BYD Seal review

£45,695 is a chunk of money to pay for a car from a little known brand, and although BYD is claiming that residual values are strong, as yet, it doesn’t look like the lease companies agree. Most are quoting around £600 a month, when an Ioniq 6 is £100 cheaper, and the Model 3 starts as low as £350. Some buyers are also finding it hard to track down an insurance company that's actually prepared to quote for a Seal too. Hmm.

You get a lot of kit as standard. Unfortunately, as we have described, a lot of that kit doesn’t add much, if anything, to the ownership experience. Some of it we actively wish wasn’t included at all.

The RWD car comes solely in Design trim, the AWD in Excellence. But those names feel arbitrary as, beyond its additional motor, the latter’s only extras are its ‘semi-active’ suspension and head-up display. Both are things you can live without.

Every car gets 19in alloys, the huge pano roof, a premium Dynaudio stereo (it’s decent, but not worth bragging about) and – yay! – all those active safety systems.

It has a strong warranty in its favour: six years or 93,750 miles for the whole car, eight years/125,000 miles for the battery. Soon we'll see the launch of a 61kWh entry-level car that’ll hopefully sneak under the £40k barrier.