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The Sealion 5 will be one of the only BYD models on sale in Australia without an ANCAP safety rating.
Family Cars
The 2026 BYD Sealion 5 plug-in hybrid family SUV will enter Australian showrooms without an independent ANCAP safety assessment – one of the only models from the brand missing a rating.
At the launch of the Sealion 5 and Sealion 8 models, BYD Australia chief product officer Sajid Hasan said only one of the two models will be supplied for crash testing.
“We have not yet announced the NCAP rating [for Sealion 8],” he said. “It hasn't been tested yet, but we do have plans… We are supplying the Sealion 8 for testing,” Hasan claimed.
But when asked about the Sealion 5, Hasan said: “Just due to a priority of resources and also limitations in testing availability, the test lab availability, we've had to prioritise our models, and so Sealion 8 has been our priority.”
When asked to clarify what he meant by lab capacity, BYD Australia chief operating officer Stephen Collins explained that “they [ANCAP] can't test every car in the market”.
Manufacturers have the option of submitting their vehicles for crash assessment to ANCAP, which requires around seven vehicles to complete testing, at their own cost.
If a car brand does not voluntarily put forward one of their models, ANCAP will weigh up whether the cost of purchasing vehicles for crash assessment is worth the information gleamed from said test.
According to ANCAP, due to limited funding, it targets models that will have the most impact on the Australian buying public – of which the Sealion 5 would qualify as it plays in the mid-size SUV segment, one of the largest in terms of volume in the country.
Drive contacted ANCAP for comment and asked whether the organisation had plans to acquire a Sealion 5 for independent crash testing.
ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg commented: “At this stage, the BYD Sealion 5 has not been scheduled for testing, however there are a number of other BYD models that the manufacturer has put forward for inclusion in this year’s test program.”
It was put to BYD by local media that perhaps it ought to be a priority for ANCAP to test the Sealion 5, the company’s headline price-leading plug-in SUV that starts from $33,990 before on-road costs.
“They can [test the Sealion 5], I guess, if they try and obtain their own resources, but from a voluntary perspective, yeah, they're out,” Hasan said.
“What I will add is that whilst the vehicle may be unrated for the time being, we have ensured that the vehicle meets the top safety levels by including all of the features as standard as well.
“There's no trade-off for safety. It's not like we cut out safety specs to the Essential grade.
“It [testing] does depend on a lot of other factors and it's not just within our control. There's many other parties involved in the resources for testing.”
Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why BYD’s sales aspirations for the Sealion 5 remain relatively modest. The company claimed it was targeting 600 sales per month for the electric SUV, despite undercutting key competitors like the Mitsubishi Outlander and Toyota RAV4.
It’s also a significant outlier, with BYD submitting every other vehicle it currently sells in Australia for ANCAP testing.
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Andy brings almost 30 years automotive writing experience to his role at Drive. When he wasn’t showing people which way the Nürburgring went, he freelanced for outlets such as Car, Autocar, and The Times. After contributing to Top Gear Australia, Andy subsequently moved Down Under, serving as editor at MOTOR and Wheels. As Drive’s Road Test Editor, he’s at the heart of our vehicle testing, but also loves to spin a long-form yarn.
