrader | BYD Sealion 7: Better than a Tesla Model Y?
[Music] Guys, I’ve got a confession. I have a Tesla. Honestly, I’ve got other stuff as well. I got petrol. I got diesel. But I bought the Model Y before the Giza went mental and now stumped with the Ah, please forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. [Music] Only joking. The Model Y is brilliant. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. It’s arguably the best electric family SUV in its segment. In fact, thing is though, there’s a lot of new stuff out there that might be just as good. And that includes this, the BYD Cline 7, an electric family SUV that might just be a Model Y exterminator. Let’s get the basics out of the way. It’s a similar size to a Tesla Model Y, similar price, around £47,000. It’s got an 82 kWh battery pack as standard, and around a 300 mile range. And here’s the thing, even though it might have a slightly unusual badge on the front, it’s actually quite a compelling package. Note the slim headlights with attractive boomerang shaped DRLs, actual functional aero vents that open and close to cool the battery, and below the bonnet, a 58 L front trunk. It’s about half the size as the one you get in the Model Y, but it’s a decent space nonetheless. At the side, it has big 20-in wheels on the topsp spec model. There are pop out door handles that help with aerodynamic efficiency, a bit, and a charge port with a state of charge indicator built in. Something else that’s really cool about this charge port is that it supports vehicle to load or V2L. So, inside this handy carry bag is an extension lead with a bunch of three pin plugs on it. And you plug this end into the car and you can plug whatever device you want into this section. a popcorn maker, a microwave, an air fryer. You can actually use the car to power your home in the event of a power cut, which is super handy. More cars should have this at the rear. Meanwhile, lots going on here, especially around the branding. We’ve got BYD in the middle, which is fine, but why have BYD again here in the name? We know. As for Cine 7, silly name if you ask me, but I do like the 4.5S portion of the lettering. It makes perfect sense because that’s exactly how fast this car goes from 0 to 62. Let’s try it. Here we go. Brake, gas, head back, launch. Oh, that is moving. And that’s 60. This is a quick car. Big but quick. More important than that, however, is of course the boot. This is 500 L of cargo space and very generous it is too. But you know the most interesting thing about the boot is this handle for adjusting the boot floor. Look at that. How premium is that? That is black chrome. I’m pretty sure you don’t even get that in Bentleys. That looks sensational. Only problem is, of course, it’s going to get scratched up the minute you put any bags or other luggage inside it. So, a bit pointless, but I appreciate the attention to detail. When you lift up the boot floor, what you’ll find is some extra space underneath for your charge cables. And you can even adjust the boot floor to raise the level slightly to give you a bit more of a flat load bay. And here’s what the seats look like when they’re folded completely flat. No, that’s quite hard. What it needs is a separate set of buttons on either side to make folding the seats a bit easier. But yeah, quite practical. The second row of this car is actually a nice place to hang out. Here’s the thing. A lot of electric cars, they have floors that are raised up a little bit too high, which means your legs don’t get the thigh support they need from the seats. But this, no problem at all. You also get space underneath the seat in front, so you can stretch out. And there’s an angle to the seat back, so you feel nice and relaxed. Leg room, loads of that, loads of that headroom, decent despite there being a panoramic glass roof. And also, speaking of the glass roof, it lets a lot of light into this car. Now, you’ve also got these little windows behind your head, which makes it feel nice and airy. We got storage here, one, two, three seat pockets per person. We got heated seats on either side. We’ve also got some storage down here, cup holders that flip open, and couple of USB ports down there. Yeah, this is nice back here. Like it. It’s positive news up front, too. The material quality is surprisingly good for a start. Perhaps even better than in a Tesla with two-tone stitching, leather that’s of a good standard, and some interesting sculpting, plus metal knurling on the controls on the center console and the steering wheel and good practicality thanks to ISOIX in the front passenger seat and a goodiz glove box. The tech is very good as well, and it’s all centered around this enormous screen on the dashboard. And the coolest thing about it is that you can change the orientation from landscape to portrait using that little button. Look at that. It rotates. I have no idea why you’d want it to rotate, but it does. And um it’s a bit of a flex. I want to know though, BYD owners, do you actually use this or is it just something you show off to your mates once and never use again? Let me know in the comments. It also has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And here’s what’s interesting. If I turn it to portrait mode and try to activate Apple CarPlay, the car will actually tell me that CarPlay doesn’t work in that mode and it will actually rotate it back to the normal orient. I mean, that that just makes no sense to me. But hey, flexing. As for buttons, you got some down here, but I’d like a bit more for adjusting things like your climate control. However, you do have climate controls permanently down at the bottom of the screen, so they never go missing. That’s quite handy. Other tech I like includes this wireless charging map. Take care of vehicles coming behind you when opening the door. Every time a car drives past me from behind, it warns me not to reverse into the cars, but I’m actually in park. There’s no danger. just relax. Other tech I like includes this wireless charging mat down here. That’s a 50 watt wireless charger for your phone. I’ll put it into context. A lot of old school wireless charging phones only charge at around 7 watt. This charges at 50. So, it could top your phone up to nearly full in around 45 minutes. Very fast. And also that problem of your phone overheating while wireless charging. They get around that by having this little vent here which blows cool air onto your phone to keep it charging speedily. Um, I don’t know how effective it is if you got a a case on your phone, but it’s a nice idea. Also nice are these cup holders. They’re a bit weird, right? But they’ve got this very interesting feature where you can change the depth of the cup holder. So, you can actually push them down to allow you to accommodate much longer bottles. And then when you want them to raise again, you push these buttons and up they come. A bit pointless, but quite nice. What’s not pointless is the reverse camera on this car. It’s magnificent. It’s really high- res and it’s got so many different modes, including 3D and 2D. I’ll go into 3D mode. And look at that. You’ve got this kind of cutout of the car showing you all angles. And look, when you actually turn the front wheels, the wheels on the screen turn as well. That’s very cool. And look at this. You’ve got a forward view of the car. And again, you can see exactly where your wheels are pointed. That is absolutely sensational. Love it. Okay, I showed you how freakishly fast the Cine 7 was earlier, but I’ve got to reiterate how quick it is. It really is a monster in a straight line. The top of the range model has two electric motors and all-wheel drive and has access to a total of 523 horsepower and 690 Nm. So, when you want it to go, it goes. What it means is that overtaking is done in an instant and no one is going to beat you off the line at a traffic light unless you allow them to or unless they’re bouncing off the rev limiter using launch control in a supercar. But how likely is that? Anyway, you’re probably more interested in what this car is like to drive on a daily basis around town. And I can fill you in. It is very different to a Tesla Model Y. The Model Y has very stiff suspension. It’s really, really firm, especially when you’re going over speed bumps. this the exact opposite. It’s really quite soft. If you’re on a nice smooth stretch of road, it feels like it’s floating along quite effortlessly. The problem is when you do encounter speed bumps, it does feel very wallowy and like there isn’t much body control. Which one do I prefer? I’d say on balance in a family car, I’d rather have it soft compared to hard, but that’s just my preference. The seats in the Cine 7 are very comfy, more comfy than in a Tesla Model Y if you ask me. And also, the seats are very adjustable as well. You can actually find it really easy to get a nice comfortable driving position. And the steering wheel adjusts for both reach and rake. So, no matter your body shape or size, you can always feel pretty comfortable in this car. I will say though, the Cine 7 feels like a bigger, more substantial car than the Model Y, which you might think would make it a bit more intimidating to drive. But because it’s got these really clever, really clear cameras, you always have a decent view of the outside world. And check this out as well. It’s even got a blind spot camera. So when you indicate left on the screen, it shows you exactly what’s happening in your blind spot on the left hand side. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to want to do it for the right hand side, which seems like a bit of an oversight, but there you go. Here’s something I’m not so keen on. That on the A-pillar, that is a massive camera pointed directly at your face the entire time you’re driving. And it feels a bit big brother the way that it’s positioned. This is by no means the only modern car with a camera that watches your face the entire time you drive, but having it so obvious and overt, yeah, it kind of freaks me out a little bit. It’s there for a good reason. And it’s there to monitor your face for signs of fatigue, to make sure you’re paying attention, to make sure you haven’t passed out. And in fact, if I uh pretend to be asleep right now, I’ll do a little yawn. Look at that. A little warning pops up on the dashboard to tell me that maybe I should take a break from driving. So, it is good. I just don’t like the fact that it’s so big and so in your face. Here’s something else. Staying on the whole big brother theme, this car beeps and bongs at you constantly. If you go one mile an hour over the speed limit, it will issue a very stern warning to tell you that you’re in the wrong. And it just gets on my nerves. It really does. Luckily, you can turn it off quite easily by swiping down on the screen and hitting the SLW button to get rid of the bongs. But it won’t deactivate it permanently. It always comes back whenever you switch the car off and then on again and go for another drive. Official range varies depending on which version you go for. The cheaper comfort model will take you up to 300 m, while the most powerful design all-wheel drive model will go 283 mi. In my hands, on a mixture of roads, I averaged about 2.8 m per kowatt hour, which is pretty low efficiency. If you own a Tesla, then you probably know about the feature called FSD or full self-drive or autopilot, where the car effectively drives itself. The Cine 7 has a pretty similar feature, although maybe not quite as advanced. It’s called ICC or intelligent cruise control. And I’ll give it a go down this stretch of road to see whether it actually works. I’m a bit skeptical cuz there’s only one lane marking here, but let’s see how it does. There we go. ICC activated. My hands are off the wheel a bit and I’m drifting towards parked cars. Yeah, it’s it’s not the cleverest system in the world. It does work reasonably well on the motorway, but around town, yeah, it’s probably not as good as the autopilot system you get in a Tesla. Go on. Go on. Go on. You got it. You got it. Yeah, it seems to be working, but no, that is definitely trying to crash me into the curb. Needs a bit of work. As for charging speeds, home charging is okay at either 7 or 11 kW. So overnight charging is about the same as most other cars, but the DC rapid charging capability is limited to 150 kW. Not a terrible number. It’s 20 to 80% in 34 minutes, but in a world where BYD has developed 1,000 kW charging speeds, this feels slightly lethargic. A Model Y, by the way, charges at 250 kW. As for the battery chemistry, it uses the cheaper lithium ion phosphate type, which is similar to what’s found in the entry-level Model Y rear wheel drive. There are pros and cons to this particular battery chemistry. On the downside, these batteries aren’t quite as energy dense. So, what that means is the batteries themselves need to be bigger and heavier in order to give you the same range as lithium ion battery packs, but on the upside, they’re cheaper. So, the electric car that they’re fitted to is also going to be cheaper. You also don’t need to worry about charging your car fully to 100% and leaving it parked up for long periods of time, as you might do with a lithium ion battery pack. With this, you can charge it up to 100% and there’s no risk of you damaging your battery. LFP batteries are also kinder to the environment in theory because they use iron rather than the inherently more toxic cobalt or manganesees, which means this is a more eco-friendly car in theory. Another big upside with the LFP battery type in the Cine 7 is that they’re safer than lithium ion batteries found in more expensive EVs. In theory, they’re less prone to thermal runaway, aka setting on fire, and they should last longer. In fact, BYD are so confident in the longevity of their cars that they give you an 8-year, 155,000mi warranty on the battery and the electric motor. That’s the same length of time as you get from Tesla, but 5,000 mi more. That’s pretty impressive. So, pretty damn decent. Surely, there’s got to be stuff that I don’t like. Well, here’s a few bits. The handling isn’t great. It’s very fast, but it doesn’t corner that well given the power. It’s also not the most efficient. Again, 2.8 m per kilowatt hour is kind of poor really. The Mercedes CLA will get around double that. And there are some quirks like it doesn’t have a grab handle on the driver’s side door, so if you aren’t very mobile, getting in and out might be tough. Plus, the screen, while it’s good, isn’t quite as high- res or as responsive as some. And finally, the Cine 7 has got a really silly name, honestly. Right. It’s clearly a very good car on balance. The question I have for myself is would I choose this over a Model Y? And I think the answer is I would. You know, I’m not saying it’s better. It doesn’t blow the Model Y out of the water. There’s no single feature that makes me go, “Wow, I’ve got to have this car.” But what it does is tick a lot of different boxes that add up to this being an exceptional family EV.
The BYD Sealion 7 is BYD’s latest electric SUV, but is it actually better than one of the kings of this segment, the Tesla Model Y? In this review Rory takes a close look at its design, interior quality, technology, space, driving experience and real-world efficiency to see whether it can genuinely challenge the UK’s best-selling EV. If you’re considering a Model Y, an alternative EV, or you’re simply curious about BYD’s rapid rise, this is the one to watch.
00:38 Basic specs and design
1:27 V2L charging
2:22 Acceleration
2:40 Practicality, interior and technology
7:23 Driving impressions
11:07 Self driving
12:02 Battery and charging
14:07 Negative things
14:40 Verdict
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