► Living with a BYD Seal electric car
► BYD’s gimmick is a rotating infotainment screen
► Read month 1 here
Across all its UK and European cars, BYD installs a rotating infotainment screen, allowing you to freely switch between landscape and portrait viewing modes while you’re in the car. There’s a physical button for it on the Seal’s steering wheel as well as a fixed place on the touchscreen.
But, after a little while behind the wheel, I’m struggling to see the point. It feels little more than a gimmick designed to help BYD stand out and… little else. It’s definitely a talking point; I show it to passengers when they’re new to the car, they make a noise of (potentially fake) interest, and then I switch it back to widescreen and carry on with my life.
Some car makers have defaulted to using a portrait screen in their cars, seeing it as something that would mirror your phone screen. Volvo (and, by extension, Polestar) is the most obvious example of this. There are a few benefits to shaping it that way, as I find it particularly helpful for navigation seeing the road ahead if I use the built-in nav.
But I don’t. I use Android Auto and Waze. And, thereby furnishing my point about the rotating screen not being that useful, Android Auto in the Seal is locked to widescreen mode. Press the dedicated button and the screen just responds with ‘rotation not possible.’
And that dedicated button on the steering wheel? That would be put to much better use for allowing drivers to quickly switch regenerative braking modes. As I spend more time with the Seal, I’ve just left it in ‘normal’ regen which acts like little more than how engine braking would in a combustion car – even if some city situations would mean stronger regen is useful. It’s an odd decision not to include a physical switch for this – especially since the cheaper Dolphin and Atto 3 do.
Read month 1
Logbook: BYD Seal
Price £48,695 (£48,695 as tested)
Performance 82.5kWh battery, two e-motors, 523bhp, 3.8sec 0-62mph, 112mph
Efficiency 3.4 miles per kWh (official), 2.83 (tested), 0g/km CO2
Range 323 miles (official), 310 miles (tested)
Energy cost 18.2p per mile
Miles this month 1324
Total miles 6084