Giant test
BYD SEAL I TESLA MODEL 3 I POLESTAR 2
Established car makers lost faith in the saloon, but some of the best cars from EV specialists have brought new life to an old style – like this trio
Giant test: BYD vs Tesla vs Polestar
THE DEFINITIVE VERDICT
Five years ago this would’ve sounded mad, and even now it seems improbable, but here we are… a triple test in core company-car territory in which all contenders are electric, where Tesla is the best-known brand and from which legacy name plates are purged like CO2 from a greenwashed company report.
Then, in a bizarre retro twist, we note that our test cars aren’t even SUVs, but four-door, rear-wheel-drive saloons. The market’s not so much been disrupted as turned upside down and brusquely shaken by the ankles.
But our rules of engagement are familiar enough. We’re te sting EVs costing £40,000-£50,000 and offering around 300-400 miles of range with 250-300bhp. Endless driver-assist features and whizzy touchscreens to dwarf iPads are not mandatory, but guess what?
Tesla has driven this revolution with its Model 3, which climbed to the upper reaches of the UK’s sales charts in peak Covid. It’s been refreshed not just with over-the-air updates but also a physical nipand-tuck. No changes to battery or motor, mind.
Polestar’s facelifted 2 has more performance and more range to go with its subtly fettled looks… a timely reboot for the first car to go toe-to-toe with the Model 3, then.
And the BYD? It stands for Build Your Dreams, a new-to-the-UK Chinese outfit that was founded in 1995 as a battery maker, started knocking out everything from forklifts to buses and rapidly grew to become the biggest EV maker in the world’s biggest car market.
Now BYD has built more than three million EVs, and continues to manufacture battery packs in-house, not to mention motors, semiconductors and more. Handy given all those supply-chain bottlenecks that have troubled other car makers.
Despite the comedy name, the Seal definitely deserves to be taken seriously. Under the skin you get BYD’s e-Platform 3.0 architecture and an 82.5kWh lithium-iron-phosphate ‘Blade’ battery, effectively a twist on the familiar lithium-ion battery minus sometimes-evil cobalt. An 11kW three-phase onboard charger is standard – but find a 150kW charger, have all your stars align and you can boost the battery from 30 to 80 per cent in 26 minutes.
The powertrain also integrates eight systems including battery management, drive motor and the on-board charger in one compact unit – in a nutshell it’s good for packaging and good for range.
There’s double-wishbone front suspension and a multi-link rear, and the Seal is skilled enough at crashing to earn a five-star NCAP rating. Our entry-level Design s
