The BYD Sealion 5plug-in hybrid (PHEV) SUV is on the hit list for crash testing by independent safety authority ANCAP, despite the Chinese automaker withdrawing plans to supply a vehicle for testing.
The Sealion 5, a rival to the Mitsubishi Outlander and upcoming Toyota RAV4 PHEVs, was launched earlier this year.
The automaker said it has withdrawn previous plans to offer a Sealion 5 to ANCAP for testing, instead prioritising a safety rating for its first seven-seat SUV, the Sealion 8 PHEV.
The company has supplied the Sealion 8 for ANCAP testing but won’t offer the Sealion 5, making it one of two BYD models sold here without a rating, alongside the unrated Atto 2. All other models have achieved a five-star result.
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“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,” BYD Australia chief product officer Sajid Hasan told media at the Sealion 5 launch.
ANCAP said changes to the 2026 protocols saw a flurry of activity in the second half of last year, as manufacturers rushed to have vehicles tested before the new regime came into effect.
This may have been a factor in the Sealion 5 missing testing ahead of order books opening late last year.
“If ANCAP wish to test the vehicle it is up to them,” a BYD Australia spokesperson told CarExpert.
“Our position is to push forward with ANCAP testing for vehicles entering our market that are at the start of their product lifecycle. This is a bit of an anomaly with the Sealion 5, as we introduced this car midway through its lifecycle; there’s not much we can do about it.”
Speaking at an event in Belgium, ANCAP CEO Carla Hoorweg told media, including CarExpert, the safety body does indeed have the necessary resources to conduct testing on the Sealion 5.
It means while the Sealion 5 missed out on 2025 testing, it may instead be among the first vehicles assessed under the new protocols, with initial testing anticipated in April/May before the first rating is published in July 2026.
“The Sealion 5 is currently not rated, so it’s absolutely eligible to be tested in our program,” said Ms Hoorweg.
When asked if that means the BYD will definitely be tested, she responded: “Essentially any vehicle that’s unrated is always eligible for testing.”
“The work that we do in terms of selecting vehicles is quite comprehensive. We look at how much volume is the car selling; what segment does it sit in?” Ms Hoorweg explained.
The Medium SUV segment the Sealion 5 competes in was the largest in Australia in 2025, with 312,409 sales, accounting for a quarter (25.2 per cent) of all new vehicle sales.
BYD is targeting around 600 Sealion 5 sales per month, which would place it around the middle of the category. A total of 196 sales were recorded last month as first arrivals began.
While this places the Sealion 5 in the largest segment by volume, the Sealion 8 PHEV sits in the Large SUV category, with rivals including the Omoda 9, Kia Sorento and Mazda CX-80 PHEVs.
While still significant, the Large SUV segment recorded 164,558 sales in 2025, accounting for 13.3 per cent of all new vehicle sales, but trailing the Medium SUV segment’s 312,409 sales.
Ms Hoorweg also outlined other factors influencing testing:
“What are the other cars in that segment sitting at; are they rated? Is the vehicle going into a segment where it is unrated and everything else in that segment is rated?” she said.
“Because that’s not fair on those who’ve gone through the program, and then you can have a kind of free rider situation.”
The Toyota RAV4, Australia’s top-selling mid-size SUV, has a five-star ANCAP rating which expired on December 31, 2025. A new model is due in showrooms this year and is likely to be tested in 2026.
Other top-selling mid-size SUVs, including the Mitsubishi Outlander, Tesla Model Y and BYD’s own Sealion 6 and Sealion 7, also have five-star ANCAP ratings.
On paper, the Sealion 5 appears to meet ANCAP’s assessment criteria for a vehicle competing in a popular segment against rivals with a safety rating.
“It’s also, in part, to do with the funding that we’ve got, what capital we’ve got available to deploy for testing … so as we move forward into 2026, we’ll be setting our program and identifying which vehicles we’re going to test.”