I swapped my gas truck for a Chinese hybrid. The BYD Shark is great to drive, but one thing worries me.

This as-told-to effort is based connected a speech with Wayne Dopson, a task manager successful Brisbane, Australia astir owning a BYD Shark hybrid pickup truck. It has been edited for magnitude and clarity.

I've ever been successful the spot market, flipping houses and doing renovations. I person a tiny renovation business, moving connected kitchens, bathrooms, and decks for clients successful Brisbane, which I've been doing for astir 12 years now.

I bought a VW Amarok diesel-powered pickup successful 2015. I wanted to upgrade for a while, but thing came on that took my interest.

Other combustion-engine trucks similar the Ford Ranger were each precise akin to the Amarok. I would person been getting beauteous overmuch the aforesaid car with conscionable a bigger screen, truthful I waited for thing a small spot different.

I bought the BYD Shark hybrid pickup successful March for 64,000 Australian dollars, astir $41,000.

Ford and Toyota are charging ridiculous prices for their pickup trucks, oregon utes successful Australia. You're looking astatine up to 80,000 dollars for thing that is, to me, inferior to what BYD is charging 60,000 for.

I've lone done 2,000 kilometers successful the Shark truthful I'm inactive learning the car, but truthful acold I emotion driving it.

The technology, the power, and the smoothness — it feels decades up of the Amarok.

Luxury and powerfulness connected the cheap

The level of luxury wrong is unthinkable for the money. I've owned Audis and BMWs and it feels conscionable arsenic good, conscionable arsenic coagulated and well-built arsenic a premium car. It besides does 0 to 100km/h successful 5.7 seconds, truthful it drives similar a sports car.

Dopson said the BYD Shark's interior was luxurious. Wayne Dopson

I usage it chiefly for enactment arsenic good arsenic leisure, and determination are a mates of advantages to utilizing it for work.

It costs maine conscionable cents to tally it each day. I've got 30 star panels connected my roof, truthful my energy during the time is free.

I wage 8 cents per kilowatt hr from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m., which is capable clip to complaint the car — it takes betwixt 3 to 4 hours to charge.

If I acceptable the car to complaint astatine midnight, it's done by astir 4 a.m., and it mostly costs little than 2 Australian dollars, oregon $1.03. I'd beryllium utilizing 13 oregon 14 dollars ($8-9) worthy of diesel a time successful the VW Amarok, truthful comparatively it's precise inexpensive to run.

The different vantage is you've got powerfulness outlets successful the backmost of the motortruck that supply astir six kilowatts of power, which you tin usage on-site to powerfulness tools.

The Shark's powerfulness sockets tin beryllium utilized for appliances and tools. Wayne Dopson

It's got a truly large tray with a mates of small tricks up its sleeve. You tin unfastened your tailgate with a speedy property of the key, which is useful if you're walking up with your hands full.

Range is not a problem

The Shark is what they telephone an EREV, oregon extended scope electrical vehicle. It's got 2 electrical motors, astatine the beforehand and rear, and it besides has a 1.5-liter petrol turbo motor that acts arsenic a generator.

The petrol motor means scope anxiousness isn't truly a happening for me.

Generally, I bash little than 100 kilometers a day, which volition beryllium done successful electrical mode, but if I bash privation to spell to the formation oregon further down the coast, I've got the petrol motor close there.

That conscionable kicks successful and charges the artillery and I'm bully to spell for astir 800 kilometers.

The lone happening that would interest maine down the enactment is the resale value. I've already seen that caller vehicles are coming retired from Nissan, Ford, and Great Wall.

The exertion is advancing similar brainsick astatine the moment, truthful my Shark could beryllium reasonably obsolete successful 5 years.

It's got a six-year warranty, and I'm readying to support it for the warranty period. What's it going to beryllium worthy astatine the extremity is anyone's guess.

BYD puts down roots successful Australia

I deliberation having much Chinese EV brands successful Australia is great. We're getting longer warranty periods and amended prime cars.

Dopson uses the Shark for his renovation concern successful Brisbane. Wayne Dopson

Utes are a precise important portion of Australian culture. One of the issues the BYD Shark volition look is that it doesn't person the aforesaid off-roading credentials arsenic a conveyance with a diff fastener — an axle mechanics that you request to crawl implicit rocks and unsmooth terrain.

It's good connected the soil and successful the mud, but erstwhile it comes to truly superior off-roading, wherever you are crawling up immense hills with ruts and boulders, it's going to struggle.

For me, though, the Shark is great. It's a pleasance to drive, and it's bully being capable to thrust astir knowing it's not costing maine and not costing the satellite either.