Real range vs claimed range

The number on the brochure and the number on the road are rarely on speaking terms. Here’s what our BYD Sealion 7 Excellence really does, learned from living with it day in, day out before we point it at Greece.

The honest figure

At a steady 70 on flat motorway we see around 3.4 miles per kWh. Nudge up to 80 and it drops away fast, which is exactly why we don’t hammer it on the long days. Easing off by 10 mph buys back a genuinely useful chunk of range for the sake of a few extra minutes. Over a full day, wind matters more than hills, too. A stiff headwind quietly munches through the battery in a way you don’t clock until the percentage suddenly falls off a cliff.

What eats range, and what gives it back

Cold batteries, big climbs and speed are the three big costs. The good news is the Sealion hands a proper chunk back on long descents through regen, so we’ve learned to judge our range at the bottom of a pass, not the top. The heat pump helps as well, warming the cabin far more efficiently than a plain heater, so a frosty Alpine morning doesn’t sting the range as hard as we’d feared.

Why we charge to a full 100 percent

The Sealion runs an LFP Blade battery, which is perfectly happy charged right to the top and left there. So unlike a lot of EVs, we don’t stop at 80 percent to baby it, we take the extra miles. On a big country-crossing day, that headroom is worth its weight in gold.

Our running log

We note the efficiency for every leg and keep it on the the car page, so you get the real numbers instead of a marketing figure.

We’ll build this into a full table of temperature, speed and terrain as the legs stack up behind us.