BYD SEAL

Is the latest electric saloon out of China a circus act or like a kiss from a rose?

- SAM PHILLIPS 

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.