Living with a BYD Seal U: A lovely interior but some confusing tech

This is our BYD Seal U, a budget-friendly plug-in hybrid SUV which we’ve been using every day for the last few months.

It costs £10,000 less than the equivalent Volkswagen Tiguan, but it still has loads of standard equipment and an impressively posh interior. You can check out the first report on this car for a rundown of the specs, but here we’re going to go over a few interior quirks and features which we’ve noticed during our first few months with the car.

BYD Seal U interior: things we like

On the whole, the BYD Seal U’s interior is a pretty nice place to be. That £33,000 price tag made us think it would feel cheap inside, but the opposite is true.

It almost feels as posh as a Volkswagen Tiguan, with plenty of soft-touch materials, stylish stitching and solid switchgear. The soft-touch dashboard even stretches all the way to the base of the windscreen, which is totally unnecessary as you’ll never touch it but still amps up the quality feel.

There are also plenty of options for charging your phone – six in total. You have two wireless charging pads, two USB-C ports under the centre console and two more in the rear. Our Seal U becomes a mobile charging station on video shoots out in the sticks.

BYD Seal U interior: strange quirks

There are also a few quirky features in our BYD which we’ve not seen on other cars, with the rotating touchscreen being one of them.

In fairness, this is something which features on all BYD models, but we’re not entirely sure why. The screen defaults to landscape, but you can rotate it to portrait with a button on the steering wheel. Portrait mode doesn’t work if you’re using Android Auto, and it also partially blocks your view forwards. It seems like a fairly pointless gimmick.

A slightly more useful feature is the voice controls. If you have the fan turned up and press the voice command button, it’ll turn the fan down so it can hear you better. Once you’re done talking, it’ll go back up to your previous setting.

BYD Seal U interior: annoying features

Not everything about this cabin is great, and the main annoyance we have is with the buttons.

It’s great that you have proper buttons on the dashboard, but we feel like they could be better utilised. You have buttons for the driving mode and hybrid system settings, but these are things we rarely change. Proper buttons for the climate control would be more useful.

The rear visibility is also pretty poor thanks to a narrow rear window, and the tiny wiper only clears a very small section of it in the rain. We’ve been relying heavily on the 360-degree camera system, which thankfully is high-definition and very clear.

Living with a BYD Seal U: introduction

Chinese cars are flooding the UK market right now, with a new brand seemingly popping up every month. They all seemingly go by a similar business model: build an SUV, pack it with standard equipment and sell it for a temptingly low price.

The BYD Seal U is a perfect example of this. For just over £33,000 you get a plug-in hybrid SUV with a nice interior, loads of legroom and decent electric range, all for around £10,000 less than the equivalent Volkswagen Tiguan.

Sounds tempting, doesn’t it? But is the BYD Seal U cheap and cheerful, or just cheap? Well to find out, we’re going to be living with one for six months.

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All Seal U models use a 1.5-litre petrol engine paired with an electric motor. Our Comfort model has a larger battery than the entry-level Boost, and as a result it should be able to do up to 78 miles on electric power alone according to BYD. We’ll see how close it gets in reality over the coming months.

There aren’t really trim levels to choose from, all cars just come fully loaded. You get heated and ventilated leather seats, a heated steering wheel, a 15.6-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a head-up display, a 360-degree camera and adaptive cruise control. The list goes on.

There are no optional extras to pay for on the BYD Seal U aside from paint jobs. You simply pick between the entry-level model with a smaller battery, a Comfort model like ours or the dual-motor all-wheel drive version, then pick and colour and you’re done.

Our car is finished in Time Grey, which is a no-cost colour option, making the total price of this car £35,315. For context, if you wanted a plug-in hybrid Volkswagen Tiguan with adaptive cruise control, a head-up display, a 360-degree camera and heated and ventilated seats you would have to pay £47,415.

So the BYD Seal U seems like a bit of a bargain, but is it actually any good? We’ll report back once we’ve got some miles under our belts.

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*Prices correct at the time of writing