BYD Sealion 7: A force to be reckoned with

0 0 October 13, 2025 Edit this post

by Alistair Kennedy

What is it?

Back in 2022, BYD was one of the first Chinese vehicles to enter the Australian EV market.

It started as a one-car brand imported by the private company EV Direct with the Atto 3 compact SUV.

Although popular with early EV adopters it didn’t make much of an impact on overall sales.

Atto 3 was followed in 2023 by the Dolphin EV hatch and Seal EV sedan.

The first BYD plug-in hybrid, the Sealion 6, arrived in 2024. A mid-sized SUV, it attracted strong sales and quickly became the top-selling PHEV that year.

The rise and rise of BYD really began in 2025 when the company assumed direct control of its operations in Australia.

At the same time two new models arrived, the Sealion 7 EV family-sized SUV and the Shark 6 -- a four-door PHEV ute.

Such as been the success of the Sealion and Shark that BYD has jumped into the top 10 for vehicle sales sitting in eighth place between fellow Chinese brands GWM and MG.

Even more impressive is that Shark is now running third in the Light Commercial segment behind Ranger and D-Max and well ahead of the much- vaunted Kia Tasman.

What’s it cost?

There are two Sealion 7 variants, Premium priced at $54,990 and Performance, at $63,990.

On-road costs need to be added.

There are four colour options. Aurora White is standard, Atlantis Grey, Cosmos Shark Grey and Black are all cost options.

At just over 4.8 metres long which, using the 4.6-metre RAV4 as a yardstick, makes BYD Sealion one of the largest vehicles in the mid-sized SUV category.

Sealion 7 shares much of its overall design with its Seal sedan sibling including the flowing coupe-like lines that are becoming prevalent in the latest SUVs.

The front has twin creases down the bonnet merging with wide triangular headlights coupled with narrow daytime running lights.

Both are LEDs as is the full-width red rear light assembly that incorporates the brake lights and turn indicators.

Fortunately, the ‘Build Your Dreams’ lettering that was spread across the rear of the Atto 3 is no longer deemed necessary to explain the BYD name.

Both Sealion 7 variants get a full-length fixed panoramic glass roof with a powered shade. There are two spoilers in the rear.

Premium rolls on 19-inch alloy wheels and the Performance on 20-inch with red brake calipers.

Standard in both variants are a 15.6-inch touchscreen that can be rotated between landscape and portrait formats, together with a 10.25-inch LCD driver’s instrument panel, embedded satellite navigation with free map updates for three years, and voice controls.

The choice of portrait or landscape modes caters for personal preference although, as most people do, you want to use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, then it only operates in landscape.

There are four USB ports, two (USB-C and USB-A) in the front and the same in the rear.

There is embedded satellite navigation which does show the location of nearby EV charging locations.

At this stage however it doesn’t include a trip planning facility.

Over-the-air (OTA) updates are standard so hopefully these will be included in future software upgrades.

Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) technology is standard, allowing the car to power external appliances.

Audio is through a 12-speaker Dynaudio premium audio system.

All BYD vehicles come with the maximum five-star ANCAP rating, with Sealion 7 the most most recently tested – in February, 2025.

Standard features include dual frontal, side chest-protecting and side head- protecting airbags.

There is also a centre airbag which provides added protection to front seat occupants in side impact crashes.

There’s also a comprehensive autonomous emergency braking system that includes other vehicles and vulnerable road users, a range of lane support systems, adaptive cruise control, advanced speed control alerts with speed sign recognition, rear cross traffic alert, blind spot detection, forward and rear collision warning, driver attention warning and hill hold.

Parking is assisted by 2-zone front and 4-zone rear parking sensors together with a 360-degree high-resolution camera with surround-view and enhanced parking.

Family buyers will be attracted by the Sealion 7’s 93 per cent score in the Child Occupant Protection component of the ANCAP tests.

Features include ISOFix child seat anchor points in the outer rear seats, Electronic Child Lock which prevent children from opening the rear doors from the inside and Child Presence Detection which sounds an alert when children or pets are left in the car.

What’s it go like?

The 4830mm of length and 2930mm wheelbase of the Sealion 7 contributes to class-leading interior space, especially in the rear.

Entry is through flush door handles that emerge when the vehicle is unlocked either through the key fob or by pressing a button on the door or by tapping the supplied NFC card against driver’s side mirror.

Once inside the effect is immediate with a luxury look and feel that is right up there with the best premium SUVs from Europe and Japan.

The seats are premium Nappa leather with a choice of trims.

Both front seats are ventilated and heated.

The Performance variant adds a heated steering wheel and heated rear seats.

The seats are large, supportive and extremely comfortable.

There are high quality soft touch materials all round with configurable ambient lighting on the doors.

The powered driver’s seat provides eight position options, four-way lumbar settings, adjustable leg rest and memory.

The front passenger gets six-way power adjustment.

The dashboard and centre console designs are well spaced and easy to reach.

A major plus there are quite a few physical knobs, buttons and rollers that reduce the need to access them through the touchscreen as is the case with so many Chinese vehicles.

There’s plenty of sensible store space including a deep bin at the rear of the centre console and hidden tray beneath.

Boot capacity with the rear seatbacks in place is 500 litres with an extra 58 litres under the bonnet (aka the froot), ideal for storing the charging cables.

Sealion 7 offers two distinct powertrain options.

Premium has a single rear- mounted electric that produces 230kW of power and 380Nm of torque.

Performance adds a second motor for the front axle to provide all-wheel drive with power and torque increasing to 390kW and 690Nm.

Both configurations use an 82.5kWh Blade lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery.

Using an 11kW AC charger rate with three-phase power it will take around nine hours to charge from zero to 100 per cent.

DC charging at 150kW from 10-80 per cent will take about 30 minutes.

As is now our standard procedure when driving the latest hi-tech vehicles, we don’t take off immediately but rather set up our preferred drive settings on the touchscreen.

Most of the excellent range of safety features remain switched on, but we prefer to turn off the over-sensitive speed limit warnings, multiple lane correction settings and the camera triggered driver attention alerts.

A large windscreen, side windows and large wing mirrors provide excellent visibility to the front and sides.

Rear vision is poor with a wide but narrow rear window although the range of camera angles does overcome this problem when parking.

There are four drive modes: Normal, Eco, Sport and Snow.

We used Eco around the suburbs then switched to Normal once we hit the motorway.

However, it’s not perfect. While it drives beautifully in a straight line, it’s soft ride leads to a fair bit of body roll on the way through corners.

The charging port is at the driver’s side rear.

We were able to re-charge at a commercial station from 40 to 95 per cent in around 40 minutes at a cost of $37 increasing the range from 180km to 450km.

When we picked up the Sealion 7, with the battery fully charged, a range of 524 km was displayed -- a fair bit higher than the published WLTP range of 482km.

Our 100km trips to and from southern Sydney were almost entirely on motorways which saw our range drop by around 160km each time.

It's something to be aware of when planning a long-distance trip.

As is rapidly becoming the norm nowadays, access to the majority of features, especially in Chinese vehicles, is through the touchscreen.

While this is the case in the Sealion 7 it’s far more intuitive and adaptable than other EVs that we’ve tested.

Sealion 7 has configurable brake regenerative modes, but not one-pedal driving.

What we like?

Luxury look and feel
Class-leading interior space
Build Your Dreams lettering has been dropped
Touchscreen rotates between landscape and portrait
Very high child protection rating

What we don’t like?

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto operate only in landscape
Only three years of navigation updates
Satnav doesn’t include a trip planning facility
Rear vision poor
No one-pedal driving

The bottom line?

BYD's Sealion 7 is one of the most impressive vehicles we’ve driven.

Its interior space, comfort and safety features make it ideal for typical urban tasks such as commuting, shopping and school runs.

It’s well-priced, sitting about $10K below the Tesla Model Y and well below all other premium mid-sized SUV.

There are a number of cheaper mid-sized Chinese electric SUVs but none can match the all-round quality of the Sealion.

Sharp acceleration, smoothness and range mean that it’s equally at home in urban road, motorway conditions supporting claims to becoming the first Chinese grand tourer.