BYD Seal vs Polestar 2

The Polestar 2 is £520 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £160 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the Polestar 2 comes out roughly £640 cheaper overall. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 244 miles for the BYD Seal and 231 miles for the Polestar 2 - effectively matched, and both well below their WLTP figures because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. A rapid charge to 80% takes around 37 minutes in the BYD Seal and 26 in the Polestar 2, so the Polestar 2 loses less time at each stop.

The two are within 16 mm on width, so neither is meaningfully easier to thread into a tight space. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 541 mm of total clearance for the Polestar 2 and about 525 mm of total clearance for the BYD Seal. The BYD Seal also turns in a 0.3 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 90% battery health for the BYD Seal and 90% for the Polestar 2. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use LFP-type cells, which are happy charged to 100% every day. Both batteries carry a 8-year manufacturer warranty.