It’s the Shark 6 DMO again, huh? Did BYD let you drive the pickup more this time?
It sure did. BYD Cars Philippines and ACMobility recently took us on a long out-of-town road trip with its new hybrid truck. From Quezon City, we drove all the way to Alviera in Porac, Pampanga to play with the truck.
We then stayed in Clark overnight, before embarking on a journey around Daang Kalikasan where we were really able to test the pickup even further.
How is the BYD Shark 6 DMO like on long open roads?
I never thought I’d say this, but the Shark 6 DMO is a good road-trip companion. If you’re only seating four people, it might even be one of the most ideal ones for you out there.
It’s comfortable on the highway. It’s not plush like a premium SUV, but it feels like a luxury sedan compared to other pickups—especially the Chinese ones. The Shark 6 DMO is planted on asphalt roads, and it eats up any and all minor imperfections along the way. There’s still some bounce with the suspension when you hit bigger bumps, but for the most part, it’s really comfortable.
Would you say it’s as comfortable as a Ford Ranger Raptor?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. While I was able to recently try out Ford’s popular performance pickup, I’ll still need a side-by-side comparo to see which has the better ride. But one thing’s for sure, the BYD has more room in the second row.
‘Roomy’ isn’t exactly a word we throw around with pickups.
The Shark 6 DMO is a different kind of animal—no pun intended—mind you. With the battery integrated into the chassis and the lack of a drivetrain tunnel in the middle, there’s heaps of space in the second row. Three people won’t have a problem fitting in the back. In our case, Top Gear Philippines videographer Aaron Pagador was with me in the backseat, and even if we had a lot of bags in between us, our time as rear passengers was still quite pleasant.
I see. But were you able to take the BYD Shark 6 DMO off-road?
Like I said, we were able to play with the pickup in Pampanga, and by that I meant off-road. We had time to drive and shoot it around Alviera, and that included a drive through some light trails. Before you ask any follow-up questions, I’ll go ahead and share our experience with it.
The Shark 6 DMO doesn’t feel harsh at all when taken off-road. In fact, it feels too smooth that it already feels…weird. You’ll feel the rough terrain underneath you, of course, but the lack of vibration when you press on the pedal feels very unnatural when driving off-road. We even tried doing donuts on some dirt, and it felt even weirder. I’m used to the ‘response’ a loud turbodiesel engine gives you, so the experience with the Shark 6 DMO was very foreign for me.
Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s a capable off-roader. More than capable. It has almost all the tools you’ll need when driving off the beaten path. There’s a 360-degree camera that lets you see what’s under the hood, making it a bit easier to navigate through ruts, rocks, and loose soil. There’s also hill-descent control that’s so intuitive to use and very handy when crawling downhill. We were able to test all of those through a light trail around Alviera.
But I said “almost,” and that’s because there’s no low-range transfer case. Sure, the computers onboard did all the work for me when I drove off-road—I even stuck to Eco mode on a trail—but the lack of a transfer case could be a deal-breaker for hardcore off-roaders. That just means you’ll have all 430hp and 650Nm of torque on tap at all times, without the option to manually adjust gear ratios and torque distribution for steep climbs, rock-crawling, or tricky downhill sections.
That sounds like a huge deal breaker.
Well, that’s the thing—most of the customer base won’t be hardcore off-roaders anyway. We’ve already lost count of all the mall crawlers dressed to the nines that we see in the metro, and that’s probably where most of the sales of the Shark will come from. And for them, they most likely aren’t that technical and probably won’t care much.
But that’s not a knock on the pickup nor on BYD Cars Philippines. Not even on the customers who’ll eventually buy this and never take the truck off-road. See, the Shark 6 DMO is a complete pickup for the regular customer. A no-frills truck that’s comfy and not too big of a headache in the city but can go anywhere when necessary—heck, it can even get through the occasional Metro Manila floods if need be.
Complete, eh? Please elaborate.
Like I said earlier, it’s almost like the ideal road-trip companion. After playtime around Alviera, we took the BYD Shark 6 DMO to Daang Kalikasan the following day. It was a few hundred kilometers, yet we barely used up any fuel. ACMobility had our pickups charged up before we took off on the second day of our drive, and the full charge took us well over the estimated range of 100km before the engine had to start up and use up gas. Heck, the range on the instrument cluster only went down by a bit even after a long morning drive. That’s not something you’ll find in any other pickup in the market right now.
And when we got to Daang Kalikasan, it was the perfect use-case simulation. It was all cemented roads until we got nearer our lunch stop along a river. We had to shift almost instantaneously from paved roads to a rocky trail as we went downhill from the mountain’s viewdeck, but we didn’t even need to press anything at all. In my case, I used hill-descent control just for the sake of it, but I still could’ve gone through without it. It’s nice to have, I tell you.
It’s that easy to change terrains with the Shark 6, and I’m sure the majority of would-be buyers will appreciate that. Oh, and we also got a flat in the middle of the trail, and it was a huge bonus to have a spare tire available. It wasn’t easy to change the tire because this was still a pickup, and it was good thing we had the Ramirez & Cutter crew help us out for that, but it’s great to have a spare nonetheless.
As another bonus, the Shark 6 DMO even has V2L capabilities, so it can even double as a power source. This was in full display with the Overland Kings setup along the river. That’s also something a lot of would-be owners will find handy, regardless of whether or not they like exploring the great outdoors.
After all that, how was your overall fuel economy, then?
That’s the problem…I wasn’t able to check it completely. And there lies one of the problems. BYD’s instrument cluster is fully digital and is nice and all that, but it isn’t the most user-friendly. It isn’t intuitive unlike in other less-advanced and simpler systems, so I wasn’t able to properly reset the trip meters and check for fuel consumption. The fact that we also had to switch drivers every now and then also didn’t help.
But as I mentioned earlier, we were easily able to get more out of the battery than the suggested 100km on a single charge. And when the engine did start up, we only shed off 15km of range after driving more than double the distance, and off-road at that. While I don’t have the kilometers-per-liter figure for you, that should already suggest that the Shark 6 DMO, despite its size, is both battery-efficient and fuel-efficient when you’re easy on the throttle.
Okay, let’s wrap it up with a final question: Will it dethrone the most dominant pickups in the market?
The Ranger and Hilux fanboys are loyal to a fault, so probably no. On paper, the Shark 6 DMO might be the better truck, but we’ll have to wait for more local comparisons—perhaps a Big Test—to truly find out which is the best. But that doesn’t mean this won’t be a hit among Filipinos.
We’ve seen BYD’s success over the past year—it’s evident with the sheer number of the brand’s cars on our roads. With a growing fanbase like this, it’s only a matter of time before a capable pickup like the Shark 6 DMO gets the traction it deserves. It’s heaps better than a lot of the pickups in the market right now. So circling back: Dethrone? Probably not. But will it give its competitors a run for their money? Oh, most definitely. Without a doubt.
