BYD SEALION 7

Will the large SUV buck the trend and demonstrate that Chinese cars come with a soul?

- Jordan Katsianis

IF 2025 proved one thing, it's that Chinese car brands are deadly serious about becoming the biggest player in global sales. But despite having driven the vast majority of the new offerings on sale in the UK, no Chinese-branded model has really taken my fancy so far.

This isn't about brand snobbery or politics, but the fact that Chinese cars often feel more like a product than a car, so often missing the soul that turns a car from a tool into something worth cherishing. So to challenge this notion, I've got my hands on China's biggest manufacturer's largest EV for the next few months to try to convince me otherwise.

This is the BYD Sealion 7, a chunky electric SUV with a sloping roofline and a highperformance powertrain. It can be a little hard to grasp just how big it is from the pictures, but the 7 is around 250mm longer than a Volkswagen ID.5 or Skoda Enyaq Coupé -two cars that, despite this discrepancy, act as key rivals across most other metrics.

BYD says the Sealion 7 is all about breaking with clichéd notions of 'cheap', and it certainly does that when you read the price.