BYD Shark 6 DMO

Featuring an all-black theme with leather upholstery as standard, the BYD Shark 6 has contrast red accents around the front and rear AC vents and contrast red stitching over the dashboard, door pad inserts, steering wheel and seats. The innovatively designed sports-contoured front seats of the Shark 6 look very inviting, and so do the gloss black touches on the lower centre console.

The cabin of the BYD Shark 6 looks tech-laden with modern full-TFT rectangular screens, with the infotainment system having a rotating feature, like in other BYD offerings. The cabin also has a four-spoke flat-bottomed multi-functional steering wheel, vertically-aligned rectangular AC vents on the dashboard corners and horizontally-aligned rectangular AC vents in the lower centre console, which are positioned above the wireless charging pad.

The transmission tunnel of the BYD Shark 6 has a cockpit-inspired theme and houses a stubby transmission lever and toggle-themed switches for various functions. Adding more premium touches to the cabin are dark chrome-finished inside door handles and a soft-touch finish for the dashboard, door panel inserts and front centre armrest.

Pros and Cons:

Pro: Premium-looking black leather upholstery for the cabin

Con: Upper centre console design looks very simple

Boot Space and Storage

With a deck lid measuring 1,520mm long, 1,500mm wide and 517mm tall, the BYD Shark 6 has enough space to haul your luggage on the go, with it also claiming 1200 litres of deck capacity, 2500 kg of towing capacity and water wading depth of 700mm. 

The in-cabin space management of the BYD Shark 6 is also pretty good, with the pickup truck having a centre console compartment for storage, cup holders in the front centre console and rear centre armrest, bottle holders in all four door panels and a sizeable glovebox. 

Pros and cons:

Pro: Humongous space in the deck 

Con: Storage spaces in the door panels could have been larger

With a length of 5,457mm, a width of 1,971mm and a height of 1,925mm, the BYD Shark 6 has an imposing road presence, which is comparable to the other popular trucks, and in some cases, even better than some of them. There are a few eye-catching design elements of the Shark 6, which immediately catch your attention, but they can indeed be subjective. 

Say, for example, the front profile, which looks pretty bold with the huge BYD lettering in the middle of the front grille. This rectangular-themed grille is quite small in size and has all-black surrounds. The rectangular all-LED headlamps on the sides are surrounded by thick C-shaped LED DRLs, which are joined by another thick LED light bar running over the front grille.

Adding more ruggedness to the front profile is the tough-looking front bumper, which has an all-black plastic finish and features tiny LED fog lamps on the corners and a massive silver skid plate in the middle. The BYD Shark 6 continues its muscular appeal in its side profile, too, where it gets prominent body cladding over its squared wheel arches. The pillars here are blacked out, while the rearview mirrors are heated and electrically adjustable and foldable.

The BYD Shark 6 has a cleaner but distinctive-looking rear profile, with the deck lid also having an LED light bar connecting the vertically-aligned LED tail lamps on the sides. Besides having a rear defogger and spray-on finish for the bedliner as standard, the Shark 6 also has aluminium roof rails and a sports bar in its Premium variant.

Pros and cons:

Pro: Imposing road presence

Cons: Front styling is subjective and not to everyone’s taste

Besides claiming a pure-electric range of 100 km and a full tank range of 800 km, the BYD Shark 6 claims a fuel efficiency of 50 kmpl when the vehicle is driven with a fully charged battery and the electric drive is consistently in operation. However, in the pure gasoline mode, the BYD Shark 6’s fuel efficiency is around 11-12 kmpl.

Pros and cons:

Pro: Impressive fuel efficiency in electric and hybrid driving modes

Con: Pure petrol efficiency could have been more

With its dual-motor setup that has an electric motor at each front and rear, the BYD Shark 6 supports all-wheel drive mode. Equipped with a double wishbone setup for the suspension at both front and rear, the BYD Shark 6 is being offered with three drive modes – Normal, Economy and Sport – and three terrain modes – Mud, Sand and Snow – for a pleasurable driving experience. The turning radius of 6.75 metres is huge and can make manoeuvring the BYD Shark 6 a task in the urban environment. 

Pros and Cons:

Pro: Responsive drive and terrain modes

Con: Huge turning radius

The BYD Shark 6 is solely offered with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, which is a combination of a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, a lithium-iron-phosphate blade battery and a dual-motor setup. Here, the 1.5-litre petrol engine operates as a high-efficiency generator, with the front motor producing 231 PS of power and 310 Nm of torque and the rear motor producing 204 PS of power and 340 Nm of torque. 

The 29.6 kWh LFP blade battery of the BYD Shark 6 has a pure-electric driving range of 100 km, and in the hybrid mode, the entire powertrain claims a maximum driving range of 800 km. With this powertrain, the Shark 6 also claims a top speed of 160 kmph, a 0-100 kmph sprint time of 5.7 seconds, AC charging of 15-100% in 5.2 hours and DC fast charging of 30-80% in 0.4 hours. The powertrain also supports regenerative braking and vehicle-to-load capability, with it offered with a portable charging cable, a 7kWh AC wall-mounted charger and a V2L adapter. 

Pros and cons:

Pro: Impressive power and performance at all speeds

Con: Pure electric range could have been higher

Besides equipping it with a host of comfort and convenience features, BYD has also loaded the Shark 6 with plenty of safety and security features. The standard list of safety features offered in both variants of BYD Shark 6 are six airbags, ISOFIX mounts for child seats, hill hold control, hill descent control, anti-rollover control system, comfort braking, traction control, ABS with EBD and brake assist, auto brake hold, traction control, cruise control, 360-degree parking camera with see-through mode and front and rear parking sensors. 

The BYD Shark 6 is also offered with premium ADAS features exclusively in its Premium variant, the list of which includes adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go function, predictive collision warning, automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, emergency lane keeping assist, rear cross traffic alert, rear cross traffic braking and blind spot detection.

Pros and cons:

Pro: Plenty of conventional and advanced safety features

Con: Display quality of the camera leaves room for improvement 

Competitor Comparison

Besides the BYD Shark 6, the only other plug-in hybrid pickup truck on sale in the Philippines is the Changan Nevo Hunter K50 Reev, which is also priced similarly to it. The other popular pickup trucks on sale, including Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, Nissan Navara, Isuzu D-Max, Mitsubishi Triton and Foton Thunder, are also competitors to the BYD Shark 6. 

Conclusion and Final Verdict

BYD might have been late to the party of the pickup trucks in the Philippines, but it has done a commendable job in taking its time and covering all the grounds with the Shark 6. One of the most advanced pickup trucks on sale, the BYD Shark 6 is high on tech, features and novelty factor, which justifies its premium positioning over other popular diesel-powered trucks.