BYD’s new EV is about the size of a Tesla Model 3, but half the cost in China. After launching the e7, BYD is already boasting that it will be the “winner’s choice” for midsize EV sedans. Here’s our first look at the new low-cost electric sedan.
Will the new BYD e7 EV rival the Tesla Model 3 in China?
After previewing the e7 for the first time a little over a month ago, BYD officially launched the midsize electric sedan on Saturday.
The new e7 is available in three “Smart” trims, starting at 103,800 yuan, or about $14,500. For a limited time, BYD is offering a renewal price of 99,800 yuan ($13,900).
Buyers can choose from two BYD Blade battery options: 48 or 57.8 kWh, providing CLTC driving ranges of 450 and 520 km, respectively.
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BYD’s new midsize EV sedan is about the size of a Tesla Model 3: 4,780 mm long, 1,900 mm wide, 1,515 mm tall, and 2,820 mm wheelbase.
Although it looks similar to other BYD models, the e7 has a few unique design elements, including a “Smiling and high-spirited” front face design, full-score LED headlights, and a duck tail.
We knew it would be a lower-priced EV after the preview showed the e7 with traditional door handles, rather than the flush ones found on newer models.
Like BYD’s other new vehicles, the interior is relatively simple with a 15.6″ central infotainment at the center and a 5″ driver display cluster. It’s also loaded with the advanced version of BYD’s smart cockpit and DiLink100.
The “ingeniously crafted comfortable cockpit,” as BYD calls it, is available with ergonomic cloud-sensing seats, an integrated hand gear, and a panoramic sunroof.
Although the e7 is part of BYD’s e-series, a lower-priced lineup aimed at younger drivers or taxi services, it’s now being absorbed into its Ocean series with other popular EVs like the Dolphin and Seagull.
BYD’s new EV is over half the cost of a base Tesla Model 3 RWD model in China, which starts at 235,500 yuan ($32,700). But, to be fair, the base Model 3 has a CLTC driving range of up to 634 km (394 miles). For 275,500 yuan ($38,200), the Model 3 Long Range AWD is rated with up to 713 km (443 miles) CLTC range.
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What looks to be Tesla’s long-rumored “more affordable model” has been spotted testing on a highway, without any camouflage. But before you get too excited, it’s just a Model Y with some cheaper parts – and a price that’s not much different than we’ve seen on other Teslas.
For many years, Tesla had planned to build a much more affordable vehicle, starting around $25k. This vehicle was nicknamed the “Model 2,” and would have offered the most affordable entry point into the EV market, at least in the West.
In its place, Tesla started offering vague promises about “more affordable models,” starting in its Q1 report in April 2024. Tesla later specified that these would enter production in the first half of 2025.
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The language Tesla used suggested that the cheaper vehicles would be new models, which means more than one model, and not just based on a current Tesla model. But we reported that this was unlikely to be the case, and that the new models would just be a stripped-down Model Y.
We first saw the “more affordable” Model Y out and about in Chinese spy shots, which included exterior videos and even a peek at the interior. However, in those spy shots, the front and rear of the vehicle were covered with camouflage, suggesting that there would be some changes in those areas Tesla didn’t want to leak yet.
Tesla doesn’t seem to mind those leaks anymore (especially after a low-res website leak), as a Model Y was spotted driving on the highway with no camouflage whatsoever, offering a look into what Tesla was hiding underneath those covers.
The pictures were posted to reddit by Fantastic_Train_7270, and show a Model Y with Florida manufacturer plates.
The nicely clear front end photos show that the car is missing the front light bar that was added with the Juniper refresh, instead reverting to separate headlights – though both are quite narrow, like the headlights on the Juniper.
The rear end is also missing its light bar, instead replaced by a horizontal black line. The line does not have the “T E S L A” badging, as the Juniper refresh has.
The model also has new aerodynamic wheels, which should help add a little range (and may make up for a smaller battery pack, though we don’t have information yet on whether battery size is part of the decontenting associated with the “more affordable” model).
Other than the lack of light bars, the front and rear look quite similar to the Juniper refresh. However, one concerning detail is that the rear trunk lid does not seem to fit snugly into the place it’s supposed to fit, instead encroaching onto the top of the plastic rear fascia.
We don’t know what might have caused this, but we do know that we’ve seen Model Ys with poor color matching on body panels before – but that’s a lot less of a problem than a body panel that seems to be misaligned by the better part of an inch, visible from a longish distance shot on a highway.
Of course, it’s just a prototype, but this is also the reason prototypes have camouflage, so the public can’t see fiddly bits like this ahead of release.
While these photos don’t show us anything of the interior, information from a recent software update gives us some hints as to what has been removed. In addition to removing the glass roof, coat hooks and 8″ rear screen (as could be seen in the Chinese spy shots), the software update suggests that the Model Y will have no ambient LED lights, single-axis seat controls, and simpler air vents.
The fact that this vehicle was spotted without camouflage, alongside the fact that this vehicle has shown up in recent software updates, suggests that release may be imminent. We had expected that it might be released in China first as has been the case with some other Tesla models lately, but the vehicle’s presence on US roads means that it might see a release here soon too.
And if it is releasing soon, it would be at an important time. Tesla just had its first positive sales quarter in some time, but that was primarily due to the expiration of the $7,500 US EV tax credit, which pulled forward demand. That means Teslas are now going to be $7,500 more expensive for US buyers, as of yesterday. So anything Tesla can do to cut prices will be a big deal.
We don’t know for certain how much cheaper the “more affordable” Model Y will be, but estimates (and a leak) suggest a base price of $40k – so, a savings of $5k over the current $45k base price, or $2,500 under the current base price of the Model 3, neither of which are as low as the lowest prices we’ve seen Teslas sell for before. Quite a far shout from the actually affordable $25,000 car we were all promised for so long.
Also, that price would still be a $2,500 price increase compared to the deal which was available just two days ago, before tax credit expiry. And Tesla has its own CEO to thank for that price hike, given he unwisely spent $200 million campaigning for the anti-EV forces that are now making his company’s products less affordable.
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On today’s surprising episode of Quick Charge, Tesla had its first good sales quarter in a while as the EV tax credit expiration spiked demand, but a number of big shareholders still want Elon gone! Press play to find out why!
We’re also highlighting new EV deals from BMW and Jeep – but it’s not all rosy news for Stellantis’ EV fans. The eagerly anticipated, ultra-fast Banshee edition may never see the light of day.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Climate XChange, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to help states pass effective, equitable climate policies. The nonprofit just kicked off its 10th annual EV raffle, where participants have multiple opportunities to win their dream EV.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (most weeks, anyway). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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Despite the gated release that requires an invite code, the video creation tool has already shot to the number three spot on Apple‘s App Store and sparked a wave of deepfakes, including a viral clip of CEO Sam Altman shoplifting GPUs.
Internally, the rollout has reignited a long-running debate inside OpenAI about how to balance safety with creative freedom.
A person familiar with internal strategy at the company said leadership views strict guardrails as essential, but also worries about stifling creativity or being perceived as censoring too much.
That tension remains unresolved.
OpenAI’s culture has long favored speed, often shipping new tools ahead of rivals and letting the public adapt in real time.
One former employee, who asked not to be named to discuss internal matters, told CNBC that during their tenure, OpenAI leadership had a pattern of prioritizing fast launches. That strategy was on full display after China’s DeepSeek released a powerful model at the end of last year that was cheaper and faster to build than anything out of Silicon Valley.
OpenAI responded within weeks, debuting two new models in what was widely viewed as a defensive move to preserve its lead.
But OpenAI has a key advantage: Its growing institutional muscle.
Once a scrappy research lab in San Francisco’s Mission District, the company has since become more structured, enabling it to spin up cross-functional teams more quickly and accelerate the development and deployment cycles for products like Sora.
OpenAI said Sora includes multiple layers of safeguards meant to prevent unsafe content from being generated, using prompt filtering and output moderation across video frames and audio transcripts. It bans explicit content, terrorist propaganda, and material promoting self-harm. The app also uses watermarks and bans likeness impersonation.
But some users have already found ways to skirt those protections.
Sora 2, the AI model powering OpenAI’s app, is a sharp improvement over the first version. The new system generates longer, more coherent clips that look strikingly real.
Multiple viral videos feature Altman after he granted permission for his likeness to be used on the platform, while others depict popular cartoon characters like Pikachu and SpongeBob SquarePants in unsettling roles.
The content has fueled criticism that OpenAI is once again moving faster than its own guardrails. Its use of copyrighted material — unless rights holders opt out — is consistent with the company’s current policy, though that approach is being challenged in court.
Altman has brushed off concerns, saying in a post on X that Sora is as much about transparency — showing the public what the technology can do — as it is about building commercial momentum to fund OpenAI’s broader ambitions around artificial general intelligence.
The launch comes amid intensifying competition. Meta rolled out Vibes last week, a new short-form AI video feed inside its Meta AI app. Google has Veo 3, while ByteDance and Alibabahave also debuted rival systems.
OpenAI, meanwhile, just committed to fresh spending of $850 billion, deepening its push into infrastructure and next-gen models.
Experts say the push into video isn’t just about drawing more users into the ecosystem with another sticky consumer app.
Professor Hao Li, a leading expert in video synthesis, told CNBC that most AI systems today are still trained on linguistic data like books and internet text. But to move toward general intelligence, he said, models need to learn from visual and audio information, much like a baby discovers the world through sight.
“We use AI to generate content to then train another model to perform better,” he said.
Li added that his lab already uses AI-generated video to enhance model performance, feeding synthetic data back into the system.
It’s part of a broader trend among researchers who see video generation as a way to simulate reality and help models reason more like humans.
Former OpenAI executive Zack Kass, whose forthcoming book “The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential” explores the societal implications of artificial intelligence, echoed that view.
On the broader question of how model makers should approach deployment, Kass argued that the trade-offs of releasing powerful technology early are worth it.
“There are two alternatives to building in the open: Not building at all, or building privately. And those alternatives, to me, are worse,” he told CNBC. “If we have a groundbreaking technology, I think people should know about it and use it so that we can all update to it.”