The colour’s fittingly called ‘Deep Sea Blue’. Photo: James Coleman.
LDV was the first car company to bring an electric ute to Australia with the eT60 in 2022, and there’s probably a reason you haven’t heard much about it ever since – it had a range of “up to 330 km” but if you put anything more than a hammer in the back, that would drop to about 2 km.
The Ford F150 Lightning is another recent option, but by the time it’s imported from the US and the steering wheel is mounted on the correct side for our roads by a Queensland-based company called AusEV, you’re paying an eye-watering $196,000-plus.
The Extended Range model can apparently go 515 km, but if you plan on maxing out its 4500 kg towing capacity, expect half that.
Scott Morrison was put down repeatedly for once saying EVs would “ruin the weekend”, but it turns out that if the EV in question is towing anything, he’s still right.
BYD realised this, which is why, for their ute, the Chinese brand decided it was best to go down the plug-in hybrid route. And they’ve been proven dead right.
As with anything made by BYD, the Shark 6 is raking in sales at the moment (once it got over a little issue at the Melbourne port earlier this year). The BYD “experience centre” in Belconnen is shifting an average of 100 a month since it arrived in October last year.
This sheer popularity means it’s taken a while for staff to spare me one to try out, but finally, I was allotted a little over 24 hours in one.
To make things easy, there is one model – the Premium – and it costs from $57,900. Already, that’s a sharp start when a mid-range Ford Ranger XLT is around $60 K.
It looks good too, with similar squared-off lights to the Ranger, a boxy shape and muscly haunches. The BYD bit is also strongly advertised – back and front – but make sure you run away before anyone asks what it stands for. Any testosterone the looks might have lent you tends to evaporate when you say “Build Your Dreams”.
Everything inside is very sturdy too, and the ‘Outback Orange’ pieces are very pleasant in a ute landscape where cabins are normally barren wildernesses of black plastic. I didn’t understand half of the graphics and acronyms that clutter the info screen, but the stuff you want to know is easy enough to find.
And no, there is no rev counter.
It could be said that the Shark works more like Top Gear‘s similarly named homemade hybrid car, the ‘Hammerhead Eagle iThrust’, except obviously nowhere near as rubbish. The 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine is basically there purely as a generator, keeping the battery topped up.
It can also chip in to help the front wheels when needed, but most of the time, the electric motors – one for each pair of wheels – are the only things actually moving you.
Next to the orange start button in a series of buttons shaped like LEGO bricks – again, brilliant – is one that changes the drivetrain from hybrid to full EV. BYD claims a pure electric range of up to 100 km, but with dinosaur juice exploding under the bonnet, as a hybrid, owners score a total range of 800 km.
As a bonus for tradies, BYD says you can plug a cable into the charging port and run your power tools off the battery when you get to your jobsite.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any time for jack-hammering during my brief loan, but what I can tell you is that, around town, I’ve never been in something so high off the ground and also so eerily quiet since I rode in a hot-air balloon. Except in this case, the roar of the gas burner is little more than the occasional and distant hum of the engine.
It turns corners with surprising sharpness, too, and yes, the ride is jiggly enough to speed up digestion, but I don’t want to judge it too harshly on this, given I had the combined weight of my backpack and jumper in the back seat.
It’s faster than a Ford Ranger Raptor to 100 km/h, too – BYD claims the task will take 5.7 seconds.
But this is all on-road. What about off it?
Diesels are known for a lot of clattery noises and low-down grunt and not a lot else – it’s what makes them perfect for towing caravans and rock climbing and towing caravans while rock climbing. So I wasn’t sure how what is basically an EV would go. And one without any diff locks.
And to be fair, I still don’t. But my jaunt along some rutted fire trails in the Cotter Reserve proved that – apart from some tyre scrambling up hills in ‘Normal’ mode, fixed immediately by changing to ‘Mountain’ – I’ve completed more challenging blinks.
However, this brings us back to towing capacity, which is still down on its rivals by about a tonne – 2500 kg braked, compared to the Ranger’s 3500 kg.
But unlike previous electric utes, you’d actually seriously consider taking your caravan to the coast with a Shark.
Photo: James Coleman.
2025 BYD Shark 6 Premium
- $57,990 (plus on-road costs)
- 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine, two electric motors, 29.58 kWh battery, 321 kW / 650 Nm
- Automatic, all-wheel drive (AWD)
- 2 litres per 100 km claimed fuel consumption, 800 km claimed range
- 0-100 km/h in 5.7 seconds
- 2710 kg
- 5-star ANCAP safety rating.
Thanks to BYD Experience Centre Canberra for providing this vehicle for testing. Region has no commercial relationship with BYD.
Original Article published by James Coleman on Region Canberra.
