A BYD Sealion 7 test vehicle has been photographed in Markham, Ontario, the first local sighting of that model, according to images that surfaced on Chinese social media this week and were shared among Canadian EV watchers online.The car appeared just weeks after a Sealion 7 was seen parked alongside a Fangchengbao Ti7 at a Montreal hotel, and it joins a Sealion 6 spotted earlier with its badges taped over near BYD's Canadian head office in Markham.The Sealion 7 test vehicle photographed in an underground parking garage in Markham, Ontario, September 2026 (Reddit/r-EVCanada)The mix of vehicles is notable. The Sealion 7 is currently an export-only model that BYD (HKG: 1211) already sells in Europe and Australia and New Zealand, while the Sealion 6 has so far been exclusive to the Chinese domestic market, and the Fangchengbao Ti7 has only been sold in China and exported to Southeast Asia.Testing all three in Canada at once suggests BYD has not settled on a final lineup, and that its eventual Canadian range could look different from what it sells elsewhere. On the Reddit thread where the Markham photo circulated, Canadian EV shoppers speculated instead about the Atto 3, Dolphin and Seal, models that have not yet turned up in any spotting despite being the ones BYD is already cleared to import. None of the three spotted vehicles line up with the models BYD has already cleared to import. The automaker is listed in Transport Canada's Appendix G pre-clearance registry, which lets a foreign manufacturer's compliant vehicles skip case-by-case review at the border, for two plants: a Shenzhen facility covering the Dolphin, Seal, Atto 3 and Seagull, and a Xi'an facility.That approval predates a 2025 freeze on new passenger-vehicle applications, giving BYD a regulatory head start most other Chinese brands still lack. The Sealion 7, Sealion 6 and Ti7 sightings point instead to smaller-volume evaluation imports still working through case-by-case approval, separate from that existing clearance.The regulatory door swung open after Ottawa and Beijing struck a trade agreement disclosed in January 2026, which replaced Canada's 100 percent surtax on Chinese-made EVs with a 6.1 percent tariff under an annual import quota. The quota allows up to 49,000 electrified vehicles into Canada in its first year, split into two 24,500-vehicle windows running from March to August 2026 and September 2026 to February 2027, with permits issued first-come, first-served through Global Affairs Canada.Eligibility extends beyond Chinese-badged brands to any automaker building electrified vehicles in China, a list that includes Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Polestar and Volvo alongside BYD, Geely and Chery, and Tesla has already begun bringing in Shanghai-built Model 3s under the same quota. None of the 49,000 vehicles are required to be priced under $35,000 in year one; that affordability threshold only begins to phase in from year two onward, rising from 10 percent of imports to 50 percent by year five, and even then it is measured against the import price rather than the sticker price, leaving room for automakers to mark vehicles up substantially at retail without breaching the rule. Vehicles built in China are also ineligible for the federal Electric Vehicle Affordability Program's $5,000 incentive, a gap that will weigh on how competitively BYD can price whatever it eventually sells here.Distribution plans are further along than the model lineup. Farid Ahmad, chief executive of Dealer Solutions Mergers & Acquisitions, the firm working on BYD's Canadian retail footprint, has said his company is "in active talks with three separate locations." Reporting corroborated by the Globe and Mail and Bloomberg points to a target of roughly 20 dealerships in BYD's first year, starting in the Greater Toronto Area before expanding to Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. In August 2026, BYD's Canadian website added a "coming soon" banner and eleven job postings, a sign of hiring activity ahead of any public launch date. What is still missing is anything official on pricing, specific models or a launch date, and a misinformation episode in May 2026 illustrates why that gap matters. A fake account impersonating a BYD executive claimed the company would open 20 dealerships across four cities in late 2026 and launch a Seagull priced at $25,000, details that one outlet republished and then retracted after the account was exposed as an imposter.BYD's own statement afterward said the company "has not announced, approved, or confirmed any plans to launch passenger vehicles in Canada." The broader outline of dealership-building and market preparation held up, but the specific figures did not, and no confirmed Canadian pricing exists for any model as of this writing.The pattern across these sightings also lines up with how BYD has entered other markets. In Australia, the company began selling in 2022 but did not bring its Dolphin hatchback to that market until roughly a year later, rolling out models gradually rather than launching a full lineup at once. If Canada follows a similar sequence, the vehicles now being road-tested under wraps may say more about what BYD is evaluating than about what will actually reach a dealer lot first, or in what order.Taken together, the picture is of a company doing real groundwork, official clearance for one set of models, a dealer network being assembled city by city, hiring underway, while still testing an entirely different set of vehicles on Canadian roads under wraps. Whether the Sealion 7, Sealion 6 or Ti7 ultimately reach Canadian showrooms, or whether BYD instead leads with the already-cleared Atto 3, Dolphin and Seal, remains an open question that only an official announcement will settle.
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