When I tell you that I got to spend some time driving a BYD Seal 7, the first question you will probably ask is: ”What is a BYD Seal 7?” Simply put, a BYD Seal 7 is a 390kW/670Nm luxury electric sedan that is said to hit 100km/h from a standstill in a mere 3.8 seconds while offering a range of 520km on a single charge. The second question you might ask is: “Who is BYD?” Build Your Dreams, or BYD for short, started out as a little battery making company in 1995 in Shenzhen, China.
Under the guidance of their founder, Wang Chuanfu, they have transformed into the largest supplier of electric vehicles in the world. Charging (get it?) past Tesla in the process. BYD Seal 7 joins Atto 3 and Dolphin The Seal 7 joins the Atto 3, launched in July 2023, and the Dolphin, South Africa’s cheapest electric vehicle, launched in April 2024.
The Atto 3 retails for R768 000 and the Dolphin for R539 900. The Seal 7 comes in at R999 900 for the Lux EXT rear-wheel drive model which produces slightly less power and torque at 230kW and 360Nm compared to the R1 199 900 all-wheel drive Lux Performance. It was the flagship that The Citizen Motoring got to have a brief and mostly unexciting drive in.
Except for the poor man in the BMW that took huge umbrage and wanted to show the four of us crammed into the BYD Seal 7 his latest karate moves. You see, I got a bit lost (thanks Google Maps) and ending up coming out a side road the wrong way round and this delayed Mr BMW’s progress by around 2..
