Can BYD blow away HiLux and the Ranger with an electric ute?

There has been a lot of frothing excitement about BYD bringing this, the first-ever PHEV ute, to market. Prepare to be surprised by what this ‘quiet giant’ has to offer.

Stephen Corby

The BYD Shark is so large that it can swallow humans whole.

3 min read

12:00AMMarch 08, 2025

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Look, obviously, coming up with cool names for new cars is almost impossible, because all the good ones – Triumph Spitfire, Ford Probe, Ferrari LaFerrari, Aston Martin Valkyrie – are taken. Despite this, it was only recently that Jeep came up with the Gladiator, a properly powerful name that it proceeded to attach to a pitifully awful ute.

There are still plenty of weird and stupid names out there, however, and when a car company wheels one out – the Ora Funky Cat for example – it is like a siren song to me, as a person who revels in ridicule.

As such, I’ve been closely watching the work of BYD – a company with an entirely silly name, Build Your Dreams, that it strangely hides behind an anodyne acronym – with great interest. The world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles (eclipsing Tesla late last year, and likely to accelerate away as Elon Musk sets fire to his brand) has gone for a theme with its nomenclature, which seems to be “Things That Eat Fish”. So we have the amusingly titled BYD Sealion, plus the Seal, Dolphin, Seagull (and I thought they only liked chips) and today’s topic, the Shark, which is so large that it can swallow humans whole. BYD has obviously been keeping an eye on me, too, because it had resisted loaning me any cars until this hulking PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) turned up.

There has been a lot of frothing excitement about BYD bringing this, the first-ever PHEV ute, to market.

Now, my position on utes is normally as far away from them as I can get, but slightly more than one in five of all new vehicles bought in Australia last year were what I still insist on calling pick-up trucks (the proper, Aussie ute died when Ford and Holden stopped making them locally) and there has been a lot of frothing excitement about BYD bringing this, the first-ever PHEV ute, to market.

In the metal, it looks a lot like they stole the designs for the Ford Ranger and hoped no one would care, but on paper it looks mighty impressive, thanks to the use of two electric motors, one on each axle, in concert with a 30kWh battery and a 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine, which you never need to use at all, theoretically, unless you need to drive further than its claimed 100km EV-only range.

This hybrid system produces a very impressive 321kW and 650Nm, making this the most powerful pick-up in its segment, and also the fastest, with a zesty zero to 100km/h time of 5.7 seconds.

My initial impression was frustration, because I couldn’t work out where the Start button was (it’s hidden beneath the gear lever, in a bevy of buttons that seem designed to look like Thanos’s jewelled fist), followed by bafflement. I don’t know why, but I found it very hard to get used to an entirely silent ute, perhaps because they normally cough and splutter like a heavy smoker in a sauna. In a whole week of driving, I never heard the engine kick in once, and I must say I found the quiet giant quite pleasant.

Inside the BYD Shark 6 plug-in hybrid ute.

With the two electric motors whirring away, it also felt unusually powerful and thrusty for a pick-up truck, although I’m reliably informed that the Shark is a bit of a guppy when it comes to towing big things (the braked capacity is just 2.5 tonnes). A proper man would point out that its hauling capacity is just 790kg, which is a lot less than a “one-tonne”, mate.

What I instantly liked most of all, however, was the steering, which feels properly calibrated, muscular and accurate in feedback; it can even be adjusted if you like a slightly sleepier feel, via the giant touchscreen, which can also show you which power sources you’re using and how close you’re getting to the unfeasible-sounding claimed fuel economy figure of two litres per 100km.

What’s not in doubt is that you’ll use a lot less fuel in a Shark than you would in its obvious and shockingly popular competitors, the Ranger and Toyota’s HiLux, both of which BYD has undercut on price, in terms of comparable models, by charging just $57,900 for its PHEV pick-up.

While I found the great big white Shark alarming to look at, just because it’s so colossal and I really don’t like any utes, I was surprised by how many strangers approached me to ask whether it was fully electric (clearly BYD has defined itself quickly as an EV brand in our market) and to tell me how much they loved its design.

Clearly, this Shark could be a game changer in what is a thriving market, but personally I am even more excited about what’s to come from BYD. I’m hoping they bring us a Narwhal (because my wife doesn’t believe they exist) and a vast people-carrier called the BYD Humpback Whale. And talking of things that eat fish, if they don’t call one of their cars the Grizzly Bear, I’ll be very grizzly indeed.