BYD Sealion 8 Premium AWD: Google Automotive Services, Camp Mode and DiSUS-C Tested Over a Full Week

A week with the Sealion 8 Premium AWD confirmed what two media drives hinted at…and exposed one DiSUS-C setting that changes everything.

BYD’s largest SUV on sale in Australia right now is the Sealion 8, and the Premium all-wheel drive variant is the one with the full kit. I’ve driven it twice before at media events, once on the Mornington Peninsula and once at Lang Lang, but controlled environments only tell part of the story. A week as a daily driver tells the rest.

Three things went under the microscope during this loan: Google Automotive Services, the Sealion 8’s suite of camping and rest modes, and the DiSUS-C adaptive suspension. Two of those exceeded expectations. One came with a trap that nearly had me sending a strongly worded email to BYD!

Google Automotive Services

The Sealion 8 Premium AWD is one of the first BYD vehicles in Australia to ship with Google Automotive Services. It’s the full Google Play Store running natively on the infotainment screen. Maps, YouTube, Waze, YouTube Music, Spotify, Plug Share, Prime Video, Audible, iHeart Radio, car-compatible games…all installable directly onto the head unit.

Waze set via the infotainment screen pushes the map through to the driver display as well, which is one of the first times I’ve seen that work cleanly in a BYD. Heads-up display navigation is tied to Google Maps running natively rather than through Android Auto, so that’s worth knowing if you run both.

Beach Buggy Racing is in the Play Store, which will mean something to Tesla owners. The steering wheel controls don’t map to the game on the Sealion 8 so it’s touch-screen only, not quite the Tesla experience, but the fact it installs and runs at all gives you a sense of where this is heading. The more interesting long-term play is diagnostic and off-road apps that can pull live vehicle data. That’s a genuine use case that could make this genuinely useful beyond entertainment.

It’s early days for Google Automotive Services as a platform, but the foundation is solid.

Nap Mode and Camp Mode

Scene Mode is tucked inside the main app drawer, not the drive settings menu. From there you get three options: screen wipe mode, nap mode, and camp mode.

Nap mode reclines the driver’s seat, activates ambient sound (forest, rain and similar options), and lets you set a timer up to 90 minutes. Fan speed and cabin temperature remain adjustable while it’s running. Three-finger swipe still works on the screen. If you’re waiting out a school pickup in the rain or killing time between appointments, it does exactly what it says.

Camp mode goes further. The campfire scene runs ambient audio and visuals, interior lighting can be toggled on and off, and there’s an option to auto-start the combustion engine when state of charge drops low. With the engine acting as a generator, you can theoretically run camp mode indefinitely without draining the battery flat.

I tested this properly with a self-inflating SUV mattress, the kind shaped to fit the contours of the cargo area. You can get one from BCF for about $100. At 5’11 I lay out completely flat in the back of the Sealion 8 with room to spare. The mat hit the top of the folded middle row seats for support and ran all the way to the tailgate. It fits. The Sealion 8 is genuinely usable as a sleeping space which makes those long drives and remote destinations a lot more practical.

V2L and the Bluetti Elite 300

The Sealion 8 ships with a V2L adapter in the boot as standard, plug it into the charge port and the AC output goes live immediately. On this loan I used it to charge a Bluetti Elite 300 portable power station, which Bluetti provided as a sponsorship for this test.

The Elite 300 is a 3 kWh LFP unit, the same battery chemistry as the Blade Battery in the Sealion 8 itself. Bluetti claims it’s the world’s smallest 3 kWh power station and the footprint backs that up. Continuous output is 2,400W with a power lift mode pushing to 4,800W peak, so microwaves, air fryers, compressors and heaters are all viable. Ports include dual AC outlets, 100W and 140W USB-C, USB-A, a 12V 10A socket, and a 12V 30A DC port. Charges 0 to 80% in around 78 minutes from AC mains, which is exactly what V2L provides.

In practice I was seeing around 1.2kW going into the Bluetti from the Sealion 8’s V2L output. App monitoring via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi gives you live stats on your phone, useful if the unit is running somewhere out of sight. The point of this test isn’t just to show V2L works, it’s to flag what’s actually possible: charge a 3 kWh power station from the car, take it to the campsite, the beach, or the backyard, and run whatever you need from there. Range on the power station, not distance from the car.

DiSUS-C: Change This Setting First

The Sealion 8 Premium AWD runs BYD’s DiSUS-C adaptive damping system. It has a dedicated app in the main menu, not inside the drive settings, and it needs to be set to Strong before you drive the car anywhere.

Default setting out of the lot, the suspension is soft. I was bottoming out on speed humps and experiencing pitch and dive under acceleration and braking that made the car feel like something had gone wrong with the tune. It didn’t match either of my previous drives at all. Two days of that before I dug into the menus, found the DiSUS-C app, switched it to Strong and the car transformed completely. Everything I remembered from Lang Lang and the Peninsula came back immediately.

Set DiSUS-C to Strong. Do it before you leave the dealership. If you take delivery and wonder why the Sealion 8 feels nothing like the media reviews described, that’s why.

A week of daily driving

With the suspension sorted the Sealion 8 Premium AWD is exactly the car it’s supposed to be. Freeway overtakes in a 2.5-tonne seven-seater happen with a confidence that usually costs significantly more. The wheelbase-to-turning-radius ratio is better than my BYD Seal, a car I’ve done over 50,000 kilometres in, which means a car this size swings into a car park in a single pass every time. That’s not a small thing when you’re dealing with it every day.

Cabin refinement is genuinely good. Double-glazed glass, solid sound isolation, massage seats front and second row, heated and cooled front seats. The Sealion 8 runs BYD’s DMI 5.0 hybrid drivetrain, an upgrade over the 4.0 system in the Sealion 5 and 6, and efficiency figures from the full loan period are shown on screen. The EV-only range of around 100 kilometres means most owners plugging in nightly won’t see a petrol station for weeks.

ISOFIX and top tether points extend to the third row, which is rare. Kids grow. A seven-seater that can properly accommodate car seats in the third row is a different proposition to one that technically fits seven adults on paper.

If you’re shopping in the seven-seat SUV segment right now, the Sealion 8 Premium AWD belongs on the short list. Just set the DiSUS-C to Strong before you form any opinions about the ride.