China’s leading EV maker, BYD, revealed its first mid-size urban electric SUV Friday. BYD’s new Sea Lion 07 is poised to narrow the gap with Tesla as the brand takes on a new segment.
BYD unveiled the Sea Lion 07 EV at the 2023 Guangzhou International Auto Show as it continues its dominant expansion.
The company teased the new electric SUV’s design last week leading up to the release. Led by ex-Audi and Lamborghini chief designer Wolfgang Egger, the Sea Lion 07 almost resembles a combination of the two.
BYD says the new EV draws inspiration from Sea Lions jumping into the water to create a distinctive five-spoke design.
Egger is now the head designer at BYD as the brand expands in the electric era. The Sea Lion 07 is part of BYD’s Ocean series, following the Dolphin hatchback and Seal sedan.
BYD says its first mid-size electric SUV unlocks the “new” style of the Ocean series. It will kick off a new sub-brand of EVs.
Based on the e-platform 3.0, the Sea Lion features BYD’s 8-in-1 electric powertrain. BYD claims the tech improves range, safety, and driving in low temperatures.
BYD Sea Lion 07, the brands “first mid-sized urban smart electric SUV” (Source: BYD)
BYD unveils first mid-size EV SUV, closing gap with Tesla
At 4,830 mm long, 1,925 mm wide, and 1,620 mm tall, the Sea Lion will rival Tesla’s Model Y (L – 4,760 mm, W – 1,921 mm, H – 1,624 mm).
BYD’s first mid-size electric SUV will cost between 200,000 – 260,000 yuan ($27,700 – $35,900). It’s poised to compete with Model Y, which runs between 266,000 – 363,900 yuan ($36,900 – $50,500).
BYD continued its impressive run after selling over 165,500 fully electric vehicles in October. The leading Chinese EV maker has sold over 1.2 million EVs this year.
Tesla, the current market leader, delivered 435,059 vehicles in the third quarter as it aims to hit 1.8 million this year. BYD came within 3,500 of surpassing tesla in Q3 after delivering 431,603 EVs.
BYD hopes its first mid-size electric SUV can narrow the gap further as it looks to steal the crown from Tesla.
Electrek’s Take
The fourth quarter is shaping up to be an exciting one as EV leaders Tesla and BYD continue their aggressive expansions.
Meanwhile, with both cutting prices drastically this year, rivals are struggling to keep pace. Several automakers have delayed EV goals including Ford, GM, and VW.
BYD’s beginnings as a battery maker and Tesla’s early ambitions are paying off while others are being squeezed out of the market. Despite lowering prices, BYD scored a record $1.42B in Q3 profits. With a new mid-size electric SUV, BYD will likely make it even harder.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
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To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.
This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.
In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”
The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.
One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.
Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.
They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.
Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.
At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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