This Car Proves Just How Far Chinese Cars Have Come

Bobby goes for a drive in perhaps the most complete and advanced Chinese EV to arrive on European shores thus far: the BYD Seal. With next-generation battery tech, is this a new contender for all-around best EV on sale today? Maybe – just don’t call it a Tesla killer!

00:00 Intro
1:28 Battery maestros
4:27 Driving impressions
5:19 A very Bobby walkaround
8:00 No more sacrificing range!
9:07 Not un-powerful
10:07 Battery and range
10:43 Techy interior
13:37 Back seat Bob test
14:40 Come see it for yourself!

The BYD Seal will be on display at Fully Charged: LIVE Europe, on the 24th-26th November. Tickets available here: https://fullycharged.live/

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#BYD #Seal #buildyourdreams #electricvehicles #ev #electriccar #battery #cleanenergy

Some people are going to call this car a Tesla killer I’m not going to say those people are stupid but I’m going to say they’re wrong it’s not a Tesla killer but it is an amazing car that is the byd seal and this is the fully charged show fancy seeing the byd

Seal for yourself then come to fully charged live Amsterdam this weekend on the 24th 25th and 26th of November get your tickets today when you get to test a new car like this you often go to really exotic locations around the place We’ve Ended up in amazing like coastal regions and

Mountains bright Sunshine’s been a wonderful and today we’ve come to a beautiful part of the United Kingdom called the Lake District in the north of England very near Scotland and it’s got mountains it’s got Rivers streams and lakes it’s beautiful lots of sheep uh we’ve come here on probably the wetest

Dullest day that even this area of the United Kingdom has had in many a long year torrential rain really low clouds what a what a delight but what it is good for is testing the phenomenal road holding abilities of the byd seal I think it’s worth looking back at the a

Bit of the history of the company that made this car and you will notice I’m going to be very careful about naming the company because if I say the three letters uh uh the the in its title uh the SAT now the whole Software System

Wakes up that’s how you how you ask the car you know directions or where you’re going or what all those sort of things so I can’t say the three letters so I’m going to say build your dreams which is what the three letters stand for so when

Build your dreams have started in 1995 no one outside a very small group of Engineers and Battery scientists would have heard of it and yet we were all using their products so they were in everything so currently build your dreams makes half of all the iPads in the world and that we’re talking

Hundreds of millions they make a fifth of all batteries in all cell phones right across the the spectrum of cell phones billions of batteries they are a battery manufacturer that went on to make cars they’re not a car manufacturer that tried to work out how to make

Batteries and I’ve got a feeling that gives them a little bit of an advantage what they’ve actually built this car using their blade battery is the kind of latest the latest iteration of that and the way they’ve built it is remarkable so what you’re actually doing when your

Feet are on the floor your feet are pretty much literally on the top of the battery so the battery pack it is the floor of the vehicle it’s a structural part of the vehicle it’s what holds the whole vehicle together and we saw some pretty impressive

Footage last night which we can show you now which is of a crash test so they smashed the car uh sideways into a big pillar absolutely smashed the door in you know wrecked the car it would have written the car off in an accident you know a severe accident then they turned

The car around and smashed it on the other side so it was like totally wrecked then they lifted the car up took the battery pack out of the car put it in another car started the other car up up drove off absolutely no problem so the battery pack withstood what I would

Consider to be pretty serious crash damage and it wasn’t it wasn’t damaged it didn’t catch fire all the things that people talk about with electric car batteries not only that the the byd blade batteries they have done the nail test and that is literally you put the

Battery on a bench when it’s fully charged and you smash a nail through it with a big hammer and nothing happens it doesn’t explode it doesn’t burst into Flames these cars are incredibly safe and really when it comes down to it and this is something we’ve been dealing

With uh outside the fully charge show but with it with other things we’re working on the stock BS which will there’ll be links for in the show notes for this uh with a lot of stuff about battery fires is utter not the most dangerous cars that catch fire the most

Diesel petrol and hybrid particularly hybrid but I won’t rant on about that for now what is interesting actually is when I I’m concentrating on just driving or talking I become I I completely forget that I’m in a car I’ve never driven before it is actually in its in its driving characteristics its position

It’s the visibility out the wind screen everything about it is quite Tesla Model 3ish and that’s a compliment because I think the Tesla Model 3 is an extraordinary car but I think this one is just fractionally better for example I’ve got a heads up display with my

Speed on it on the wind screen so I am looking at the road and I can see how fast I’m going and there’s some people walking in the Lake District that breaks my heart they’re walking on a day like this they’ve come all the way to do walking in this beautiful countryside

And it’s like this and normally when we have a walk around a new car we will do it outside in some glamorous location but because it’s raining so heavily today we’re doing it in the showroom be have handed us their showroom for the afternoon aren’t we lucky but this is the byd seal

And I’ve got to say as soon as I saw it I went that’s nice I saw the back end first and I liked it straight away I’m not going to be able to do the beautiful description of the Bodywork and The Styling and the design of the lights

That Jack does normally on the show but I’m just going to say I quite like it the uh the this would all be you’d be able to do all this with an app I don’t have the app yet but the back has got it’s very like as you can tell the Tesla

Model three so it has got a proper old-fashioned boot we call it in the country or trunk cuz it’s a saloon car it’s a proper saloon car you press the little button and it closes again 411 L of space there but obviously if you put the seats down you get a lot

More but it’s not going to be you know if people who’ve got dogs I know people who’ got big dogs they want a big opening trunk to get their dogs in completely glass roof beautifully done no Central beam like the model 3 as I’m only saying about the Tesla Model 3 as

Obviously there is going to be comparisons made and the reason I said at the very beginning about it not being a Tesla killer because Tesla are selling cars more than you can poke a stick out Millions every year but so are byd they’ve sold over 5.2 million electric cars this company

Has already obviously mostly in China we’re now starting to see them outside China but I tell you who this is the biggest challenge to is a big the biggest car company in the world Toyota who have been so slow at at joining in the electric transition but up until

This year uh Japan as a country was the either the second or the third biggest car exporter in the world they’re currently the third biggest as of but the next few months China will overtake them as the biggest car exporter in the world and they will continue to grow so

You know this is something we’ve got to deal with this it’s too late to stop now we moved all our manufacturing to China very happily in the ‘ 80s and the ’90s and the early 0s and now they’re really really good at it please support our stop burning stuff

Patreon and help us to tackle misinformation about electric vehicles and clean [Applause] energy Here’s another thing with this car the it has a high efficiency heat pump now the technology of that the intricate technology I’m not sure about but what I do know is it’s it’s robustness and it’s low energy use and its reliability so I’m really nice and warm and dry in this

Car driving through horrendous weather it this heat pump can operate from minus 30° centigrade to plus 60° Centigrade that is a terrifyingly wide margin of atmospheres on the planet Earth I think it’s built for the future but that is uh you know one of the big changes with

Electric cars that you know that you may have heard if you’ve never driven one is oh God you can’t turn the heating on because you’ve got no range you will not notice any depreciation in range at all by turning on the heating that that was very much the case with early electric

Cars it’s no longer the case you know the technology has moved on as with so many aspects of electric vehicles you can’t compare this car to one that was even available 5 years ago the technology has moved on to such an extent they’re not comparable so I’m

Currently driving on eco mode and I’ve got to tell you it is so lovely it’s just this smooth continuous power if you do want to go a bit faster it’s not jerky it’s very very calm it just gradually builds up speed but it does not feel UNP powerful it feels that it’s

Got very restrained power it’s got way way more so there are three settings there’s I think is it Comfort no it’s normal Sport and Eco so this is in sport now and you do then get a a noticeable V but even that it’s got a kind of it’s

Kind of like being pushed Along by a really fluffy duvet it’s not being pushed Along by a lump of concrete it’s like a that pushes you forward I think it’s really it’s a really nice feeling it feels very controlled very powerful but not insane not like crazy angry L you know it’s not

Ludicrous so this car comes with an 82.5 Kow usable battery capacity that’s what you actually use it so it will be bigger than that its capacity will be bigger but that’s what you use when you’re driving it um that gives it a wltp range of 325 Mi well I know for a

Fact that that is probably very much closer to 300 but basically I could imagine this car will do 300 miles on a charge with you know even in weather like this so it’s super Adequate so the interior is I I would say highend I would classify this as really really luxurious there I mean what it reminded me of for a very short period of time was the Mercedes eqs which was like the first time I’d been been in like something really Posh this

Is maybe one step down from that it’s not really Posh but it’s Posh it’s it’s beautifully put together it’s so tightly made and when you drive it it’s just a solid thing it’s not got wibbly wobbly bits it’s just really really nice it’s got some some quirky things and some

Really really cool things doing this is a you know brand new car this has only driven 15 miles so there’s not a lot of data on the screen here here’s one thing you might not expect cuz that looks very model 3ish but you press that little button there and it twizzles around and

It then adjusts and so you have an upright which I thought well I’m not sure if that really cool but actually if you have that if you’re driving along no you can choose between all the different screens it’s not that one it’s that one yeah I quite like that that’s just a

Clock it’s really really simple there’s nothing to distract you when you’re driving if you don’t need the satinav obviously if you’re going to use the satinav that’s a different matter so I quite like that we and you can also you don’t need to touch the screen to do

That you can do that from the from the steering wheel the buttons on the steering wheel pretty intuitive I got to I work them out pretty quickly the cruise control the adaptive cruise control very easy to set that use that uh you can hit a button and you get all

The all round cameras all around the car which when you’re parking I suppose I found the reversing camera really good the camera at the back really good with the guidance of where you’re going that works beautifully but there’s a lot of other cameras all around which I found a

Overwhelming and confusing it was so much information on the screen that I started to use the mirrors but that you you get used to it so they are it comes all this is standard you don’t get there’s not like a a top level bottom level all the equipment in here is

Standard the seats are really really good sports seats with heating and cooling um very adjustable really really comfy really comfy nice materials all the materials very very beautifully done very nicely done nice big cubby hole there and a b bit of storage under that’s why I put everything there

Obviously phone charger goes there the the you know wireless phone charger but we had the wire plugged in when we were driving it we had it does Apple uh apple carplay or um Android auto that’s just it just does it you don’t have to FAU about that just that just works uh gear

Select stop Start parking button uh modes volume very I mean everything that basically everything that you you would normally use I found in about 4 seconds I wasn’t going oh how’d you turn the volume down you know it was very very simple to do so you learn it

Quickly as back seats go this is up there this is in the top 1% i’ say this is really really comfy loads of room one slight thing which cameraman Andy pointed out and I I would have noticed thing if I’d been in it for a long time

Is you can’t put your feet under the the driver’s seat or the passenger seat you know like if you want to stretch your legs a bit more there’s plenty of room it’s easy to get in and out of it’s a completely flat floor but you know occasionally you want to kind of like

You could do that just to stretch your leg you can’t that’s it that’s as far as like that’s like I’ve got to sit like that like in the drawing uh it’s got USB ports down here quite discreet USB old old school USB and USB 2 3 USB 3 c

C so is it it can be a five-seater but it’s got an armrest with cup holds oh you can’t now I’m comfy now I don’t care about my feet not going under that seat I’m very happy in the bag carry-on driver if you are interested in this car

Where do you go to see one other than the fully charge live show obviously that’s the place to come and see these cars and do test drives but failing that if you can’t make it to one of those you’ll be able to go to a bwy showroom

At the moment there’s only 10 in the whole country these are showrooms and obviously service centers and you know that’s where you can go and find out about the cars there’s 10 of them in the UK at the moment by this time next year there will be 80 so they are expanding

At a phenomenal rate and uh we really are testing the the waterproofness of this vehicle CU my goodness there’s a lot of it around but uh so they are expanding so fast and that’s just in the UK over the rest of Europe it’s going to be off the

Scale there’ll be hundreds and hundreds I’m just going to do it a little bit of bipping on a really wet rough road I did not see that I’m GL there’s a bit of head back for those of you watching this at home probably not on the actual episode

We just got air I don’t know that we quite did but we were fuing close that was the driver not anticipating the extraordinary hump in the road I don’t know how you where you where it blows on you