BYD “smaller vehicle” confirmed for 2024 Aussie launch

A “smaller vehicle” has been confirmed as joining an electric SUV and the highly-anticipated plug-in hybrid BYD Shark dual-cab ute on the Chinese car-maker’s launch list for Australia in 2024.

Mystery surrounds what the “smaller vehicle” is, while there are also now questions around whether Tesla Model Y-size BYD Sea Lion 07 is the SUV coming this year, following comments by the chief of local BYD importer EVDirect, Luke Todd.

Speaking at last week’s launch of the BYD Sealion 6 plug-in medium SUV in Melbourne, Todd played down the chances of a 2024 arrival for the widely-tipped 07, but was happy to predict that a whole raft of Sea Lion electric SUVs would eventually arrive in Australia.

“The Sea Lion [07], there is more work to be done there,” he said when he asked about its 2024 Australian arrival prospects.

“You’ll see some potential other products with that name on top of Sea Lion 07,” he added.

“A lot of this timing I can’t tell you because there is still some moving around… the thing I can say for certain is there will be a range of Sea Lions.

“We have more family SUVs coming.”

The incoming models from BYD are part of the company’s epic triple-double sales forecast and model line-up expansion plans.

Launched last week in Mexico, the BYD Shark ute’s local release may still drift into a 2025 date because of Australian Design Rule certification.

The Sea Lion 07 was launched in production form at the Beijing auto show in April, and Chinese media have reported it will soon be followed by the Sea Lion 05 and 06 electric SUVs.

That leaves the question of which BYD electric SUV is launched in Australia this year if it is not the Sea Lion 07. One prospect could be the Song L, which launched in China in 2023.

About the same size as the Sea Lion 07, it has a more sloping roofline and is based on the older BYD e-platform 3.0 EV architecture, rather than the latest 3.0 Evo underpinnings used by the 07.

While declining to name the new model, EVDirect CEO David Smitherman said BYD’s next arrival “certainly is an SUV and it is an EV”.

“I was in Beijing with the head of product and I said ‘we need this car, we need to bring it to market’.

“And we have another car coming as well – another product as well that we bring to market.”

Asked for detail, he would only say it is “a smaller vehicle”.

The Yuan Plus compact SUV and the Dolphin Mini hatch, which is pictured here and called the Seagull in China, and are two models recently launched by BYD that could be under consideration for Australia, but Smitherman wouldn’t confirm either.

“It’s a smaller vehicle… something like that,” he said. “But I am not going to be quoted on that at this stage.”

Of course, the models Smitherman is expecting might not have broken cover. That’s entirely plausible considering the rate at which BYD is pushing out fresh metal.

“There is no shortage of activity,” Smitherman said. “It’s incredible. That’s my biggest comment about BYD, that the product [plan] is enormous and the offering is significant.”

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