China’s EV specialist wields all its experience to bring PHEV power to the family SUV buyer for an ICE price
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the UK car market needs another Chinese-export, mid-sized SUV right now in much the same way that Greenland is crying out for an explosion of Trump-branded, all-American fast food outlets. If you did, you’d certainly be surprised at how excited the people at BYD UK are about the arrival of this one: the BYD Sealion 5. From the outside looking in, it would seem to be just another four-point-something-metre-long, high-rise family holdall, from a company whose variously overlapping product lines already bring you the Atto 3 (4.5m long, electric), the Seal U (4.8m long, PHEV) and the Sealion 7 (4.8m long, electric).And yet the Sealion 5 (4.7m long, PHEV) is expected to become one the brand’s best-selling cars by the end of 2026. That may be because it’s a straight-as-an-arrow rival for some of the UK’s best-selling cars: the Nissan Qashqai, Kia Sportage, Volkswagen Tiguan and MG HS. In lieu of the ordinary combustion engine you’d be looking at in most entry-level versions of those rivals, however, BYD gives you plug-in hybrid power for a very reasonable price.
