EVwire brief: Bailiffs acting for Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) reportedly raided BYD's offices in the Netherlands and seized digital records, ahead of a court case over whether BYD's Ti7 SUV copies the Land Rover Defender.
The court-ordered raid took place in August at BYD's offices in Schiedam and Hoofddorp, according to The Sunday Times. JLR reportedly suspects that BYD reverse-engineered some of the technology that could be used in the Ti7, and it wanted to secure the records before they could be destroyed.
A court in The Hague will decide this week whether BYD has a case to answer over allegations that the Ti7 infringes the Defender's intellectual property. Both JLR and BYD declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.
Here’s how the two cars look like:
The Land Rover Defender and the BYD Ti7. Image: EVwire render
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The Ti7 is a seven-seat plug-in hybrid SUV that has drawn comparisons with the Defender since it went on sale in China in September 2025, with Top Gear going as far as calling it a "Chinese Defender clone."
BYD is set to launch the Ti7 in the UK in January at £47,995 (about US$64,300), undercutting the £68,465 (about US$91,700) seven-seat Defender 110 by more than £20,000 (about US$26,800). BYD's UK site describes the Ti7's "unapologetically boxy profile" as a contemporary take on the chunky design SUV buyers like.
The Defender is one of JLR's best sellers, with 29,500 units sold to retail customers between July and September, up from 25,370 a year earlier. This also isn't JLR's first legal fight with a Chinese carmaker over a lookalike. In 2019, it won a case to stop Jiangling Motor Corporation from selling a copycat vehicle after a three-year court battle.
The Land Rover Defender and the BYD Ti7. Image: EVwire render
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Context:
The court case lands during a busy stretch for BYD outside China. Over the weekend, BYD's Yangwang U9 Xtreme set a production car speed record of 503.17 km/h (312.66 mph) at a media event in the UAE, where the company also unveiled its Yangwang Altior luxury sedan and demonstrated a robotic Flash Charger. In Europe, BYD has announced plans to have 100 flash chargers by the end of this year and 3,000 by the end of 2027.
The UK, where the Ti7 is set to arrive, has been one of BYD's fastest-growing markets. BYD passed 100,000 NEV sales in the UK in June, becoming the fastest brand in UK automotive history to reach a 5% market share, helped by a lineup that spans both battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models.
Source: The Guardian, The Sunday Times
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