I drove the Chinese version of the Porsche Taycan but is £40k cheaper

In 2012, Top Gear’sJeremy Clarkson and James May travelled to China to assess whether their cars were a threat to European equivalents. At their conclusion they suggested that, based on the rate of development, that within ten years people may very well be driving Chinese cars. That’s proven true. Thirteen years later and they are flooding the market with people choosing Jaecoos, BYDs, and others over Range Rovers, BMWs, and Porsches.

One of the main reasons behind this trend is that not only do some of these cars look like their competitors, such as the Jaecoo 7 taking inspiration from the Range Rover, but they’re much cheaper. It’s like a tribute band that looks like the original, but plays just as well if not better.

However, it isn’t just Jaecoo looking west at its European competitors. I recently drove the BYD Seal – the spitting image of a Porsche Taycan – and wondered if it could be a competitor to the BMW i4 I’d driven just days earlier.

What would happen if I took the Seal for a swim and how does it do in the volatile ocean of the modern car market?

Let’s start with the basics. The model I had on test was a 2025 BYD Seal Excellence. The difference between this and other versions of the Seal are that, unlike the Design variant, the Excellence has AWD which means the power goes through all four wheels.

When it comes to power there are significant levels of it. Translate the 530PS into horsepower and you have just over 500 which is more than a 1980s Group B rally car or 1970s Formula One machine in a car you can drive to shops in.

The WLTP range is around 323 miles which is very similar to the BMW i4, the electric car I had had the most recent experience of at the time of writing, but less than the claimed 420 miles of the Porsche Taycan I drove last year. Where the trio differ greatly, as is so often the case between European and Chinese machinery, is the price.

Whereas the basic vehicle price of the BMW G26 i4 M50 is around £69,995, the BYD Seal Excellence is lower at around £45,695 according to Autotrader. This means that on the starting line the BMW is ahead on power but also £24,000 on price, but this is spec dependant, this is a gap which widens when compared to the Porsche.

Comparing the Seal to the car it looks like, the aforementioned Taycan, and the results are even more financially favourable as it comes in at £43,000 cheaper. To borrow a metaphor from boxing, however, it is the i4 M50 that the Seal is best matched within this east vs west electric car bout.

The Porsche may be £43k more expensive, but with that comes a larger range, more power, and more equipment. That means, despite their aesthetic similarities, it would be unfair to compare the Seal to the highly capable Taycan. They’re both capable fighters, but for the moment, you won’t see them in the ring at the same time.

The Seal is more comparable in range, efficiency and performance to the BMW i4, they are two different approaches fighting over the same automotive territory. BMW’s rival to the Taycan comes in the form of the slightly bigger BMW i5.

On the inside the Seal is a sea – if you pardon the pun – of leather and plastic which feel of lower quality than the i4, but still decent, durable, and comfortable. The dashboard is dominated by a massive iPad-esque touchscreen.

Just in front of that is a wireless charging pad for your phone and a series of manual buttons for the parking break, gear selection, driving modes, stereo volume, and hazard lights. Behind that still is a very deep storage cabin.

The driver isn’t completely abandoned, however, with a smaller screen in behind the steering wheel indicating the usual metrics and whether you have certain driving assists on or off. The steering wheel is where the Seal has one up on the i4 in that it has a thinner rim making it nicer to hold on the straight and in cornering.

Get in the back seat and you’re met with seats that can cope with people of varying heights and a couple of storage bins and charging ports, but otherwise it’s not exactly a Gameboy back there.

This is where the Seal triggers surprise and intrigue because it carries its weight -2,185kg or 2.1tonnes – better than the similarly weight i4. Through the corners and over bumps it feels lighter afoot that means you forget just how much you’re carrying around.

What’s more, it has three driving modes (Sport, Normal, and Eco) that adjust the car’s powertrain depending on the road conditions and how it handles.

Furthermore, you can adjust how much regen braking (a system where the brakes are used to recharge the battery) you have, allowing one pedal motoring. There’s a separate adjustor for the steering to adjust how much feel you have when you take the Seal through corners.

However, it is in those corners that something very strange happens. The BYD has great steering feel at low and motorway speeds. There’s lots of communication through the wheel about what the wheels are doing, but when you apply the throttle out of a corner it disappears.

What I mean is into and through a corner you have that communication, you feel the vibration, but as you accelerate out of that corner it disappears. It’s like suddenly losing your sense of taste just as you start chew some food.

You regain the feel and metaphorical taste once the car is in a straight line, but the sensation is repeated as you come out of the next corner and once again apply the throttle.

Whilst a slightly strange development, this doesn’t ruin the experience because you drive corners differently whereby you wait until the car is Roman road straight before accelerating so you’re not all sixes and sevens on slippery surfaces.

Not an immediate problem, but worth sorting out for the facelift. Furthermore, on a drive down to Brighton, similar to that which I completed in the i4, the BYD didn’t feel as efficient. It was more closely matched to the Taycan in its 2024 spec, but still lacking a little.

In the BMW I gained range on my way down to the popular seaside city despite high temperatures and high payload, but in the BYD I had no such gains despite cooler ambient temperatures and nothing apart from a coat and a camera stand. Unusual? Probably not, but an interesting comparison.

On the face of it the BYD has some good cards to play on the practicality front. It has a 400-litre rear boot and 53 litre front boot (or frunk in America). This means an overall estimated carrying capacity of a healthy 453 litres. However, there are a few things that restrict it’s useability.

At the front the trunk is a little bit smaller than you expect given there’s no heavy engine to get in the way. There’s room for a couple of bags of shopping, but not much more.

Meanwhile, at the back, unlike the BMW i4, where the rear bodywork and rear glass opens to create a hatchback, only the rear bodywork yields when you open the boot, similarly to the Taycan. However, the Taycan comes in estate form too so that negative is negated.

This means you wouldn’t be able to attempt to put large or bulky objects inside, and even if you could, you wouldn’t be able to use the full extent of the space available to you. This is because, whilst you can fold the rear seats down, you can’t remove the parcel shelf because that has speakers inside it.

As a result, you are more limited by the size and shape of object you can carry. Granted that’s the case of every car or van, but I wouldn’t have been able to use the Seal in the same way I had used the i4 when that had the job of carrying my bicycle and lots of luggage on a weekend away in the South Downs.

Whilst the Seal would be less useful when it comes to more unusual cargo, it gains points back for having a usable touchscreen interface.

These systems are never going to be superior to switches when it comes to shortcuts, but the Seal does a good job of putting key functions and shortcuts close to the driver and including a few buttons on the steering wheel and centre console to move between different driving modes (Eco, Sport, and Normal).

Overall, the BYD Seal is a compelling alternative to the likes of the BMW i4 and, maybe in the future, the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-Tron Quattro even if, to borrow a metaphor from boxing, the Porsche and Audi are in higher fighting categories.

It handles well, it’s reasonably easy to use, and you get the sense of a good first attempt. Buyers will be put off the lack of practicality (see parcel shelf and front trunk) and might opt for other models with larger ranges and greater efficiency.

Furthermore, it is impossible to ignore the price difference between this and some of its competitors. In a world where the cost of living and socialising is rising, having the option of buying a car with similar performance and range that’s, in some places, over £10,000 cheaper than its competitors makes the Seal a competitive proposition.

At the end of my week with the Seal I’d developed a soft spot for it. Does that mean I would buy one today if I had the money? No, but if they sorted out the kinks and increased the range for the facelift, then I just might opt for this charming underdog.