In its mission to overcome the might of the established brands in Europe, Chinese battery giant BYD is bolstering its presence with arguably its most important EV to date: the Seal.
While the Atto 3 is designed to take on the likes of the Volkswagen ID 3, this saloon is ambitiously intended to rival the Tesla Model 3, Hyundai Ioniq 6 and BMW i4.
BYD is a huge company, with some 600,000 people across six continents working on not only cars but also batteries, solar panels, trains and buses. And it makes almost everything in-house, including its cobalt-free, lithium-iron-phosphate Blade battery.
The Seal is by far the best-looking of the Euro-focused BYDs so far, to these eyes at least. It's more into the maritime theme than the Dolphin hatchback, with a few fin and gill details, which are subtle enough.
The Seal is based on the same e-Platform 3.0 as the Atto 3 and Dolphin, but it gets a bigger (82.5kWh) battery and the single-motor version is rear-wheel drive, rather than front-wheel drive.
That has 308bhp and should get 354 miles on a single charge, while the dual-motor, four-wheel-drive version packs a very serious 523bhp. Yet its official range drops only 31 miles to a still-competitive 323. Both models can charge at 150kW.
This story is from the September 06, 2023 edition of Autocar UK.
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This story is from the September 06, 2023 edition of Autocar UK.
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