2025 BYD Shark 6 review

It's the ute from China that has disrupted one of our most competitive and popular segments, landing with big sales and setting tongues wagging. The 2025 BYD Shark 6 is also the first plug-in hybrid ute for the Australian market, which puts it in stark contrast with the convention and dominance of diesel power.

Instead, we've got a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine that plays second fiddle to twin electric motors and a hefty 29.6kWh centrally-mounted battery. This means there are no traditional 4x4 ingredients like differentials, transfer cases and live axles. The petrol engine can power the front wheels directly, but is that going to hold the Shark 6 back off-road?

Can a BYD Shark 6 do everything that a regular 4x4 ute can do? What are the advantages and where are the pitfalls? Should you consider one? We know that many are considering the Shark 6 as a first-ever ute or a replacement for their current steed. Let's get into it.

For those who do want to get into a Shark 6, the only other thing they really need to think about is colour (and there aren't many of those either). There are no range trim levels to worry about, and the single offering comes with an impressive range of standard kit for the $57,900 plus on-road costs asking price.

When you compare this fact alone against what similar money gets you in a D-Max, HiLux or Ranger, the value-for-money quotient in the Shark 6 is mighty impressive.

Along with the rotating 15.6-inch infotainment display, we've got a head-up display, 10.25-inch digital instrument cluster and 360-degree camera system. The seats have heating and ventilation, with eight ways of electric adjustment for the driver and four for the front passenger. The seats themselves are quite comfortable and supportive, and the tilt-and-reach adjustment through the steering column allows the driver to dial themselves in well.

There are also LED headlights and tail-lights, keyless entry and push-button start, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, dual-zone climate control and a 12-speaker Dynaudio sound system. In other words, the Shark 6 is specced as good as, or better than, most top-spec utes that land at a much higher price.

BYD dealerships are popping up around the country, so follow this link to see if there is one near you and organise a test drive or see what kind of deals might be available. At the time of writing this review, there was a finance offer available on the vehicle that could be worth considering.

One thing to note about the Shark 6 is the size of the vehicle. It's relatively large for the segment, and outstrips the Ford Ranger for length, width and height. It's certainly got some boxy presence, but the interior of the Shark 6 benefits with plenty of interior space.

Up front, it's mostly dark-coloured materials with a few splashes of coppery orange to break things up. The materials feel good, and the build quality appears to be solid also.

Even though we have a big ol' rotating infotainment display mounted proudly in the centre of the dashboard, the Shark 6 still has a handful of chunky physical buttons for some of the important controls around the chunky gear shifter.

The wireless charging pad in front of the gear shifter is handy for storing your bits and bobs, and the nook in front of the passenger is surprisingly useful for storing stuff as well. The centre console is big, and this is where you'll find your USB and 12V power outlets. So, from a practicality and everyday usage point of view, the Shark 6 impresses.

The second row of the Shark 6 benefits mostly from the amount of interior space on offer, which is an important thing for those who want to employ this vehicle as a family car. There's plenty of leg room and head room on offer, and the seats are relatively comfortable for a ute.

Visibility is hampered by the bulky, sports-style seats in front, but you can't really complain about the amount of space on offer. There are air vents for the rear occupants, as well as two USB-A power outlets and a 240V household plug. There's also a drop-down armrest with cupholders, as well as map pockets and room for storing bottles in the doors.

In the tub, you've got a little bit less space than what is available in a Ranger or HiLux, which tells me that BYD has actively prioritised interior space over load-lugging acreage. Keep in mind, we have a relatively lithe payload here of 790kg, and the amount of space on offer in the tub (which is already protected with a tub liner) would be enough for most users.

In here, you'll find three household plugs, which are powered from that battery and all have 10 amps of available output. There are also tie-down points and lights in the back, along with a lockable tailgate.

The Shark 6's 15.6-inch infotainment system – which has the trademark BYD rotating trick – runs a familiar Android-based operating system that works well and is well featured. It operates well, and has plenty of cool tricks (including karaoke) for users to dig through.

Unfortunately, though, the USB microphone that BYD offers in other markets isn't available through official channels in Australia yet. This may change in the future, but those who want to go all-out on Livin' on a Prayer will need to source one from the aftermarket.

This system supports wired and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as native navigation, digital radio and AM/FM reception.

There's also a BYD app, which allows owners to have a range of functions like remote locking and unlocking, climate controls, vehicle location and charging status.

Coming with a 2025 five-star ANCAP rating, the BYD Shark 6 has impressive safety credentials.

This includes an 85 per cent rating for adult occupants and 87 per cent rating for child occupants, while vulnerable road users (pedestrians) get a lower 74 per cent score. The Shark 6's onboard safety systems – including things like autonomous emergency braking and lane-keep assistance – get an 86 per cent score.

The Shark 6 has plenty of active safety equipment loaded in, befitting what you would expect from this increasingly dominant Chinese brand. There is autonomous emergency braking, and rear cross-traffic alert also includes an autonomous braking function. Blind-spot monitoring doesn't have any assistance beyond the warning, but it seems well tuned for most conditions.

Adaptive cruise control works well for urban driving, but the driver monitoring system – which operates via cameras mounted on the A-pillar – can be a bit overactive at times, in warning the driver for drowsiness and inattention.

While running costs in terms of fuel consumption could be quite low for the Shark 6 – especially if you're able to charge the battery off cheap electricity whenever possible – servicing costs don't follow the same script. Three years of servicing, which gets you 60,000km of distance covered, costs $1215 for an average of $405 per year.

The expensive fourth service makes for a taller average after five years, with $2489 balancing out at $498 per year on average.

For those who want the peace of mind of a long capped-price servicing schedule, BYD offers clarity on this up to 11 years and 220,000km.

And after all that time and kilometres, you're looking at $6077 or $552 per year on average. Although, this wouldn't be an absolutely exhaustive figure, and you will likely have other maintenance, consumables and parts replacement costs in that time.

Insurance for a BYD Shark 6 is set at $2213.47 per year, according to an online comprehensive quote generator. This is a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.

The 29.6kWh battery pack in the Shark 6 offers a claimed 80km of electric-only driving range, which could be enough for the daily commute for many Australian buyers without the need to burn a drop of unleaded petrol. And from our testing, 80km of EV range in the BYD Shark 6 is achievable.

It's worth noting that this is a number that has trended downwards from 100km in previous statements from BYD, and this is for good reason. While the hardware hasn't changed, the software has. The vehicle effectively now blocks itself from using the last 25 per cent of battery capacity, switching from EV mode and sticking into hybrid 'HEV' mode to maintain a minimum level.

This means you can't use all of your battery in one go, and will start burning fuel after around 80km. But it also means you've got a useful reserve of power available, and can draw upon those muscular twin electric motors and not depend upon the weedier petrol powerplant.

This is the next thing to consider. Of course, the Shark 6 is capable of consuming as little as zero litres per 100 kilometres for a time and depending on how often the battery gets recharged.

However, what about fuel efficiency when the battery is drained down to that 25 per cent minimum? In our testing, we saw around 8.5/100km consumed, which is pretty good and is on par with what most other utes (albeit with diesel power) would achieve.

When towing around the maximum permissible weight, however, it's a different story. When towing with a 2.1-tonne pop-top camper trailer and otherwise loaded up close to the permissible gross combination mass of 5750kg, fuel consumption effectively doubled to around 17L/100km. This is a significantly bigger jump in the drink compared to what you would expect from a diesel-powered ute.

From the perspective of being a dual-cab ute, the BYD Shark 6 is impressively fast and refined. Big combined outputs – which feel particularly potent from a standing start – give the Shark 6 enough acceleration to beat a twin-turbocharged V6 Ranger Raptor. Combined outputs are a healthy 321kW and 650Nm, don't forget.

And when you consider the price of the car, it only gets more alluring. The drivetrain is certainly EV-first, giving the twin electric motors the lead job of motivation.

This means – compared to diesel-powered utes – the torque comes on smoothly and quietly, which is very non-diesel like. For cruising around town and with the occasional highway run, spending time behind the wheel of the Shark 6 certainly has its appeal.

However, getting up to highway speeds does dull the kind of shove the electric motors can provide, and also brings the 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine into play more and more. Now, you can select EV-only mode, but keeping HEV (hybrid, in other words) uses petrol power at highway speeds because sustained highway driving will rip through the battery at a very fast pace.

The ride quality of the Shark 6 is a little disappointing, because there is a familiar firmness and bobbling that can happen across rough surfaces, which is not dissimilar to other utes in the segment. Yes, this is a ute as well. But it's also a ute with independent suspension all round, a long wheelbase and a relatively low payload. However, this tends to ride similarly to a leaf-sprung ute with a one-tonne payload.

Once you're loaded up with some heft in the back – like we did with 650kg from our favourite landscape supplier – that ride quality does improve noticeably. The steering stays in touch well enough and performance isn't too blighted by the additional weight.

Having independent suspension – and with a coil spring in between the chassis and meaty lower control arm – means there is little chance for bottoming out around town, even though there was a bit of noticeable sag in the rear end.

What's most disappointing about the BYD Shark 6 is the off-road performance. It's way off the pace of what you would expect in a four-wheel-drive ute, and it failed to ascend one of our favourite test hill climbs. In fact, it began going backwards at times, despite me having my foot buried into the firewall.

It seems the electric motors cannot provide enough torque to the wheels in a steep and rutted off-road climb, which means the vehicle goes nowhere fast. It's a problem made worse by the weight of the Shark 6, and the fact that the independent suspension doesn't offer much in the way of articulation and stability.

It's worth pointing out that I tried all of the different drive modes available, but none allowed forward progress on our test hill.

And when you hit pause and engage the park brake, you're told by the vehicle "insufficient parking brake, sliding risk". So, you need to get onto a flat area before leaving the vehicle.

While some of us might extol the possible virtues of a fully-electric off-roader, the BYD Shark 6 has unfortunately showed some of the engineering challenges that exist. It also shows why a low-range transfer case – which multiplies the torque to the wheels through reduction gearing – has worked so well for decades.

Firstly, the 2500kg braked towing capacity of the Shark 6 means it's not in the same class as most other utes out there. Similarly to having fast acceleration times, one ute that the Shark 6 matches for towing capacity is the Ford Ranger Raptor.

Here are some additional numbers: along with a 2500kg braked towing capacity, the BYD Shark 6 has a 3500kg gross vehicle mass, 790kg payload and 5750kg gross combination mass.

And for the real rivet-counters out there, the front and rear axle load capacities are 1651kg and 1927kg apiece.

So, we put the Shark 6 to the test. Using a hybrid pop-top caravan from Cub Campers, we filled up the water tanks and loaded the storage to take the 1.8-tonne trailer up to around 2.1 tonnes. Then, I scrounged around amongst all of the stuff in our garage (the stuff my wife calls junk) to fill the cabin and tub to around 3.4 tonnes of vehicle weight (including ball weight).

Why did I do this? Because we rarely go camping alone, and I wanted to re-create the weight of a family holiday or camping adventure.

Now, to be clear, this could have been worse. I could have made the trailer heavier, and the pop-top design of the Cub F14 hybrid van (which towed wonderfully, by the way) provided less wind resistance than what you'd get with a full-bodied caravan.

One thing that works in the Shark 6's favour for towing is the software. The second your trailer loom is plugged into the vehicle, the engine switches on and doesn't turn off until the battery is charged up to 70 per cent.

So even when you're driving with around 5.2 tonnes of combined mass through traffic and the suburbs, the battery is able to to be charged up by the petrol engine.

Once you're on the highway, it was only on some long and steep sections of highway – sitting on 100km/h – that we saw the battery percentage start going backwards. It dropped from 70 per cent to 64 per cent at one stage, while the petrol engine was thrashing as hard as it could under the bonnet.

But once we got to the top of the hill, the battery percentage starting creeping upwards once again.

It's conceivable that in some situations – where the demand for torque consistently outstrips what the 1.5-litre petrol engine can provide – that you could run the battery down enough to get significantly downgraded performance. But it would be rare to happen in the real world to find a hill that is long and steep enough to not give the car a recharging breather.

And if you're towing a heavier and larger trailer on a hotter day, that possibility increases.

Performance feels laggy through the throttle, as if the car is resisting providing full thrust as much as possible at highway speeds, and fuel consumption shoots up quite considerably. The suspension felt fine, but the steering did start to feel a little bit light with this much weight. We had a 240kg ball weight during testing and a tub loaded up to just within the rear-axle load capacity.

Don't buy a BYD Shark 6 if you're keen on doing regular and challenging off-roading, because you'll be bitterly disappointed. We've all seen the Beer O'Clock Hill videos I'm sure, but even the odd occasional challenge on the way to your favourite off-road camping destination could prove to be a problem in the Shark 6.

Think of it as more of a soft-roader, in a similar vein to a Subaru Forester or Toyota RAV4. Not a real HiLux or Ranger competitor in terms of off-road ability.

And while the Shark 6 showed it was able to tow a heavy load along the highway without any problems, it's also not highly recommended in this regard. Fuel consumption surges, and the powertrain gets noticeably thrashy and laggy at highway speeds.

But, there is still a lot to like about BYD's Shark 6 in terms of performance, value and driving refinement. However, the shortcomings mean this is the ute you buy when, and let's all really be honest with ourselves here, you don't really need a ute.

If you look at it from that point of view, then it provides class-leading value for money, plenty of space for the family, and impressive performance.

Sam Purcell has been writing about cars, four-wheel driving and camping since 2013, and obsessed with anything that goes brum-brum longer than he can remember. Sam joined the team at CarAdvice/Drive as the off-road Editor in 2018, after cutting his teeth at Unsealed 4X4 and Pat Callinan’s 4X4 Adventures. Off-road writer of the Year, Winner - Sam Purcell

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