Earlier this year, the team at DriveLife reviewed the top-of-the-range BYD Seal Performance, a dual-motor EV with some genuinely impressive performance credentials. The Seal Premium is more focused on comfort than sports performance and has only a single motor at the rear, but in keeping with the Performance model, it comes with the same battery capacity and many of the same luxury features. 

I had been impressed by the Seal Performance, so was keen to see how their Premium spec variant stacked up – what do you miss out on when you save $11,000 on the purchase price? 

We spent a week living with the car, driving it some 400 km to find out.

What We Like and Dislike About The 2024 BYD Seal Premium

What we likeWhat we don’t like
Luxury
Design
Fit and finish
Equipment levels
Ventilation system
Performance
Comfort
Interior space
Easy to live with 
Boot opening on the small side
Lane-keep can be forceful

What’s In The 2024 BYD Seal Range?

The Seal is a conventional 4-door sedan format, offered in increasing levels of performance and specification across three models. 

  • Dynamic $62,990
  • Premium $72,990 (tested)
  • Performance $83,990

The Dynamic model has a 61kWh battery feeding a single 150kW/310Nm electric motor driving the rear wheels. It is rated with a WLTP range of 460km and can get to 100km/h in 7.5 seconds. 

The Premium model we are testing here has a larger 82.5kWh battery powering a single 230kW/360Nm motor driving the rear wheels. It has a decent WLTP rating of 570km and an acceleration time of 0-100km/h in 5.9s.

The top of the range is the Performance. It has the same battery pack and rear motor set as the Premium model, but has all-wheel drive with the addition of a 160kW/310Nm front motor. Understandably, it has a slightly reduced WLTP rating of 520km but with an increased acceleration time of 3.8s (as it says on the badge) for 0-100km/h.

2024 BYD Seal Colour Range

Our test car was “Aurora white” so there were no additional costs over the base price. Other colours in the range have the following extra costs. 

  • Aurora white – no charge (colour of our test car)
  • Arctic Blue – $1,595
  • Atlantis Grey – $1,595
  • Cosmos Black – $1,595
  • Shark Grey – $3,000 (Note this colour is only available on the Performance model)

For a full list of specs and options available for the BYD Seal Premium, head on over to BYD New Zealand’s website.

How Does The 2024 BYD Seal Premium Compare To Its Competition?

There are a number of carmakers offering higher specification EVs with decent real-world range. There are, however, not too many others that offer the “old-school” sedan, rather more choosing to offer the more popular SUV vehicle format.

That said, even the sedans often include folding rear seats to provide flexibility for load carrying. 

Make/ ModelBattery
Capacity
kW-hr
Power/
Torque
kW/Nm
0-100km/h
seconds
Range
(WLTP),
km
Boot
Space,
litres
Price
BMW i4 eDrive35 (RWD)70.2210/4006.0430470$98,900
Tesla Model 3 Performance AWD85380/7413.1528594,88 (frunk)$84,900
BYD Seal Performance AWD83390/6703.8520400,53 (frunk)$83,990
Hyundai Ioniq 6 (RWD)53111/3508.8429401,45 (frunk)
$79,990
Tesla Model 3 Long Range (AWD)82324/4.4629594,88 (frunk)$73,900
BYD Seal Premium (RWD)82.6230/3605.9570400, 50 (frunk)$72,990
Tesla Model 3 (RWD)62.3202/4206.1513594,88 (frunk)$63,900

In the above table, AWD is all-wheel drive, RWD is rear-wheel drive.

Please note that DriveLife does its best to ensure the information above is correct at the time of publication, however, prices, specifications and models can change over time. Please bear that in mind when comparing models in the comparison table.

First Impressions Of The 2024 BYD Seal Premium

The BYD Seal is an impressively contemporary take on a classic sporty sedan. Its design is sharp and well-detailed without being overdone, and perhaps this is all the more impressive when you consider BYD doesn’t have a long-established heritage of car design from which to evolve their new models. While its inspiration may have come from a certain longer-established USA EV, for me, the Seal is a thoroughly considered and coherent design all of its own. 

The exterior design has sleek forms, accentuated by the restrained use of detailing elements. The headlights are reminiscent of the stylised Kiwi form of those on a McLaren, below each is a simple but effective angled detail panel within the bumper, the shape accentuated with multiple fine parallel lines of LED light. On the rear of each front guard is a small trim with an echoed angle that mimics the lighting detail and is labelled with “BYD Design”, again not overdone. Across the back of the car is an elegant full-width light bar, finely detailed with careful thought to both the overall form and the small details within the light itself.   

What’s The Interior Like In The 2024 BYD Seal Premium?

On unlocking the car, the previously flush door handles power open. Inside, you are greeted with an equally impressive interior. Continuing the elegant simplicity theme of the exterior, the interior wows with good design and the application of well-chosen materials, textures and forms. 

As I settled into the quilted and perforated leather seat, and before even starting the car, I already had a clear mental picture forming, that I was going to enjoy this car. And although I’ll specifically cover driving below, I confirm here that the reality lives up to those initial impressions. 

The format of a sporty sedan typically has a lower roofline and a correspondingly lower seating position. In the Seal, this does not present any problem, the car is easy to get into and out of.

As with the BYD Performance model, the interior of the Seal Premium has a touch of class, elevating it to a special place. Up front, the bucket seats are generously sized, supportive and comfortable. Both seats have power adjustment, making it easy to fine-tune the seating position. The driver’s seat is 8-way power adjustable plus 4-way lumbar adjustment, while the passenger is 6-way power-adjustable. Both front seats are ventilated and heated, and the steering wheel is also heated. There are programmable memory settings for recording the driver’s preferences for the seat and exterior mirror positions for up to two drivers. 

Once inside, the car is spacious, helped by its simplified “minimalist” approach to the design. The front of the car is dominated by a large (15.6”) central infotainment screen and a separate (10.25”) instrument screen behind the steering wheel for the driver. The leather-wrapped steering wheel has the common function button sets for audio and phone on the right side, and cruise on the left. Also on the left spoke of the wheel is a button to switch the main screen format from landscape to portrait – a bit of a party trick, but cool, and it can have its uses. 

The main infotainment screen is straightforward to navigate, and just as well since it is necessary to control everything from the driver heads-up display to the heating and ventilation system. The latter includes touch controls on a graphic screen not just for all the main ventilation controls but also to adjust the direction of the front air vents. It also has PM 2.5 filtration of the air and a negative ion air purifier as standard. 

The system comes with wireless Android Auto and wired Apple CarPlay, and it also comes with its own native navigation, should that be your preference. There is also a voice assistant to save having to use screen entry while driving – good for navigation and air conditioning controls. In addition, there are both USB-C and A-sockets, one set of each is located in the front and in the rear. 

The dash and door cards are beautifully detailed and finished in a mix of soft-touch materials from white and blue stitched leather-like capping and suede, with elements like the air vents highlighted with chrome. Restrained applications of LED strips accentuate the forms on the door cards, dash and centre console.  

The two-level centre console has a lower tray for larger items and includes a 12-volt power outlet, while the upper console level has dual non-slip Qi charging pads (why don’t all cars have two? I don’t know any passengers that don’t also have a phone). Throughout my time in the car, my phone never slipped from the Qi pads. Behind these are an elegant set of buttons surrounding a simple toggle switch drive gear selector. The buttons provide quick keys to basic functions for drive mode controls, hazard lights, the ventilation system and a second scroll wheel for audio volume. 

A couple of drinks holders are located in front of the central armrest over another storage box. Of note, one of the cupholders has an adjustable depth to accommodate taller drink bottles/cups – something I haven’t seen all that much, but it seems to be a useful idea. The car is equipped with NFC that allows you to unlock the car by holding an NFC Card near to the designated areas – the exterior mirrors to unlock and the top of the centre armrest to start the car. 

The rear seats are covered in the same quilted leather as the front and with a completely flat floor, access is easy. As is common in many EV cars, there is very little space for toes under the front seats. However, regardless of the position of the front seats, there is plenty of legroom space for adults in the back seat. To be fair, it’s a good-sized four-seater. While the back seat has places and seat belts for three, the middle seat squab is just that little bit higher, so anyone approaching 6 feet will brush their head on the roof. Ventilation outlets for the rear passengers are located in the back of the centre console. 

Even though a great deal of the interior (seats, door cards, roof framing) is trimmed in black tones, it is never oppressive. The full-length glass roof helps with that feeling of space, giving those seated in the rear a similar experience of openness, space and light as those in the front. Conveniently, the car is supplied with a sunshade insert that can be installed should the sun be too much.

In the rear, the boot is accessed through a conventional boot lid that hinges at the base of the rear window. While it offers generous space, the opening size could be limiting for larger/taller items. A portion of the floor lifts to access not only the tyre repair kit but also extra space suitable for power cables and other items. Under the front bonnet, a “frunk” offers another very decent 50 litres of additional storage space. The backs of the rear seats are collapsible to extend the boot capacity for longer items.

What’s The 2024 BYD Seal Premium Like To Drive?

On first entering the car, it is easy to adjust the seating and controls to suit. The driving position and visibility all around are good. And for me, despite being more used to driving SUVs, I did not feel low or vulnerable mixing it in commuting traffic.

The Seal Premium is one motor down on the Seal Performance model. However, in general commuting and even on a weekend away, the difference was really only noticeable on those occasions when you asked for maximum performance, like on a short uphill overtaking lane. There is a difference, and that is apparent in the numbers. The Premium in Sport mode is decently quick in its own right, with a claimed 5.9 seconds to 100km/h it is no slouch unless you compare it to the Performance which achieves the same in only 3.8 seconds. 

Where the difference was most noticeable and let’s be honest, I am being really picky here, was in the suspension settings. When maxing the acceleration, such as when making the above-mentioned overtake, a road imperfection during cornering can upset the car’s balance in a slightly disconcerting way, not anything dangerous, but enough to highlight the difference between the Performance and the Premium. The Premium is clearly set for comfort first but has also been supplied with more than adequate performance. 

The car drives well, with good road holding, sits flat on corners and is competent at damping out all but the worst of the notoriously poor roads around us. Acceleration is great, and like most EVs, hill-work is an absolutely effortless joy. The steering is well-weighted, but there is a slight disconnect in so much that you do not get precise feedback (feel) from the front wheels about grip and direction. It’s no dealbreaker, but something that would be a worthy improvement. In the settings within the infotainment system, you can change the response settings for steering and brakes. Playing around with these, my preferences were Sport for the steering, however, for the brakes, I chose Comfort. Selecting Sport for the brakes made their response difficult to modulate when parking; either on or off wasn’t conducive to making fine maneuvers.

Being an EV owner myself, I like the ‘one-pedal driving’ feature. The Seal does have some regenerative braking but even on its highest setting, this didn’t slow the car as much as I’d have liked, certainly not sufficient to bring the car to a halt. Still, the levels of regen provided are more than adequate to allow one-pedal driving over twisty hill roads where it works well.

Wind and road noise are very well managed, enhancing the experience of the almost silent drivetrain. As a consequence, your appreciation of music reproduction through the 12-speaker audio is all the more critical. For me, the audio performed well across the spectrum from bass to treble. 

In general, music selection from my phone via Bluetooth worked almost flawlessly. I say almost, because the wireless connection to Android Auto did drop out a few times. This was somewhat surprising as I didn’t recall it happening during my time with the Seal Performance. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a huge fan of a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) where the key information, primarily your vehicle speed, is projected onto the windscreen in the lower portion of your line of sight, thereby allowing you to keep your eyes on the road ahead. In the BYD, you can select a Snow mode where the speed is presented in blue coloured numbers (instead of white). For me, blue stands out more obviously against all backgrounds than the standard white and should be provided as an option on all cars with a HUD.

The HUD also displayed the posted speed limit for your information and the cruise control settings. Unlike some others, it did not show any navigation information. That said, the size of the navigation on the infotainment screen was never difficult to see. 

Earlier I suggested that the option to rotate the central screen is a bit of a gimmick, and while there is an element that once a driver has selected their preference it will never move again. It is one of those things that until it’s available, perhaps you would not think how it could possibly benefit you. When navigating in a completely new area, switching from the regular landscape to portrait format was useful. Typically, a GPS shows your planned direction from the bottom to the top of the page. As a result, the vertical format matched the operation of the GPS mapping, giving me a view much longer view of the upcoming roads and intersections.

The car has a comprehensive suite of safety features. I am pleased to say that in general these are better moderated than a lot of other cars coming from China. Typically, the lane-keep functions can be over-enthusiastic to correct your position within the lane. And at times these systems can correct something that wasn’t incorrect in the first place. In this car, the lane keep assist was generally OK. There were, however, times it could be overzealous. Therefore, a feature I was pleased to see is when selecting adaptive cruise, you can also select or deselect the lane keep assist – nice and easy. 

The infotainment screen is central to most functions and settings. This is OK for the most part, but I do have a personal preference for the ventilation system to have physical buttons/knobs for their usability while driving. That said, I was pleased to see the car has a couple of quick buttons for clearing the windscreen and fan control located in the centre console. The rest however is controlled from within the Infotainment system. And I do have to admit the ventilation controls options are impressive. Touching the graphic, you have fine control to redirect the airflow from the dash vents. One brilliant setting is “avoid” which puts the vents into a constant movement pattern that gently stirs the air distribution within the car but all the while avoiding the selected driver and or passenger’s face. It just works so well. 

Another small but well-considered detail is for control of the audio volume, there are physical scroll wheels, one located on the right spoke of the steering wheel for the driver and a second one in the centre console for use by either the driver or passenger. So easy and intuitive to use. 

I mentioned above there are programmable driver settings for up to two drivers to record their seat and exterior mirror settings. This feature is only accessible through the infotainment system. While I appreciate this avoids more physical buttons, I think buttons on the door work best. Over the week with the car, familiarity with the infotainment system came relatively quickly, and you get used to its menus and screens, which does help.

I know it’s a sedan format, but on cold mornings or in wet weather, I miss it when a car does not have a rear wiper – they are so useful, and let’s be honest, it does get cold and it can rain at times!

The car has a superb camera system that provides high-quality images that are combined into a rotatable 360-degree view of the car. Also, you can select individual cameras to view, for example, your left-side proximity to the curbing. One feature I liked turned the vehicle to transparent, enabling you to see how the car position related to the painted parking box or other road markings under the car.  

During our time with the car, we covered 565km, 350 km around town and commuting, and 215 km on a weekend away. The car’s recorded consumption was 16.9 kWh/100km, which is not bad for the mix of driving over this time, and not too far from the 14.4 kWh/100km recorded in our recent review of the Tesla Model 3. Based on our actual consumption rates, using the percentage of battery charge left after various distances travelled, we calculated the predicted real-world range to be between 550km and 598km.  While we did not match the quoted range of 629km at 100% charge, simply having a car that can easily manage more than 500km on a charge meant it is perfect for a good weekend away drive without us needing to be concerned about the next charging location. 

READ ON TO CHECK OUT OUR SUMMARY OF THE 2024 BYD SEAL PREMIUM.

2024 BYD Seal Premium – Specifications

Vehicle Type4-door sedan, rear-wheel drive full EV 
Starting Price$72,990
Price as Tested$72,990
EngineRear motor – permanent magnet synchronous motor 
Power, Torque
kW/Nm
230/360
Transmission
Spare WheelRepair kit only
Kerb Weight, Kg2,055
Length x Width x Height
mm
4800 x 1875 x 1460
Boot Space / Cargo Capacity,
Litres
(seats up/seats down)
Front: 50
Rear: 400
Energy Economy,
kWh/100km
Advertised Spec – Combined – 16.6
Real-World Test – Combined – 16.9
Low Usage: 6-10 / Medium Usage 11-19 / High Usage 19+
Towing Capacity
Kg, unbraked/braked
750/1,500
Turning circle
metres
10.4
Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+
Warranty6 years / 150,000km *
8 years of roadside assistance
8 years / 160,000km * EV Traction Battery warranty
* Whichever occurs first
Safety informationANCAP Rating – 5 stars – Link
Rightcar.govt.nz – 5 Stars – QSG510

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REVIEW OVERVIEW
Driver Technology
9
Economy
8
Handling
8
Infotainment
8
Interior
9
Performance
8
Ride
8
Safety
8
Styling
9
Value
8
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71910I thoroughly enjoyed my time driving the BYD Seal Premium. It is a very easy car to live with, nice to drive, comfortable, has a good range, and has a wealth of handy tech features together with a comprehensive set of safeties. Over a weekend road trip in the car, it proved itself to be very capable and comfortable over longer distances and time spent in the car. <br><br> It is all the more impressive when you consider the sleek design is good to look at while delivering a practical car; one that is not all that compromised  (boot opening aside) in the name of style. With BYD being such a recent entry into car design and manufacturing, other long-established makes will be on notice. The BYD Seal Premium is very well-built, offering a quality fit and finish that is right up there with the mainstream carmakers we are familiar with.

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