REPORT 2 (25th SEPT 2025)
After a few weeks with the Sealion 7 there are a lot of things that have reinforced my initial favourable impressions of it. And one thing that has made me question it a bit...
As a daily driver it is a fantastically effortless thing to live with. It has more than enough performance to punch it off the line at lights and more than enough range that range anxiety is nonexistent.
I have access to charging at the office, but don’t go in every day, so it doesn’t get charged on a daily basis, but that and opportunistic top ups at the local supermarket’s ChargeNet DC charger are more than enough to keep me between 50 and 90 percent.
That’s not a surprise, however, as I fully expected that. What I didn’t expect was the utterly dismal sound quality of the stereo.
I was seriously disappointed when I hooked up my phone to the Sealion via wireless Android Auto and experienced the hollow and powerless sound that issued from its many speakers.
I had largely resigned myself to several months of unsatisfying audio that sounded like it was coming from inside a cardboard box, wondering why BYD had cheaped out on the audio in the Sealion 7, when the rest of their cars had brilliant stereos.
Well, that was until Android Auto had one of its characteristic bursts of weirdness and utterly refused to connect one day, so I gave up and fired up Bluetooth audio instead. And the sound quality difference was quite frankly startling.
Undeniably better, with far better separation and noticeably more volume, the audio quality on Bluetooth was so staggeringly better I immediately deleted the Android Auto connection and made do with the Sealion’s integrated navigation (and there are issues there, but that is for a later report…).
After a bit of research it turns out that this isn’t, in fact, a fault with BYD’s integration as such - it is largely an Android Auto problem. Quite a considerable one, if the angry rants on the likes of Reddit are to be believed.
It seems to be a combination of YouTube Music (which I cling to out of love for the original Google Play Music, hoping that one day they make it as good...), combined with both my Samsung phone and Android Auto processing the audio before sending it to the car (which then does its own processing on top of that) that is royally screwing up the sound quality. Yes, I believe that is the technical term.
So is it Samsung, Google or BYD to blame? Well, while it is noticeably worse in the BYD (and the Shark 6 ute I had recently too), now that I have noticed it, it is obvious in a lot of other cars too, and probably explains my dissatisfaction with a number of past test cars audio quality as.
All I can really tell you is that I won’t be using Android Auto for the near future, at least until Google messes with it yet again and (hopefully) accidentally fixes it. I don't expect they will fix it on purpose...
Audio irritations aside (and now solved), the Sealion has so far proven to be an utterly fantastic daily driver and one I am genuinely enjoying living with. It is quick, comfortable and well sorted, and the phone app is generally excellent.
The ease of simply walking up to the car and it being ready for you to hop in and drive away without having to do anything more than having the key in your pocket (or tapping your phone on the driver's side door mirror) is something you only truly appreciate after you have to go back to a car that doesn't do that.
Basically, the Sealion 7 makes things easier for you in many small ways that add up to a supremely satisfying experience. Except, it seems, when it comes to Android Auto, but then Google has to carry a lot of the blame for that one.
REPORT 1 (5th SEPT 2025)
BYD’s remarkable rise from being an obscure Chinese oddity in the New Zealand new car sector to a serious mainstream force has been as brutally swift as the acceleration from some of its cars, with the brands local distributor now branching out into BYD’s high-end luxury sub-brands in the future with the imminent arrival of Denza on our shores.
But for now we just have BYD-branded cars, and even some of those are pushing higher into the sphere occupied by luxury brands, just without the price tag.
There is no better example of that than the Sealion 7 - a fully-electric coupe-style version of the Sealion SUV that boasts remarkable quality and impressive levels of standard equipment for an extremely reasonable price.
While the hot Performance version costs $79,990 it is the version you see here that, I reckon, ticks all the boxes and lands at $67,990.
The Premium comes standard with luxury features like a panoramic sunroof, electrically-adjustable genuine leather seats, a huge 15.6-inch rotating infotainment screen, LED lights all round, a heads up display, an electric tailgate, double glazed windows, a heat pump with dual zone climate control, and keyless entry and start (as well as an NFC card and a digital key), while a comprehensive suite of driver assists is also included.
In fact, the only real difference between the Premium and it sore expensive Performance sibling is the fact that the Performance gets an extra electric motor on the front axle and a bump in power to a hefty 390kW/690Nm over the Premium's more than adequate 230kW/380Nm.
Both share the same 82.5kWh battery with the Premium having a claimed range of up to 482km under the WLTP cycle.
Yes, the Premium is slower than the Performance (6.7 seconds to 100km/h versus 4.5), but it sure isn’t slow, and the superior ride quality (the Premium runs on slightly smaller 19-inch wheels and has 150kg less over its front wheels) is far more important to most people than a few seconds off 0 to 100 time anyway.
So we have the Sealion 7 Premium for an extended test, and I will be living with it on as a daily driver for as much of that time as possible.
I have previously had two long-term test EVs in another life (well, job), one of which (a first-gen MG ZS EV) I absolutely loved, and one of which (a Mercedes-Benz EQA that cost considerably more) that I… didn’t.
That was back at the dawn of mainstream EVs entering the New Zealand market, so it will be particularly interesting to see how the BYD’s considerably larger range changes how I live with it.
What is the BYD Sealion 7?
It's complicated, but at the same time, not. You see, while the Sealion 7 is ostensibly a coupe-style version of the Sealion 6 SUV, it also really isn't.
While the two share their names, styling and are pretty much the same size, the Sealion 7 is actually swoopy coupe-style SUV version of the Seal sedan, while the vehicle we know here as the Sealion 6 is actually the Song Plus in China, and was initially launched as an ICE vehicle in 2020. Even more confusingly it is also sold as the Seal U in Europe.
But all of that confusing global nomenclature really means nothing here, and both Sealions line up nicely alongside each other. But there is still one key difference - the Sealion 7 is all-electric, while the Sealion 6 is a plug-in hybrid, reflecting the differing origins of their underpinnings.
Why are we running it?
As a direct competitor to the most popular new EV in New Zealand (that is, the Tesla Model Y), the Sealion 7 has potential for mainstream success in the competitive medium SUV segment, given its aggressive pricing and near-luxury class level of quality.
It is, of course, an EV, a segment that is currently in a sales slump, so that will temper things a bit when it comes to that mainstream success, but the fact remains that the Sealion 7 offers a hell of a lot for what is essentially Honda CR-V money.
So will the Sealion prove itself to be the mythical "Tesla-killer" or is it an all-electric, luxurious alternative to the Honda, Toyota RAV4, Hyundai Tucson and the like? It can, of course, be both. So let's find out...