BYD Sealion 5 Review & Prices

The BYD Sealion 5 is one of an increasing number of cut-price plug-in hybrid SUVs on the market. It’s the smaller sibling to the very popular BYD Seal U SUV, and offers low running costs, lots of space and impressive standard equipment - but it’s definitely a head-over-heart purchase thanks to a mediocre driving experience and forgettable styling.

Offering plug-in power for a petrol price is the Sealion 5’s key selling point, so it’s a bit like getting a hotel room upgrade - you’re still in the same place, but there are some extras that you might not have expected for the price you pay.

There are loads of plug-in hybrids on the market, and the latest crop of Chinese ones are all quite similar in terms of value. In fact, between the Chery Tiggo 7 SHS, the upcoming Geely Starray EM-i and the BYD Sealion 5 there’s only a fiver’s difference in the price. For a few thousand more you could have a Jaecoo 7 SHS, an MG HS PHEV or BYD’s own Seal U. The plug-in alternatives from other, non-Chinese companies such as the Kia Sportage or VW Tiguan are all much pricier.

The Sealion 5 doesn’t get off to the greatest of starts, because it’s not what you’d call a looker. It’s a bit like a Suzuki S-Cross that got rear-ended by an Audi Q2 - the stacked grille and silvered rear pillar just don’t do enough to make it look anything other than a bit boring. There are only four colours to choose from, too - white, black, grey, or the dull ‘Atlantis Blue’ pictured here.

The interior is a bit more interesting thanks to a swooping dashboard and nicely detailed seat upholstery, but even here it feels a bit behind the alternatives. The central touchscreen seems rather lost in the expanse of the dashboard, and there’s no option for a lighter-coloured interior making it feel a bit dark and depressing.

Once you start poking around inside, though, you’ll find more to like. The materials aren’t all plush, but they’re well screwed-together and things feel solid. The touchscreen also operates more sensibly than a lot of alternatives - there are still lots of menus, but there are nice touches like a few well-chosen physical controls around the gear selector.

There are also permanent navigation bars at the top and bottom even when you’re using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, which means you don’t need to constantly hop in and out of menus to change simple things.

There’s a lot of space in the Sealion 5’s back seats. Tall adults can fit comfortably, and the totally flat floor means there’s room for everybody’s feet. It’s even wide enough that you might consider carrying three for shorter journeys, and unlike a lot of electrified cars rear occupants don’t suffer from a really high floor and an uncomfortable seating position.

The boot is a bit less to write home about, with its 463-litre capacity on the lower end of average for the class - though it is more spacious than the otherwise larger Seal U. A Kia Sportage PHEV has a massive 540 litres on offer.

The Sealion 5 uses BYD’s ‘Dual Mode’ plug-in hybrid system, which like most of its Chinese alternatives favours electric running with the engine acting more like a generator. This is a great way of doing things and results in impressive long-range fuel economy as well as the short-haul EV range that these cars are great at.

The powertrain is impressive, capable of an easy 50mpg on a long run and a theoretical 600+ miles between fillups. There are two versions with different sized batteries, capable of 38 or 53 miles of pure-electric running on a charge - good, but not as impressive as the Geely Starray or MG HS which can both do well over 70 miles.

The rest of the driving experience isn’t as good, though. The suspension is fidgety at low speeds around town, allowing bumps and vibrations to filter through the seat and steering wheel.

While it’s quiet on the motorway it’s not too impressive on a twisting back road - the steering feels quite vague and is too heavy just off dead-centre. The brake pedal doesn’t give much feedback, either. The Sealion 5 as a whole prefers a relaxed driving style.

If you’re in the market for a well-equipped and roomy plug-in hybrid, though, and you don’t much care how it looks or what it’s like to drive spiritedly - you’ll like the BYD Sealion 5.

You can check out how much you could save with our best BYD Sealion 5 deals, or find a BYD Sealion 5 lease deal. We have loads of used BYD models for sale, too, and remember that Carwow can even help you to sell your old car when the time comes.

The Sealion 5 starts from £29,995 - a fiver more than the Geely Starray and the exact same starting price as the Chery Tiggo 7 plug-in hybrid. Two versions are available - Comfort and Design.

The Comfort spec gets a 13.0kWh battery pack for a 38-mile electric range. It also has plenty of kit - vegan leather upholstery, electrically-adjustable seats, 18-inch alloys, LED lights, a rear-view camera and the usual roster of safety equipment.

The Design model gets a larger 18.3kWh battery - good for a range of 53 miles per charge. Standard equipment is also boosted with an electric tailgate, all-round parking sensors, a 360-degree camera, heated front seats and a wireless smartphone charging pad. It costs £3,000 extra over the Comfort model.

The BYD Sealion 5 has a capable and responsive hybrid engine - but it’s not very comfortable and it’s no fun in the corners

In town

We criticised BYD’s larger Seal U hybrid for being too soft and wobbly over bumps - it seems the company has listened, as the Sealion 5 is much firmer over bumps. It’s a bit too far in the other direction, though,

It’s uncomfortable over potholes and speedbumps, and on poorly surfaced roads vibrations are transmitted through the seat and the steering wheel. A Chery Tiggo 7 is more comfortable over speed bumps and potholes and a Kia Sportage, while similarly firm, better isolates the driver from thuds and vibrations.

The engine is very good though. The Sealion 5 favours electric power wherever possible, but even when the motor cuts in it’s very hushed and unobtrusive.

On the motorway

The engine spends most of its time running on the motorway but, unless you’re really caning it on a short sliproad, it’s largely drowned out by the wind and road noise - neither of which are very loud either. This is a pretty refined car.

The adaptive cruise control works pretty well, but the lane-keeping aids aren’t the best, frequently activating even when you’re going dead straight.

On a twisty road

The Sealion 5’s firm suspension means that it doesn’t lean a lot in the bends, and it’s more stable than the MG HS or Chery Tiggo 7. But the steering is just as lifeless as those cars, with a very heavy point just off the dead-ahead and no real feedback to the driver about what the front wheels are doing.

The brake pedal is quite wooden and lacks the reassuring response you’d like, and while there are two options for different levels of energy regeneration neither is particularly strong. It’s on narrow, twisty roads that the lane-keeping aids become really infuriating, too, activating frequently and actually proving more of a distraction.

Lots of room in the back seats, but interior storage and boot space is only so-so

Getting comfortable is easy enough up front in the BYD Sealion 5. The driver and passenger seats both adjust electrically, though the passenger seat doesn’t adjust for height so you do feel a little perched. You don’t get adjustable lumbar support either, but the seat has a reasonable amount already.

Storage up front is only modest, though. The door bins are pretty small, though the glovebox is a reasonable size. The cupholders are easy to access and so is the wireless phone charger, but we wish there was somewhere easy to sling wallets or keys.

Space in the back seats

The BYD Sealion 5’s rear seats are excellent. There’s tons of rear legroom - enough for a six foot adult to stretch out behind a similar-sized driver. The totally flat floor and reasonably wide cabin means you can fit three across the rear bench, too, though the centre passenger will have quite a narrow, firm perch.

There are air vents and air-con controls back here, plus two USB-C ports in the centre. The door bins are small but there are map pockets on the back of both front seats. The only annoyance is that the one-piece front seats are very bulky so you don’t get much of a view out of the front of the car.

Boot space

At 463 litres in capacity, the boot isn’t the biggest. It’s comparable to the hybrid Chery Tiggo 7 (484 litres) and actually has more capacity than the larger BYD Seal U (425 litres). However, it’s easily beaten by the 528-litre Geely Starray and 507-litre MG HS.

You get a flat floor, no load lip and a square space, but there’s not much room under the floor to keep your charging cable. An electric tailgate is standard on Design models.

Not exciting to look at, but the BYD Sealion 5’s interior is sensibly laid out and well-built with nice materials

The Sealion 5 uses BYD’s typically swoopy dashboard design, but in this one the 12.8-inch touchscreen feels a bit more of an afterthought than in cars like the Seal and Dolphin. It also looks rather dinky with lots of dashboard surrounding it.

The touchscreen operates pretty well, though. True to form, there are a few too many menus to operate - especially if you’re diving around in the settings menu - but there are some easy shortcuts, such as a swipe down from the top exposing a quick settings bar just like on a smartphone.

And while the climate controls are in the touchscreen, the bar to control them is permanently visible at the bottom, so you don’t need to keep hopping in and out of menus if you’re using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, for example - a nice touch that we wish more manufacturers would adopt. You can also use a three-finger swipe to adjust temperature or fan speed.

There are a few well-chosen controls around the gear lever to quickly defrost the car, turn the parking sensors on, or to adjust the drive mode and the volume. The 8.8-inch driver’s display is a bit of an information overload at times, but it works well enough. Just make sure to turn both it and the central screen to ‘dark’ mode - it’s much more legible.

Apart from some cheap-feeling silver plastic, material quality feels excellent for a sub-£30,000 car. The vegan leather seats are soft and comfortable, the dashboard is really well screwed-together and everything you touch feels nicely built. The central armrest and door cards are both nicely cushioned, too, so your elbows have somewhere to perch. It’s just a shame BYD doesn’t offer a lighter interior colour as an option, as the acres of black plastic and leather feel rather dour.

The Sealion 5 gets what BYD calls a ‘Dual-Mode Intelligent’ hybrid system - which just means it favours the electric motor for driving. The petrol engine is a 1.5-litre four-cylinder, and total power output stands at 212hp.

Official MPG numbers are fairly meaningless, but they come in at 104.6mpg and 134.5mpg for the Comfort and Design models respectively, reflecting the different size of their batteries.

Comfort models have a 13.0kWh battery, which is good for a 38-mile electric-only range - a bit short compared to the alternatives, which mostly offer more than 50 miles. The Design version gets a more palatable 53 miles from its 18.3kWh battery.

In both cases, you get the best fuel economy on long drives by setting the car to maintain around a 25% state of charge. This means the car can take power from the battery as needed and the engine can then top it up as efficiently as possible, instead of running with a flat battery where the engine has to keep up with the demand in real-time. Done this way, we saw about 53mpg from the Sealion 5 on our three-hour test route around Telford - including plenty of time in Sport mode and on twisting back roads heading into North Wales.

CO2 emissions of 62g/km and 48g/km respectively mean low company car tax and low first-year road tax, too. With a full tank and a full charge, BYD reckons the Sealion 5 can do more than 600 miles in one go - but the Chery Tiggo 7 will do over 700 miles with its larger fuel tank.

The Sealion 5 offers vehicle-to-load technology, allowing you to use its battery to power small appliances - but the max charge rate of just 3.3kW is disappointing. Both the Chery Tiggo 7 and the Geely Starray can charge at twice that rate at home, and even top up at public fast chargers.

Euro NCAP hasn’t crash tested the Sealion 5 yet, but every one of BYD’s models in Europe has a full five-star rating - we’d be surprised if the Sealion 5 bucks this trend.

It has all the standard safety equipment fitted, but we had rather a lot of issues with two of the systems - the lane-keeping aids and the driver distraction monitoring. The former is far too sensitive, activating when you’re even in the same postcode as one of the white lines. The latter, meanwhile, is infuriating, interpreting even brief glances away from the road as driver distraction.

BYD says it’s tuning its safety systems to better align with European road conditions, and not a moment too soon, as both of these systems need to be disabled at the moment before the car’s at all bearable to drive.

BYD’s warranty is impressively long. The basic warranty is six years and 93,750 miles, but on top of that you get eight years and 93,750 miles of coverage for the powertrain, and eight years and 155,350 miles of coverage for the battery, guaranteeing at least a 70% retention of capacity.

That looks great next to most of the European opposition, but it’s largely comparable to the Chinese alternatives - the Chery Tiggo 7 has a seven-year, 100,000-mile warranty, and the Geely Starray tops that with eight years and 125,000 miles of coverage.

BYD vehicles have good build quality, but it’s worth noting that the brand came second-to-last in the 2025 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey. Issues with the dealer network have been reported, so bear this in mind.