I have been lucky enough to have been loaned a BYD Seal for 3 weeks.
I’ve also been lucky enough to lease a Tesla Model 3 for the last 3 years.
For those of you who don’t know which is which, the Tesla Model 3 is the white car on the right, the BYD Seal is the green car on the left.
I’m not being a snotty know all, there are plenty of people for whom the subtleties of vehicle design is a topic of zero interest. I think it’s fair to say they kind of look similar and they do have a great deal in common quite apart from their looks.
The history of the two companies for starters.
Tesla was founded in the USA by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003.
BYD automotive was founded in China by Wang Chuanfu in 2003, so the two companies are definitely peers.
Just to be strictly factual, BYD, a battery company, was founded in China in 1995, but BYD Auto Co.Ltd was founded in 2003
Since its inception, Tesla Motors has sold around 7,247,237 units.
Since its inception BYD Auto has sold around 8,701,432 units.
To be strictly factual again, every single Tesla was a battery electric vehicle, Tesla don’t mess around with grubby old combustion engines.
Just over one third of the vehicles made by BYD are battery electric vehicles, the rest are what are commonly known in China as New Energy Vehicles, NEV’s. That means plug in petrol hybrids.
Another really big difference those of us in the west have to acknowledge is that Tesla has had a staggering amount of press attention in the last 22 years.
BYD? I think it’s fair to say that up until maybe 3 years ago, 90% of people outside China and the auto industry would not have had a clue about BYD.
That is changing now and changing very fast.
There are obvious similarities in range and speed, comfort and fuel economy with the two cars in the picture. I am averaging around 4.2 miles to the kiloWatt hour in the BYD Seal, and I regularly get about the same in the Tesla Model 3.
When charged to 100% the Seal’s range indicator read 326 miles. After driving 100 miles I noticed it was at 221 so that is pretty close.
I could go on and on about the similarities but who cares. The differences between a huge range of electric cars from a wide variety of manufacturers are fairly subtle. I’m sure that will annoy some people, but basically they are shaped metal canisters with 4 wheels. If you are far enough away from any collection of cars they are remarkably similar.
Anyway, these two are mid to high end cars in my book. I think they’re both fairly expensive, the Tesla Model 3 is around £45,000 and the Seal is around £43,000.
I’ve checked a few leasing companies, you can get a Model 3 long range all wheel drive, (the car in the picture) for £492.63 a month with £4,463 initial rental. I’m sure there are cheaper offers particularly for Tesla’s at the moment.
You can get the BYD Seal for £376.35 a month with £3,387 initial rental, so the Seal looks to be a bit cheaper.
The massive, undeniable advantage the Tesla still has over all the other electric cars on the market is the supercharger network.
It is incredibly reliable, often a bit cheaper than rival charger companies and very easy to use in a Tesla, (you just plug it in and walk away) and only slightly more hassle in any other electric vehicle.
No other car company has done this other than Nio in China who have installed over 3,300 battery swap stations around the country
We have made another episode where we take a Nio and swap a depleted 100 kWh battery for a fully charged one. The whole process takes 3 minutes 32 seconds, I timed it. It’s faster than filling a tank with toxic, imported, expensive, explosive refined hydrocarbons.
Just saying.

But forget all that, the Tesla Supercharger network is an incredible achievement, in the 10 years I have been driving Teslas, I have only experienced a charger failure two times, and on both of those occasions there were between 8 and 12 other superchargers available, it did mean I had to move the car though!! Oh my Lord, I’ll buy a diesel!
One of the advantages of the BYD over the Tesla is the Seal comes with vehicle to load capability built in. This is obviously very useful in the event of a power cut, but sadly isn’t quite there with running your whole house yet.
So after all that, you are kind of looking at two very similar cars, I’d say the BYD is slightly quieter at speed, it looks more cluttered or maybe ‘traditional’ than the super minimalist interior of the Tesla, but the differences are subtle and down to personal taste.
Here’s where I think the two companies start to differ.
Now let’s remember these companies started 23 years ago, in that time Tesla has grown from around 300 employees when I visited their headquarters in Menlo Park back in 2009. I interviewed an amazing man called Diarmuid O'Connell who was then Vice President of Tesla Motors, you can see the video here.
Today Tesla's global workforce is estimated to be around 125,700 employees. That is incredible considering no one managed to start a new car company successfully in the USA for many decades.
However, BYD have 110,000 employees in its R&D department alone, and just this year passed 1 million total employees. They started out as a battery company back in the 1990’s. Their understanding and knowledge about batteries, along with CATL, is now way ahead of everyone else.
They are now mass producing Sodium-ion batteries at a fraction of the cost of lithium io batteries.
Here’s a short bullet point list of the advantages of sodium-ion batteries.
They can’t catch fire
They use far more abundant material (salt)
They are cheaper (Tesla battery pack around $100 per kWh - CATL at $10 per kWh)
Sodium carbonate costs around $200/ton
Lithium carbonate costs around $15,000/ton.
Lithium-ion batteries maintain a usable charge level for 1,500 charge cycles. 12+ years.
Sodium-ion batteries maintain a usable charge level for 10,000 charge cycles. 90+ years.
Sodium-ion batteries contain zero cobalt or nickel.
So to sum up. Today in 2025 these two cars are very similar. Both companies have achieved incredible success and have developed electric cars to a degree many people in the traditional automotive industry stated categorically would never work.
They have both changed the world.
But it looks increasingly likely that BYD will continue to change the world at a speed no one else can match.
Very good Robert. I’m going to sell (hopefully) my Tesla and buy a BYD. They look decent and the reviews are good. Keep up the good fight
I'm very interested in BYD. Safer battery tech, and no fascist leadership destroying my country.
But first I need to finish driving my 2011 Prius into the ground; it's still working great and no point in getting a new car just to have one. I mostly potter about town so it's largely electric -- last filled the gas tank in September so I'm polluting very little. And I do have solar panels for future use.