BYD Sealion 7 Review 2025

BYD's assault on the European market shows no signs of slowing down, with the latest model to emerge from the Chinese EV giant being the Sealion 7. Yes, it's really called that, and yes, you can spend over £60,000 on one. It's impressive in a lot of ways but isn't quite up to snuff in others. Find out everything you need to know in our full BYD Sealion 7 review.

There are quite a few factors making it abundantly clear that BYD has lofty ambitions for both the UK and the rest of Europe. For one thing, the vast amount of money it must be spending when launching its vehicles.

We expect UK launches to be small, boutique affairs, but for the Sealion 7, BYD hired a massive conference hall at a football stadium, bringing along over 300 people including dozens of journalists and scores of dealer staff. There were also robots and a candyfloss machine, for some reason. 

Next up is how much is being charged for the cars. A lot of Chinese upstarts we've seen arriving in the UK, such as Skywell and Leapmotor, have attempted to woo buyers with temptingly low prices, while the revived MG brand undercuts most of its rivals significantly. Not so BYD. 

The Sealion 7 starts at £47,000 and goes up to £60,000 if you opt for the Excellence model and plop on an optional colour. That's similar to a lot of rivals from brands that are much better known and, in some cases, actually a bit pricier. You can get both the Hyundai Ioniq 5 or the Skoda Enyaq for a lot less.

Can that figure possibly be justified? Well, BYD isn't a nobody of the car world. It's a massive company which is now China's biggest-selling car brand. The BYDs we've reviewed so far have been mostly impressive. 

And indeed, the Sealion 7 is great in a lot of ways. But it's also less brilliant in others, such as the way it rides and handles, as well as some technology irks which feel like they still need a final polish. 

Given the BYD Sealion 7's tendency to lean significantly in the corners, you might think it's a softly set-up car that's sumptuously comfortable when driving in a straight line on motorways or dual carriageways, or pottering around town. Sadly, you'd be wrong. 

Summing-up the Sealion 7's ride in one word, it's 'jiggly'. The car just never seems to settle but at the very least, the suspension doesn't feel harsh as it works through its travel. 

The thing is, most of the Sealion 7's immediate rivals drive better, both during sedate, day-to-day driving and when you're going around corners or taking roundabouts a little too enthusiastically. 

Good refinement offsets the choppy ride, at least, although there was some unwelcome wind noise coming from around the driver's side window, making it sound as though it was ever-so-slightly open. Given that the other side was fine, we're wondering if it was a one-off fault, but can't confirm until we've driven other examples.

The entry-level BYD Sealion 7 Comfort uses a single motor outputting 313PS, making for a 0-62mph time of 6.7 seconds. The Design adds an additional motor, upping the output to an impressive 530PS, with the added benefit of all-wheel drive.

The range-topping Excellence has the same twin-motor arrangement as the Design, but with a bigger battery pack for a longer driving range. Despite it having more weight to cart around, the 0-62mph time for the two all-wheel drive cars is the same at 4.5 seconds. There's even a badge on the tailgate referring to this.

People who don't understand such things will be confused and anyone who does will likely think it's a bit naff. And they'd be right. Given the additional presence of the Sealion 7 badge, it's far from the silliest thing written on the car. Just be glad BYD has stopped putting 'Build Your Dreams' lettering across the back of its vehicles. 

We've only tried the 530PS version so far — while it definitely is fast (as confirmed by the needless 0-62mph timer clocking us at 4.4 seconds to 62mph, beating the claimed figure), it doesn't really feel that brisk. But then again, these kinds of numbers are actually quite sedate in the world of EVs, when a Tesla Model Y Performance can hit 62mph from standstill around a second faster.

The BYD Sealion 7 hasn't yet been crash-tested by Euro NCAP but given that the closely related BYD Seal achieved the full five-star rating, we see no reason why the result would be any different here. 

In terms of safety technology, plenty is fitted at no extra cost including front and rear cross-traffic alert, blind-spot detection, speed limit recognition and lane-keeping assistance. 

Some of the technology left us somewhat unimpressed. At one point during the drive the lane assistance aggressively kicked in for no apparent reason and attempted to steer the car towards the edge of the road, while the driver attention monitor is extremely sensitive. Even a brief look at the climate controls on the screen is enough to set it off, but sometimes it went off when we were most definitely looking straight ahead.

Exactly how much you can tow in a BYD Sealion 7 depends on the version you're considering. In the single-motor Comfort version the limit is 750kg regardless of whether the load is braked or unbraked, but in either of the dual-motor all-wheel drive Sealion 7s, the braked limit increases to 1500kg.

Wherever you're sat in the BYD Sealion 7, it feels roomy, helped by it being 160mm higher than the closely related Seal saloon. The flat floor in the rear will makes the lives of passengers sat back there, particularly in the middle, that little bit more pleasant.

The boot space of 520 litres is decent if a little way off being the roomiest for a car of this type. The Volkswagen ID.5 offers 549 litres, although the Sealion 7 edges it once the rear seats are dropped, increasing the total figure to 1789 litres. The Volkswagen manages 1561 litres when configured in the same way. 

There are some nicely practical features in the front part of the cabin. The first of these is a massive wireless charging pad with enough room for two smartphones side-by-side, with a cooling vent for the left one to prevent overheating. And for the right... Well, you just need to hope that one doesn't get too toasty.

Meanwhile, there's a pair of cupholders which move up and down at the bottom and can independently lock at different positions. So, whether your coffee order involves something smaller or bladder-bustingly massive, it won't be a problem. 

We're used to getting in cars from lesser-known — in the UK, at least — brands and immediately picking apart the quality, but you can't do that in the BYD Sealion 7. The cabin appears to be solidly built from a lovely blend of materials, with pretty much everything being of the soft-touch, premium-feeling variety.

Get out of one of these cars and into something like a Volkswagen ID.4 or ID.5, and you might well feel like you'd rather be in the BYD. It helps that the cabin design itself is very smart. 

The BYD Sealion 7's touchscreen infotainment system is a sizeable thing at 15.6 inches. While not an exclusive feature to this BYD, it has quite a party piece, being able to rotate 90 degrees between landscape and portrait states. You can do this either by pressing a button on the screen or using a voice command. 

Beyond impressing passengers the first time you demonstrate it, we're not sure what the point is. The screen works best in landscape mode anyway, so the main achievement here seems to be introducing needless extra complexity and a potential point of failure somewhere down the line. 

The screen itself has crisp graphics and responds quickly to touch, but it's annoying that you have to use it for all the climate functions, particularly as the controls for these aren't that big, rendering them tricky to use on the move. You can increase or decrease the temperature by dragging three fingers up or down the screen, but this didn't seem to quite operate as claimed so we struggled to select from the full range of available temperatures. 

Some of the translations on the driver's digital instrument cluster are weird with 'in the Sport mode, long press Confirm to entry' prompt when using the 0-62mph timer — another gimmick — being a particular favourite. Once you've tried it, for the avoidance of doubt, the car proudly and helpfully says 'accelerated successfully'. Thanks.

There's in-built navigation that looks good and mostly worked, although it did have a few odd moments, including the distance of an approaching junction getting stuck on 1.2 miles until we'd pretty much arrived at the turn-off. There was also an odd flickering of the map rendering. 

It's easy enough to ditch this in favour of something like Waze or Google Maps, with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay phone connectivity included as standard. 

£46,990 gets you into a BYD Sealion 7 Comfort, while for a Design version it's £51,990. Topping the range, the Sealion 7 Excellence weighs in at £58,990.

Those numbers might sound high considering the Volkswagen ID.5 starts at £42,000, but that'll only get you a 52kWh battery pack. The flagship ID.5 GTX is £56,057, which undercuts the Sealion 7 Excellence significantly, but it's not as fast, has a smaller battery and has all sorts of options that inflate the price further when bringing equipment up to BYD levels.

On the Sealion 7 configurator, the only way to bump the price up is by selecting a colour other than the standard Atlantis Grey, which will increase the total by about £1,000. Otherwise, everything you might want is fitted already, with a high standard of spec across all models. 

From 1 April 2025, EVs are going to get more expensive to run and the BYD Sealion 7 is no exception. They'll no longer be exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), which means having to cough up an expected £195 annually from year two of ownership.

Much worse is the fact electric cars no longer escape the government's expensive car supplement (also referred to as a premium car tax), the £40,000 threshold for which all versions of the Sealion 7 are comfortably beyond. That means an extra £425 annual charge from years two to five of ownership. 

The Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) company car tax for EVs is going up as well, but this isn't such a big deal. The new figure is 3%, up from 2%, which will still make for super-low monthly payments on a Sealion 7. 

Generally, we expect electric cars to be more reliable than combustion-engined vehicles because there are fewer moving parts, thus less to go wrong. In any case, should something need rectifying, there's an excellent warranty to fall back on, lasting six years or 93,210 miles, whichever comes first. That's a year shy of what Kia offers on its cars, but far better than the three-year/60,000-mile offered on Volkswagen Group models. 

As is common with EVs, there's a separate, longer warranty on the battery which in this case lasts for 125,000 miles or eight years. It kicks in if the capacity drops below 65%. 

BYD Sealion 7: Range and charging

You'll ideally be charging the Sealion 7 at home on a tariff with lower kWh charges at certain times of day to minimise your running costs. All being well, you shouldn't have to visit public chargers on all but the longest of journeys, thanks to the healthy range figures from each version. 

Because it has the twin-motor arrangement with the smaller battery, the Design fares the worse in this regard, but its 283-mile official figure isn't to be sniffed at. We reckon it should be able to do comfortably over 200 miles on a charge unless it's very cold or you keep using the 0-62mph timer. 

The Comfort meanwhile manages 300 miles according to the official WLTP Combined cycle statistic, while for the Excellence, it's 311 miles. 

The BYD Sealion 7 is available in three levels of specification — Comfort, Design and Excellence.

Despite being the entry grade, the BYD Sealion 7 Comfort is hardly lacking when it comes to equipment. There's the huge rotating screen we talked about earlier, 19-inch alloy wheels, a 12-speaker Dynaudio sound system, a double wireless charging pad, dual-zone climate control, a heat pump, vehicle-to-load capability (this allows you to run domestic appliances off the car's battery), heated and cooled front seats, plus heated rear seats. 

If you choose the BYD Sealion 7 Design you'll find the it's broadly the same in terms of equipment, with the main draw there being the additional motor for all-wheel drive, although you do get a 20-inch alloy wheel upgrade.

Adding lustre to the range-topping BYD Sealion 7 Excellence are features including Nappa leather upholstery instead of the faux leather on less-costly models, a head-up display and a more powerful 230kW on-board charger for increased rapid charging capacity.