There are plenty of cars that you drive and find yourself wondering where the money you just paid for it actually went. The BYD Seal 6 Touring does the opposite.
At $39,990 before on-road costs, this plug-in hybrid wagon is ferociously good value. But the more impressive thing is that, for the most part, it doesn’t look, feel or drive like something that has been built to hit a bargain-basement price.
Yes, there are places where the cost cutting shows. The cabin can feel a little sparse, and the eight-speaker stereo is tinny and otherwise nothing to write home about. But the seats have heating, the boot opens all by itself, and the cabin screens are big and clear. The backseats have easy-pull access from the boot to fold them flat, too.
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The Seal 6 Touring uses BYD’s DM-i plug-in hybrid setup, pairing a 1.5-litre petrol engine with a front-mounted electric motor and a 19kWh Blade battery. Combined output is 163kW and 260Nm, with BYD claiming a 0-100km/h sprint of 8.1 seconds.
Those numbers don’t scream performance, and nor does the Seal 6 Touring from behind the wheel. This isn’t a particularly fast car, but neither does it ever feel noticeably underpowered.
More impressive is the way its onboard brain works out what should be powering the wheels, and when. The Seal 6 feels very much like an electric car with a petrol engine waiting in the wings, rather than a conventional combustion vehicle with some electric assistance bolted on.
It clearly prioritises its electric motor whenever possible, which means there’s that familiar instant EV response around town and when rolling back onto the accelerator. The petrol engine tends to stay out of the way until required, with the changeover between power sources generally happening without much fuss.
There’s up to 100km of WLTP electric driving range, too, which means plenty of owners who can charge at home should be able to complete the majority of their regular commuting without using much petrol at all.
Perhaps the bigger surprise, though, is the way the Seal 6 Touring handles itself.
Some new-brand vehicles can feel a little unfinished on Australian roads. The suspension can bob and float, the steering can feel disconnected and the whole thing can struggle to settle after a bump. But there’s very little of that here.
The steering has a reassuring amount of weight to it and, for the most part, the Seal 6 feels planted and composed. It doesn’t wobble or bobble around underneath you, and there’s a refreshing sense that somebody has actually spent some time getting the fundamentals right.
Ride quality is mostly impressive, too. Smaller imperfections are dealt with comfortably, and it feels settled at speed, though larger, sharper road imperfections can produce a fairly solid clang from underneath.
There’s something slightly unnatural about the way the steering builds as you wind on more lock, though. On tighter corners you can sometimes feel like it has taken another bite when you weren’t expecting one, rather than the steering responding in one smooth, progressive movement.
Part of that might be the weight it’s shifting – you do notice the vehicle’s mass more in those situations as well. At 1800kg, the Seal 6 Touring is no lightweight, and while that heft is largely disguised once you’re flowing along, tighter turns and lower-speed manoeuvres remind you there is a fair bit of car underneath you.
The safety systems get a shout-out, too, mostly because you don’t spend much time thinking about them.
That sounds like faint praise, but it really isn’t. Overactive speed warnings, lane-keeping systems and driver-monitoring technology have become regular irritants in some newer vehicles, particularly those arriving from China.
Here, the systems seemed well configured and largely unobtrusive during our drive. The Seal 6 also carries a five-star ANCAP safety rating.
There are compromises in choosing the wagon over one of the seemingly endless number of medium SUVs on the market. The first is the driving position. Obviously, nobody accidentally buys a wagon expecting an SUV seating position, but after years of Australian roads being steadily populated by taller and taller vehicles, you become surprisingly conscious of just how low you are sitting.
Suddenly the SUV ahead feels enormous, and your view through and around traffic isn’t as commanding as it would be in a higher-riding vehicle.
The luggage space (BYD officially quotes a very healthy-sounding 670 litres with the rear seats in place, expanding to 1535 litres with them folded, though that is measured to the roof) isn’t quite as cavernous as you might expect, though we were able to fit two large suitcases in very easily. But the pay-off is easy-breezy city life, with the Seal 6 Touring’s 4840mm long, 1875mm wide and 1505mm tall and 2790mm wheelbase dimensions easy to drive and park.
The Seal 6 Touring isn’t perfect. The interior could feel richer in places, the sound system is ordinary, there are some quirks to the steering and you occasionally feel the weight hiding underneath it.
But none of those things fundamentally change what BYD has delivered.
For $39,990 before on-road costs, you’re getting a genuinely useful plug-in hybrid wagon with real electric range, plenty of equipment, mature road manners and a powertrain that does an excellent job of deciding how best to use the electricity and petrol available to it.
The most impressive thing about the Seal 6 Touring isn’t simply that it is cheap. It’s that, most of the time, it doesn’t feel like it.
2026 BYD Seal 6 Touring Premium specifications
Price:Â $39,990 plus on-road costs
Basics:Â PHEV, 5 seats, 5 doors, wagon, FWD
EV range:Â 125km (NEDC); 100km (WLTP)
Battery capacity:Â 19.0kWh BYD Blade LFP
Battery warranty:Â Eight years/160,000km
Fuel consumption:Â 0.8L/100km with sufficient battery SOC; 4.1L/100km with insufficient SOC (NEDC)
Powertrain:Â 1.5-litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder petrol, 74kW/126Nm
Motor:Â Front-mounted permanent-magnet synchronous motor, 160kW/260Nm
Combined output:Â 163kW/260Nm
Transmission:Â BYD DM-i Super Hybrid system
AC charging:Â 6.6kW
DC charging:Â 26kW
V2L:Â Yes
0-100km/h:Â 8.1 seconds
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