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AsiaOne
an hour ago
- Automotive
- AsiaOne
BYD Sealion 7 Performance review: BYD's next greatest hit offers excellent value, Lifestyle News
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you would probably know by now that BYD is currently Singapore's best-selling car brand. Its success has been spurred in large part by the BYD Atto 3, a practical and uniquely-styled electric crossover that has won over plenty of consumers, thanks to its attractive price and generous features. But for those who want a bit more, perhaps something bigger and more upmarket, BYD has now introduced the larger Sealion 7. And judging by the car's sales figures so far, it looks like they may have another huge success on their hands. What is the BYD Sealion 7? The BYD Sealion 7 is a mid-sized electric crossover that's significantly larger than the Atto 3, but you only get a sense of its scale when you see it up close in person. It measures 4,830mm long and 1,925mm wide, which is pretty sizeable even for mid-sized SUVs. It gives the car an imposing presence on the road, although its sleek styling, with its smooth and gentle curves, does soften things a tad. It also tries to strike a sporty stance with its slightly sloping roofline, giving it a coupe-SUV profile. Certainly, it is a car that's hard to ignore, given its looks and proportions, but it's no less expected from BYD by now, given their penchant for offering cars that stand out from the crowd. In case you're wondering about the name, the Sealion 7 is part of BYD's 'Ocean Series', which also includes the BYD Seal electric sedan and the BYD Dolphin compact electric hatchback, as well as two other models not sold in Singapore, the BYD Seagull small city car and the BYD Shark pickup truck. The '7' in the name indicates the car's relative size in the BYD product lineup, as there is also a Sealion 6 plug-in hybrid model that's due to be launched in Singapore very soon, along with a smaller Sealion 5 crossover that's currently only available in China. What is the BYD Sealion 7 like? Given its size, it's no surprise that the Sealion 7 offers plenty of space inside. The rear in particular is especially roomy, helped by the flat floor that results in lots of legroom for three passengers. And despite the slightly lowered roofline, there is adequate headroom in the back, so it doesn't feel claustrophobic. That said, rearward visibility is not the best, and this is where the 360-degree camera comes in handy when parking. The seats themselves are very comfortable as well, with its excellent bolstering that cushions you with soft padding, and the leather upholstery with its quilted design feels especially plush. Otherwise, the general layout of the Sealion 7's cabin is typical BYD. It doesn't quite have the quirky flair of the BYD Atto 3, but more or less mirrors the minimalistic simplicity of the Seal. That means you get the large 15.6-inch infotainment touchscreen that can be rotated to portrait orientation. There's a general lack of physical buttons, save for a couple of switches near the gear selector to adjust the drive modes and level of regenerative braking. To its credit though, BYD has attempted to try to give the Sealion 7 an upmarket ambience, and this is reflected in the plentiful use of leather and suede-like materials throughout. The digital driver instrument display is also nicely integrated into the dashboard, instead of looking like a standalone item, and that further accentuates the sense of premium thoughtfulness in the design. As with most of BYD's cars, the Sealion 7 comes extremely well-equipped. There's a full suite of advanced driver assistance features like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assist, blind spot monitoring and automotive emergency braking, to name a few. There are also nice convenience features like a panoramic sunroof, ventilated seats and a wireless smartphone charger, complete with small cooling vents at the bottom to keep your device's temperature down, which is quite a neat touch really. How does the BYD Sealion 7 drive? BYD offers the Sealion 7 in two variants in Singapore. The entry-level model is the Premium, which has a single electric motor that produces 308hp and 380Nm of torque, and is good for a 0 to 100km/h sprint time of 6.7 seconds. The one tested here is the BYD Sealion 7 Performance, which comes with a dual-motor all-wheel-drive setup that produces a combined total of 523hp and 690Nm of torque, allowing it to go from 0 to 100km/h in just 4.5 seconds. Those are pretty staggering numbers for what is essentially a family SUV. While the car picks up speed rather rapidly when you put your foot down, it does so in a controlled fashion that doesn't feel too abrupt or disruptive. Where the Sealion 7 really majors is in comfort. The ride quality is supple and plush, and it eases through bumps with minimal fuss. It is also exceptionally refined and quiet, even by electric car standards, and it makes the car extremely relaxing to drive. Of course, something has to give, and given its size and bias towards refinement, the BYD Sealion 7 is not the most dynamic to drive around corners. It mostly handles itself well with plenty of stability, but the steering feels overly light and somewhat lifeless. It's mostly ok in everyday situations, but it's not a car to excite enthusiasts. Is the BYD Sealion 7 worth buying? Given that BYD apparently received around 300 orders for the car when it was first announced at the Singapore Motorshow in January, there's clearly something about the Sealion 7 that resonates with many Singaporeans. Aside from its obvious strengths as a practical and well-equipped electric SUV that offers plenty of space and refinement, the BYD Sealion 7 has arguably won many over with its extremely attractive pricing. As of June 2025, the base BYD Sealion 7 Premium retails for $203,888 with COE, which is tremendous value considering the amount of car you're getting. Meanwhile, the BYD Sealion 7 Performance version featured here sells for $228,888 with COE, which is also incredibly reasonable as well. BYD prides itself on offering what it calls high 'price-performance ratio', or in other words, great value for money. The BYD Sealion 7 truly epitomises that strategy, and it's not surprising that Singaporeans have taken the bait. After the Atto 3, the Sealion 7 looks set to be BYD's next greatest hit. [[nid:712410]] No part of this article can be reproduced without permission from AsiaOne.
AsiaOne
4 hours ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
South Korea's ex-President Yoon probed over failed martial law bid, World News
SEOUL - South Korea's former President Yoon Suk Yeol answered a summons on Saturday (June 28) by a special prosecutor under a threat of another arrest as an investigation intensified over the ousted leader's failed bid to impose martial law in December. Yoon, through his lawyers, has protested the special prosecutor's demands to appear for questioning under media attention as a violation of his rights and a tactic to publicly humiliate him. His lawyers said in a statement Yoon would respond to the investigation on Saturday and tell the truth. They described the investigation as "politically motivated" and "full of falsehood and distortion". Yoon did not answer questions from reporters as he entered the special prosecutor's office. The martial law attempt in December shocked a country that had prided itself on becoming a thriving democracy, having overcome military dictatorship in the 1980s. Yoon was later oustered in April by the Constitutional Court that upheld his impeachment by parliament. [[nid:719460]] The special prosecutor sought a warrant to arrest Yoon for refusing to answer repeated summons earlier, but it was rejected by a court this week on grounds that he has since expressed willingness to co-operate. The special prosecutor was appointed in early June and has launched a team of more than 200 prosecutors and investigators to take over ongoing investigations of Yoon, a former top prosecutor who was elected president in 2022. Yoon is already on trial for leading the December 3 martial law declaration. He had been arrested in January after resisting authorities armed with a court warrant trying to take him into custody, but was released after 52 days on legal technicalities.
AsiaOne
4 hours ago
- Business
- AsiaOne
Trump dismisses reports US is weighing up to $38 billion civilian nuclear deal for Iran, World News
WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump on Friday (June 27) dismissed media reports that said his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion (S$38 billion) to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear programme. CNN reported on Thursday and NBC News reported on Friday that the Trump administration in recent days had explored possible economic incentives for Iran in return for its government halting uranium enrichment. The reports cited sources. CNN cited officials as saying that several proposals were floated and were preliminary. "Who in the Fake News Media is the SleazeBag saying that 'President Trump wants to give Iran $30 Billion to build non-military Nuclear facilities.' Never heard of this ridiculous idea," Trump wrote on Truth Social late on Friday, calling the reports a "Hoax." Since April, Iran and the US have held indirect talks aimed at finding a new diplomatic solution regarding Iran's nuclear programme. Tehran says its programme is peaceful and Washington says it wants to ensure Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon. Trump, earlier this week, announced a ceasefire between US ally Israel and its regional rival Iran to halt a war that began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran. The Israel-Iran conflict had raised alarms in a region already on edge since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023. The US struck Iran's nuclear sites over the last weekend and Iran targeted a US base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation, before Trump announced the ceasefire. [[nid:719354]] Israel is the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons and said its war against Iran aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not. The UN nuclear watchdog, which carries out inspections in Iran, has said it has "no credible indication" of an active, coordinated weapons programme in Iran.
AsiaOne
4 hours ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
Supreme Court in birthright case limits judges' power to block presidential policies, World News
WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday (June 27) in a case involving birthright citizenship by curbing the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, changing the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump's directive restricting birthright citizenship go into effect immediately, directing lower courts that blocked it to reconsider the scope of their orders. The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump's hardline approach toward immigration. The Republican president lauded the ruling and said his administration can now try to move forward with numerous policies such as his birthright citizenship executive order that he said "have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis." "We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House. The court granted the administration's request to narrow the scope of three so-called "universal" injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive nationwide while litigation challenging the policy plays out. The court's conservative justices were in the majority and its liberal members dissented. The ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling. The ruling thus raises the prospect of Trump's order eventually applying in some parts of the country. Federal judges have taken steps including issuing numerous nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda. The three judges in the birthright citizenship litigation found that Trump's order likely violates citizenship language in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. Warning against an "imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote, "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so." Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling a "travesty for the rule of law" as she read a summary of her dissent from the bench. In her written dissent, joined by the court's two other liberal justices, Sotomayor criticised the court's majority for ignoring whether Trump's executive order is constitutional. "Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case," Sotomayor wrote. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually under Trump's directive, according to the plaintiffs who challenged it, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants. The ruling was issued on the final day of decisions on cases argued before the Supreme Court during its nine-month term that began in October. The court also issued rulings on Friday backing a Texas law regarding online pornography, letting parents opt children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read, endorsing the Federal Communications Commission's funding mechanism for expanded phone and broadband internet access and preserving Obamacare's provision on health insurers covering preventive care. 'Monumental victory' Trump called the ruling a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law." The policies Trump said his administration can now attempt to proceed with included cutting off funds to so-called "sanctuary cities," suspending resettlement of refugees in the United States, freezing "unnecessary" federal funding and preventing federal funds from paying for gender-affirming surgeries. [[nid:632424]] The case before the Supreme Court was unusual in that the administration used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue "universal" injunctions, and asked the justices to rule that way and enforce the president's directive even without weighing its legal merits. Friday's ruling did not rule out all forms of broad relief. The ruling said judges may provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them. It did not foreclose the possibility that states might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to obtain complete relief. "We decline to take up those arguments in the first instance," wrote Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020. The ruling left untouched the potential for plaintiffs to seek wider relief through class action lawsuits, but that legal mechanism is often harder to successfully mount. In her dissent, Sotomayor said Trump's executive order is obviously unconstitutional. So rather than defend it on the merits, she wrote, the Justice Department "asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone." Sotomayor advised parents of children who would be affected by Trump's order "to file promptly class action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class." Maryland-based US District Judge Deborah Boardman, who previously blocked the order nationwide, scheduled a Monday hearing after immigration rights advocates filed a motion asking her to treat the case as a class action and block the policy nationwide again. "The Supreme Court has now instructed that, in such circumstances, class-wide relief may be appropriate," the lawyers wrote in their motion. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state helped secure the nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Seattle, called Friday's ruling "disappointing on many levels" but stressed that the justices "confirmed that courts may issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties." Universal injunctions have been opposed by presidents of both parties - Republican and Democratic - and can prevent the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, instead of just the individual plaintiffs who sued to challenge the policy. Proponents have said they are an efficient check on presidential overreach, and have stymied actions deemed unlawful by presidents of both parties. 'Illegal and cruel' The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling troubling, but limited, because lawyers can seek additional protections for potentially affected families. "The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "The court's decision to potentially open the door to enforcement is disappointing, but we will do everything in our power to ensure no child is ever subjected to the executive order." The plaintiffs argued that Trump's directive ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. In a June 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 24 per cent of all respondents supported ending birthright citizenship and 52 per cent opposed it. Among Democrats, 5 per cent supported ending it, with 84 per cent opposed. Among Republicans, 43 per cent supported ending it, with 24 per cent opposed. The rest said they were unsure or did not respond to the question. The Supreme Court has handed Trump some important victories on his immigration policies since he returned to office in January. On Monday, it cleared the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In separate decisions on May 30 and May 19, it let the administration end the temporary legal status previously given by the government to hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. But the court on May 16 kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process.
AsiaOne
4 hours ago
- Business
- AsiaOne
Eye care giant Alcon keeps 'lens' on the future with expanded manufacturing and logistics facility in Tuas, Singapore News
Eye care-device giant Alcon officially opened its expanded state-of-the art manufacturing and logistics facility in Tuas Biomedical Park on Friday (June 27) morning. This brings Alcon's investments in Singapore to more than US$600 million (S$765 million) since it began operations in Singapore back in 2005. The completed Tuas facility is one of the Swiss-American firm's largest high-tech manufacturing sites with Industry 4.0 capabilities, advanced automation and smart manufacturing systems to meet the increasing global demand for its contact lenses. Amid a growing middle class and rising demand for quality healthcare, the Asia-Pacific region continues to be the fastest-growing market for medical technology, with its market value projected to reach nearly S$300 billion by 2030. This puts the region second only to the US as a source of demand for medical technology (Medtech). "Singapore is home to some of the world's best-in-class Medtech manufacturing palnts. The sector has been growing steadily, with a manufacturing output of S$19.4 billion in 2023. This marks a $5.2 billion increase over the past decade," said Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling at the opening ceremony of Alcon's expanded facility. Beyond strengthening innovation and supply chain resilience within Singapore's MedTech ecosystem, Alcon's investment is also expected to benefit Singaporean workers and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore. Muhammad Haiqal Bin Sapuan, an associate supervisor at Alcon made the switch from the oil and gas industry, through the Career Conversion Programme (CCP), in 2022 to have more time with his family. A year and a half into his role as a senior technician, he was nominated by his peers to step up as an associate supervisor. [[nid:707984]] "That recognition gave me confidence. I started off as an interim, and it was tough at first, but the team's support made the difference," said Haiqal. To date, nearly 180 Singaporean workers have benefitted from the CCP to become Alcon associates. Alcon's new facility is expected to create new job opportunities in production operations, quality control and supply chain management. It is also expected to strengthen innovation and supply chain resilience within Singapore's Medtech ecosystem through initiatives such as the Partnership for Capability Transformation, which partners local SMEs to buiild capabilities from precision moulding to packaging, helping them to scale and compete globally. [[nid:715407]] editor@
