BYD's new Seagull jumps a size class, adding rear drive and optional lidar from around $10,000

BYD's Ocean Series sales chief Zhang Zhuo announced today that blind pre-orders for the second-generation Seagull are open, with the car due to launch in China before the end of 2026 in six colors, lime green, berry pink, mango orange, ice coconut blue, cream white and sesame gray.

The most obvious change is size, since filings put the new Seagull at 4,205 mm (about 165.6 inches) long, 1,810 mm (about 71.3 inches) wide and 1,570 mm (about 61.8 inches) tall on a 2,650 mm (about 104.3 inches) wheelbase, which is 425 mm longer than the outgoing car with a 150 mm longer wheelbase, bringing it close to the BYD Dolphin. More importantly, this is no mid-cycle facelift but a class jump, moving from an A00 minicar to an A0 small car.

The powertrain changes just as thoroughly, since drive shifts from front-wheel to rear-wheel drive, output rises from 55 kW (about 74 hp) to 95 kW (about 127 hp) and top speed climbs to 150 km/h (about 93 mph), while the rear layout frees up the front bay for a 94-liter frunk. The rear suspension also upgrades from a torsion beam to a multi-link setup with wider tires for better stability and comfort.

For battery and charging, the car uses a second-generation Blade Battery with two CLTC range options of 320 km (about 199 miles) and 420 km (about 261 miles), and supports flash charging that takes the pack from 10 to 70 percent in five minutes on a dedicated charger.

Driver assist is the headline of the generation change, since the high trim offers an optional roof-mounted lidar paired with the God's Eye B system supporting city navigation and automated parking, hardware that lands in the 70,000-yuan class for the first time, meaning an entry-level EV can now do city driving that used to be reserved for cars costing three or four times as much.

Styling follows the Ocean Series' minimalist language, with a closed front face wearing a BYD letter badge, trident-shaped LED daytime running lights, an eight-shaped black trim piece below the lamps, blacked-out B, C and D pillars for a floating roof, semi-hidden door handles, 16-inch black multi-spoke wheels on 205/60 R16 tires, and a redesigned tail with an inverted trapezoid full-width LED bar and a large roof spoiler.

Inside, the cabin is all new and focused on practicality, with shell white, sky pink and polar gray themes, a 15.6-inch rotating DiLink 150 center screen with split display, no traditional instrument cluster, a column shifter, and physical buttons plus a wireless charging pad on the center console, along with 94 liters of front storage, up to 1,380 liters (about 48.7 cubic feet) of trunk space with the second row folded, and hidden storage under the rear seats.

From A00 to A0, from torsion beam to multi-link, and from a 55 kW front-drive setup to 95 kW rear drive, the second-generation Seagull has changed almost everything it could, and putting lidar and city navigation into the 70,000-yuan class is the signal that matters most, since when Chinese brands squeeze high-level driver assist hardware into this price bracket, the bar for entry-level EVs worldwide may have to be redrawn once again.