BYD, one of the worldās fastest-growing automakers, has made a spectacular entry into the market for utes in Australia and laid down an immediate challenge to traditional best-sellers like the Toyota Hilux and Ford Ranger.
The company officially launched the Shark 6 plug-in hybrid ute on Tuesday evening at an event at Mt Gipps station near the iconic mining town of Broken Hill – despite the lingering threat of ongoing blackouts – and announced a price which is well below what many expected – $57,900 before on-roads.
This is much lower than what many expected and the BYD local website went down for nearly 2 hours. That outage left some potential customers a bit disappointed but the website did come back online by 10 pm on the evening.
The Shark includes a 29.58 kWh Ā Blade battery Ā that BYD says provides 100 kilometres of pure electric range, and a total driving range of 800 kilometres offering drivers outstanding fuel efficiency.
āThe Australian car industry has been changed forever,ā said Luke Todd, the head of BYD’s local distributor EVDirect. āAustralians love utes, and they love their SUVs. What weāve delivered is a rugged Aussie-ready ute, with the comfort of an SUV, that drives like a sports car on-road.ā
On top of the pricing, official accessories and care packages with the shark have also been revealed. These include:
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Bars
- Roof Racks
- Cargo Covers
- Weather Protection
- Tint
- Mats
- Seat Covers
- Car Care
These accessories are very timely and will allow many buyers to preconfigure their vehicles to have them fitted on before picking it up.
On the launch night, BYD also offered $500 worth of complimentary accessories for the first 2000 orders.
The online configurator shows this ute currently being available in 3 colours. This includes the Great White, Tidal Black and Deep Sea Blue. The latter two are a $700 option over the Great White.
The Shark 6 ute has been highly anticipated. It has been spotted testing on local roads for around 6 months, including towing caravans and off-road activities.
This ute has been showcased as an āelectric-firstā vehicle as it is equipped with BYDās dual-mode off-road (DM-O) technology. This tech is part of BYDās PHEV models that are geared towards off-roading.
With the DM-O tech underneath, this ute will be offering one of the longest electric-only ranges in its class thanks to a 29.58 kWh BYD blade battery that can deliver an EV-only range of up to 100 km.
Vehicle to load (V2L) is also available, making it possible to charge other equipment when on a work site, camping or just powering a laptop.
The Shark 6 has two electric motors, one on each front and rear axles. The front motor will deliver 170 kW and 310 Nm while the rear motor can output up to 150 kW and 340 Nm.
The same blade battery pack in the ute can also be charged by the uteās 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine.
With this drivetrain, the Shark 6 is equipped with 2.5 tonnes of brake towing capacity.
See our review of the Shark 6 here.
RizĀ is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
Good move by BYD
City folk often think that every trip in regional Australia is 600km, it’s not.
If this is actually used as a Ute on a farm, 100km electric range will be perfect for 1000’s of different tasks. Farmers powering it up with their own Solar will be saving a fortune on diesel every year.
Yeah, butI still want a tray back for the farm. I suspect it will be years before that’s an option (if ever).
Totally agree
Bye bye Toyota
Never thought I’d be excited to see a Hybrid hit our market. This one just seems to make sense on many levels and great that BYD are ambitious and offering better value than the cocky gang that have ruled this space with stinky diesels for too long. Look forward to seeing Hilux and Ranger sales tumbling.
Feels weird getting excited about a hybrid launch but looking forward to the dent it will make in the diesel dominated UTE market.
Vehicles like this are a good reason for PHEVs to retain tax advantages over ICE vehicles. BEV is obviously better for most use cases, but at the moment it’s easy to argue that high capacity (eg. 100km range) PHEVs are better in this class than pure BEVs.
Now if we can only make sure the Utes are actually used by people who actually need them (farmers/tradies etc) instead of suburban run abouts whose tray bed gets used for a single Bunnings trip a year..
Utes and Pickup Trucks already qualify for FBT exemptions. Even the full ICE vehicles unfortunately.
Although this is limited to work-related trips but its usually easy to justify any trip as work-related.
That’s how you launch a new model, price it below the competitors lower than what people expect and watch your website crash. Seriously, well done BYD, although I am concerned about the acceleration times on this beast, 5.7 seconds to 100km/h.
First on the market with ventilated front seats?
Too fast or too slow?
Going by modern diesel utes that are driven hard and fast, the thought of a vehicle this size and weight accelerating that quick is scary. Tesla model 3 is 6.1secs.
It’s the “ute mentality” that I see that is frightening in built up areas. The ones that go fast through or over roundabouts, taking risky moves, tailgating.
I think this is a compelling vehicle, though I would have loved to have seen a space cab-chassis version. Given the Aussie sense of humour, it won’t be long before it’s called a shart even by those who like it.
I’d never buy a BYD.
Their CEO has a different political opinion to me.
I’ll never give them money.
Are they actively destroying an existing democracy?
You really think they have a democracy? Frank Zappa called it: “Politics is the entertainment branch of the military industrial complex”
I see what you did there š
Wheels and tyres as optional accessories?
”
On top of the pricing, official accessories and care packages with the shark have also been revealed. These include:
”
Ah, okay… Sounds like BYD (“Bs, You Dolts”)
IF SAIC stopped treating Australians like faeces, and, lowered the price of their eT60 ute, in Australia, to the less than 40% of the Australian price, for which it is being sold in New Zealand, that would start to eliminate the japanese polluting utes.
And, if Geely pulled its finger out, and brought about 1000 of its RD6 utes to Australia, for sale, that would be the death knell of the ICE utes in australia.
I wonder how much the ICE vehicle companies are paying the ALP to avoid proper emissions regulations and the equivalent of the New Zealand clean cars programme that was scuttled by the drug cartel that took over the government of New Zealand.
I don’t even need to check to know they’re talking about choosing an optional tire set, like swapping out the OEM road tires for off-road ones. If you take a moment to think it through calmly, you might see the clear meaning behind the basic marketing language
ALP is doing their best with the Emissions Reduction. At least they finally got it going with acceptable levels of reduction.
Don’t expect the COALition to even have this scheme – in fact if they get in next election I won’t be surprised if they try to kill it. You should ask how much THEY are being paid to keep ICE on the road, COAL and GAS in the grid, and paying kick-backs to refineries.
Oh yeah, if anyone actually believes they are even serious about building any Nuclear power – I know a Nigerian prince I’d like you to meet.
It will be interesting to see how many people get the Shark and drive it on battery only then realise they wish it had a bigger battery and that they are essentially just dragging a petrol engine, transmission, fuel tank etc around that is barely used but they are paying to maintain. Imo there is no issue with BEV demand, just with the choice of BEV vehicles available. Even the price argument largely goes away when considering total cost of BEV ownership.
PS there may be an opportunity at BYD for a decent IT person that can organise a website with decent capacity.
If there was a small to mid sized ute available with a decent battery capacity (80kWh or more), V2L, and sensible price, it would sell like hell, especially if there was a flat tray option available.
Disappointing. BYD at least could have announced a full EV as well as a hybrid. Hybrids are just a Clayton’s attempt at meeting the problem of emissions and these ‘boys toys’ are just feeding into the SUV and expensive bodywork market.