I've had the Seal for about 2 weeks now / 1000 miles so I thought I'd just pen a few thoughts.
The main one is that I'm now a 100% EV convert. There will be no going back to ICE cars now - the Seal (and I suspect EVs in general) is such a nice car to drive. It just whispers along effortlessly and has enormous power on tap - you really notice the gear changes and engine revving once you go back to driving an ICE car, it's almost tiring to listen to how hard the car seems to have to work. As a driving experience it's much nicer than any ICE car I have driven.
Regarding range and charging, I am a little disappointed here. I regularly do a 190 mile round trip for work. Typically it has about 25% battery left at the end of it. But it seems the temperature has a far greater effect than I realised. Setting off early in the morning for the first 95 miles leg (Temperature about 12c) uses I'd say about 8% more battery than the return leg (Temperature about 25). I do need to test this more though. The car reckons 29.5KWh per 100 miles so far, so 279 miles but for motorway driving (or lower temperatures, I'm not sure) I reckon it's less.
Octopus intelligent go and an Ohme home pro charger can only effectively charge 50-60% of the battery over night (say from 1800 to 0800) at the cheap 7p KWh rate. If you need more than this you'll have to charge at peak rate - that being said, it's still cheaper than petrol. I haven't tried fast charging yet although I understand it's not that impressive. An 82.5Kwh battery at 7p KWh is £5.77.
The cabin feels very nice and is well put together - it definitely has a premium feel.
It comes with two normal keys for starting etc, but also a credit card type thing or you can use the app on your phone. The app, although pretty basic, does everything you want it to, and has worked flawlessly so far.
The car has a variety of bings and bongs which are very mild and will tell you if speed limit changes and a variety of other things. They're almost inaudible and not remotely obtrusive.
Aircon is great and despite the glass roof handles the recent hot weather just fine. Being able to turn it on via the app is a godsend. It also has ventilated seats which is a first for me and I'm impressed.
It also comes with vehicle to load, i.e a 3 pin, 4 way extension lead which plugs onto the battery port, and if I understand correctly, provides 240V 50Hz mains power up to 3.2Kw from the battery. This should prove very useful for our camping trips later in the year but I haven't tried it out yet.
The blind spot indicators are very useful, particularly if you're reversing (like I do out of my drive where visibility is limited) - it gives a good timely warning if traffic is coming. The all round cameras are very good as well.
There are some minor niggles.
The intelligent cruise control is very clever and will keep a set distance from the car in front, but the automatic lane keeping lulls you into a false sense of security before trying to drive you off the road - in the short time I've tried it, I figured that I'll never use it again.
The lane keeping assist will try to keep you in lane if you drift across without indicating. It reasonably gently steers you back but is easy to steer through - it almost feels like there is a slight raised bump running along the lane marking. It does tend to encourage you to indicate properly and I've only seen it work on motorways. I can't decide if I like it or not but so far it's not a big deal.
The auto headlights come on every time you pass from bright sunlight to shadow (say under a bridge), this then dims the screens in the car far too much. If there's a way to adjust this I haven't figured it out.
It's not all good though. Twice now I've had the car slam on the brakes hard. Once was low speed in a car park and it thought someone was going to turn across in front of me - not really a big deal. The second was when I doing about 40 and another car came over the brow of a hill on a corner in the opposite direction (fast) and I guess the Seal thought it was heading right for me. It absolutely hammered the brakes and scared the life out of me. I understand this is mandated for the NCAP safety rating but how anyone thinks this is a good idea I don't know.
You can turn all this stuff off but it's a bit of a faff and it resets every time you turn the car on. That being said I think I have an older software version in the car (I can't figure out how to update but from the youtube videos I've seen a newer version is available, maybe only in other countries for now) and I think this is something that is being worked on.
But overall I'm very happy with it and can see it's something that's going to be easy to live with. I do quite a high mileage and the fuel saving alone will be very significant for me.
Edit: AWD Excellence.
Thanks for the write up, it was very interesting.
Having looked at the available choices, completed the test drives and a lot of pondering if an EV is for me, I finally made my mind up and bought something
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Next week I pick up a 25 plate BYD Seal Excellence in Atlantis Grey
. It's an ex-demonstrator car so got a great deal on it. With less than 4k miles on it, registered March 2025 so avoid the 'luxury' car tax on EVs, I got it for just under £36k so saving more than £12k from new. Sure, it's an ex-demo car but it's pristine inside and out albeit with some tyre wear of course.
The test drive of the Seal was interesting as well as being an information overload. Firstly, the space inside is a revelation coming from my 640D. My son hates being in the back of the BMW with it being so cramped but loved being in the back of Seal due to the ample space and pano-roof. I was surprised at how high the rear passengers seem to sit when you turn your head to look at them, maybe I had my seat set a bit too low
. I immediately liked the driving position although the 15" display seemed a bit close to me and I was a bit apprehensive to look at it while driving but I think that's down to unfamiliarity and not wanting to study it while driving. Talking of the screen, the salesman rotated it while I was driving and it almost took my kneecap off due to how my left leg was positioned. Either that or he was feeling me up
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The drive was nice - not as direct as I'm used to but in no way wallowy and the power on tap in sports mode is immediate but should only be used when there's no passengers (so I was told by those in the rear seats!). I could feel the difference between the two regen settings with the stronger of the two being similar to an ICE car so not one foot driving by any means, not that I like the idea of that anyway. Very comfortable ride and I think it'll get better as I settle in to it over the many miles.
A few other notable bits - when reverse is selected both door mirrors tilt down so you can see the wheels/kerbs which I like, but with all the cameras and the massive display showing all around you, you've got enough information you shouldn't ever hit anything! A simple but still a nice touch is the HUD - the speedo font can change from white to blue - for when driving in the snow, I hadn't considered that before. Ah, simple things.
I'm sure I'll discover more things on the +400 mile drive home once I've picked it up
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