BYD Shark 6 tested AGAIN: Can it now pass our tests? The results surprised us...

CarExpert

Okay we are back behind the wheel of the BYD Shark one more time. This time around it's a production version of the Shark - compared to the pre-production car we tested last time. We read everybody's feedback and have conducted all of the tests the Shark failed last time another time to see how it fares.  Original detailed BYD Shark 6 review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJWv7iyxhm8 Why the BYD Shark failed our hill climb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4yNSeAt21E BYD Shark 6 vs Ranger Raptor drag race - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcv5z5JmSXo BYD Shark 6 towing test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGjKHYE2k4I Why the BYD Shark 6 failed our towing test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLyn9fKD02w BYD Shark 6 hill angle calculated - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCcXi_OrsHE  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Hill Climb: 02:17 Software Update: 10:19 Trailer Dyne: 11:19 Trailer dyne - economy: 15:29 Trailer dyne - draining the battery: 17:14 Results & Verdict: 20:53  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #byd #shark6 #review

Transcript

00:00G'day, I'm Paul. We're sitting inside the BYD Shark. Today, we're going to redo some of the

00:05tests that this car failed at last time because we were driving a pre-production car. We were

00:10told that was the reason it wasn't able to perform things like our small hill climb on

00:14our light off-road test and also our trailer dime when the battery expired. So, we're going

00:19to repeat all of that today with this car, which is a production representative example

00:23of the BYD Shark. Before we jump into those tests, I want to read you through what this

00:28car feels like to drive day in, day out. Last time around, we had to truck that car here

00:33to the proving ground because it didn't have ADR approval and we were told that we weren't

00:38allowed to drive the car on public roads, even though some people were. We weren't for whatever

00:42that reason was. So, I've now had a chance to drive the car a bit more in day-to-day traffic

00:47and sort of live with it. And I've got to say, this thing is fantastic. The ride is really

00:51well sorted and because it doesn't have that classical internal combustion gearbox, drive

00:58lines type setup. You've just got the electric motors. It feels like a bona fide electric

01:02car. And to me, there are so many benefits to that, like instant throttle response that

01:07punches you back in the seat, really has a lot of pick up and go. And it's so quiet inside

01:11the cabin here. So, from those points of view, it does a really good job. Where I think they

01:16can improve the vehicle, though, is stuff like regen. I have it on the highest regen setting.

01:21When you roll out of the throttle, it takes like a full second or two before it starts

01:24doing regen. And that's too big of a delay. It really needs to be in sync with the throttle

01:29being released. The ADAS functions are pretty annoying. You have to switch all of that stuff

01:33off before you start driving. That's unfortunately the same as every car on the market that is

01:37released today. They are just so intrusive and so poorly tuned that you always switch

01:42it off anyway because it just does your head in otherwise. I also reckon they could do a

01:45bit more tuning with the adaptive cruise control. Stuff like not accelerating when you indicate.

01:50So, you're sort of basically pulling out into another lane and it takes forever to get up

01:54moving again. The lane support system isn't amazing either. I think they could probably do

01:59some work on that. Outside of that, though, it feels like a really good daily driver. So,

02:03today, it's going to be a task of tackling the stuff that it didn't do well last time to see

02:06whether this production software has fixed all of those issues. So, let's go to our first obstacle,

02:12which is going to be our light off-road course and the hill that disappointed the shark.

02:17Okay, here is the hill. So, there was a little bit of controversy here. So, when we tried to do this,

02:24the hill was in an ungraded state and it was as we would normally test the hill with all of the

02:29four-wheel drives. After we tested the shark originally, BYD, and again, to their credit,

02:35they're actually listening to feedback and doing stuff to fix these problems. They came back here

02:39and then sent some footage of them testing on this exact hill to the BYD owners group and they shared

02:45the footage and miraculously, it made it up without too many dramas. The thing they forgot to mention

02:50is, for some reason, and I don't know why, they regraded the hill and it was basically completely

02:56compact. And prior to them releasing that footage to the owners group, we were here with the Prado

03:01and I saw the hill. I'm like, jeez. The Prado basically walked up, could have gone up in reverse.

03:07It was so easy to go up. It was basically just like tarmac. So, I had to then chop it up a bit

03:12with the Prado to get it looking interesting. Otherwise, it would be the most boring footage

03:16in the world. So, yeah. So, now the hill is back to the state where it was previously, which I'll be

03:21curious to see how this now goes. So, what we'll do first, I'll put this, and again, I went through

03:27a lot of the feedback that people had here. We initially deduced that it could be a torque issue

03:32due to the incline of the hill. That turned out to probably not be the case. And then they thought

03:37it was drive modes and I didn't use sand mode, even though it's not sand. So, I'm now going to go

03:41through all of the modes in hybrid, in electric. I'm just going to give everything a crack here.

03:45So, let's start off in mountain land. That's now engaged. Let's see how it goes. So, constant

03:52throttle to start with. And if it does make it all the way up, I'll come back and do this from scratch

03:56with a stop involved there. Okay. So, there it is. It's really struggling there. I'm going to go

04:03harder on the throttle. We're now at full throttle on the kickdown. And pretty much nothing is

04:11happening there. Nothing there at all. Okay. So, I roll back down. What we'll do now is move to the

04:24next mode. And again, this is in hybrid EV mode at the moment. Next mode is snow land. So, we'll give

04:30this a shot. So, again, constant throttle coming up. So, I can hear a wheel spinning there, but

04:47not having any success at all. All right. Go back down. Digging ourselves a little hole there. All right.

05:00So, next up, we will try sand mode. This is the mode that everyone suggested we try. So, we'll give

05:06this one a crack. See how this goes. All right. It's getting a little bit further there.

05:25Yeah. But again, it's just coming to a stop here. I can see the traction control doing its thing, but

05:31we're not getting any further up there. So, we'll come back down. All right. We'll see what other modes we

05:39have left here. Muddy land. All right. I'll give this a shot. So, again, constant throttle.

05:48Okay. Stopping there in the same spot again. I'm now at full throttle.

06:00I can hear, again, the traction control trying to do stuff, but not having any success here at all.

06:09Okay. So, we'll go back down. As I said last time, yes, I can just send it up here at pace. No dramas

06:16at all, but that is how you destroy a vehicle. And given that normal vehicles can get up here

06:21without too many dramas, it shouldn't be this difficult. So, I think we're back to mountain

06:27land, which is what we started on. What I'll do now is people suggested trying EV mode. So,

06:35that's now in EV mode. So, again, mountain land, EV mode. Let's see how this performs.

06:46Not really any better there. And if I hit the kick down, it doesn't switch the internal combustion

06:56engine on, but that's not even really moving at all there. So, we'll come back down

07:02and cycle through to the next mode, which is snow land. So, again, keeping it in EV mode.

07:10And we'll see how this goes. Same thing again. It's just spinning up the unloaded wheel.

07:26Come out of that. All right. Next up, sand land EV. All right. Here we go.

07:35Donuts there. All right. And last mode to test there is muddy land. Again, still in EV.

07:56Let's see. Give this one more shot. So, this. Oh, here we go. It's creeping a little bit there.

08:09Go.

08:14No. Nothing there. Okay. So, last thing I want to try here is switching off stability control entirely

08:21so that we don't have any interaction from traction control. So, I'll go to safety assist.

08:30ESC off. Okay. So, it already says that ESC is off. Let me just try.

08:41So, the only way to actually properly have ESC off is if I go back into normal mode

08:45and then switch ESC off because it's still using some form of traction control when I'm

08:50in those other modes. So, this is in EV now. It's probably going to be one of the most boring

08:55video. Yeah. Look, I mean, without traction control, it doesn't even, it doesn't get anywhere

09:00at all. So, come back down a little bit and just try hybrid mode now with traction control

09:05off. Okay. Here we go.

09:09No. Same thing again. So, all right. Now, I'm quite happy and satisfied now to deduce

09:17that this is, I don't know. Look, I think, yes, it's probably partly a traction control

09:23issue, but I think it is mainly an issue of not having a lock differential or not having

09:28the ability to simulate a lock differential because with even just a rear diff lock, it

09:32would be sufficient to get this where it needs to go. You're also having the issue of having

09:36so much torque getting sent to those motors suddenly that you don't have the ability to

09:41multiply that torque through a low range transfer case. So, I think that is probably all something

09:45they need to look at. If you ever think about the Porsche Taycan, for example, they actually

09:49have a two-speed transfer case or a two-speed gearbox rather in that car that allows them

09:53to have different torque variations depending on speed. And I think that is something that

09:57they could fit into this to simulate a low range and it would help fix some of these issues.

10:02But, yeah, no matter which motor I tried here, I tried everything there. It hasn't assisted

10:07this vehicle in being able to get up what is a fairly unchallenging bit of off-road terrain.

10:13So, let's head to the circular track and let's give our Trailer Dine another crack.

10:19Hi, everyone. Sorry to interrupt. So, last night, we're shooting this over two days, we got

10:24a software update and one of the software update items was improved off-road performance.

10:29So, I was like, fantastic. All right, we'll give that a crack. So, we've applied that and I just

10:35spent the last sort of 30 minutes doing all the testing that we did again yesterday to try and get

10:41up this hill with the improved performance. And to be honest, it really didn't make that much

10:47of a difference. It just ended up doing all the same stuff. What it did change, though, that was

10:50visual is here ahead of the driver, instead of calling it land, so like mud land, sandy land and

10:56snow land. It's now just mountain, mud, sand and snow. So, they're all just sort of normal names.

11:01The function of them, though, doesn't appear to really change all that much. I tried it in

11:05HEV mode and EV mode as well. Battery was at 70%. Like, just tried everything. It really didn't make

11:11that big of a difference. So, I just wanted you guys to know that we've tested it prior to the

11:15software update and post-software update as well. And that was version 1.1.0, I believe.

11:20Okay. Now, this is where the fun begins. We're going to try our evil Trailer Dine one more time.

11:26Just as a reminder, the Trailer Dine is effectively an anchor on the back of the car and using

11:31the computer here for the Trailer Dine, I'm able to adjust the weight of that anchor. Now, if you do

11:37want a bit more detail on what that Trailer Dine is and how it works, here's an explanation from

11:41our big mega test. If you don't want that, you can just skip ahead. What exactly is a Trailer Dino? Well,

11:45that is a very good question. It may look just like a normal box trailer here, but it is actually

11:50a pretty complex piece of machinery with a lot of electrical components as well that allows to do

11:55some more dynamic testing with the ute. So, let me show you what it looks like on the inside.

11:59Think of this Trailer as an anchor. We hook this up to the car. It weighs 1,600 kilos before we even

12:04touch any of the controls. What we're then able to do with the controls is vary the weight of the

12:10anchor that's behind the vehicle, and that allows us to simulate different loads. In this particular

12:14set up here, you can see there's a retarder, there's also a differential, and we're able to

12:19then communicate with this using a computer inside the car and vary the load from no load,

12:24which is just towing a 1,600 kilo trailer, all the way through to 10 kilonewtons of load. And

12:30to put something like that into context, it would be like having a fully loaded dual cab ute going up

12:36the steepest hill you can find, and it's constantly pulling it back. So, for us, we're going to dial back

12:41the load to 3 kilonewtons in an automatic load setting, and that's going to simulate a steep

12:46incline that some of these utes are going to fail to overcome. The automatic load setting allows

12:51the dyne to temporarily limit load when the vehicle changes gears to gradually apply it again. So,

12:56it's going to simulate what you will experience driving up a big hill. We've figured out that the

12:59hill that it simulates isn't exactly the world's biggest hill, and this is, like I said last time,

13:05an absolute edge case. What we're going to be doing here is basically accelerating through to 100 k's

13:09an hour with the trailer dyne set at 3 kilonewtons to get an acceleration figure. We're then going to

13:15do two laps of the bowl with the speed constantly set at 100 kilometres an hour, again with the trailer

13:22load on to get the fuel economy, and we'll compare that to the fuel economy when there is no trailer

13:26attached so that we have a comparative measure. Based on the feedback from you guys last time,

13:31you want this in trailer mode. The reason we didn't use trailer mode last time is because it

13:36wouldn't enable cruise control, so this time around cruise control still doesn't work, so I'll just

13:41manually hold the throttle in. At least that way the car knows there's a trailer there and it can try

13:45and manipulate its stuff as it goes. Battery is at 68%. We've tried to charge it to 70%. I've been

13:52driving around for ages, but that's as high as it's going to go for whatever reason. You can see here

13:57on the screen under the energy menu that is set to 70% and save, so I'm going to keep it on that as well.

14:02Again, a bit of feedback that you guys had last time. Once we do our two laps, we're then going to

14:06drain the battery and then let the vehicle run everything on its own so that we can again replicate

14:12what we did last time, and we'll see if there are any improvements here with the production models.

14:16So let's give this a shot. Okay, I'm going to pop this into sport mode. I'm unable to switch driving

14:23mode in towing mode, so that's not going to work, so I'm just going to stand on the throttle

14:26and we'll go through to 100. Here we go.

14:39All right. Still feels pretty strong, but you can see here it's capping out at 230 kilowatts.

14:45It's not actually letting us have the full complement of power. All right, there it is. 100 k's an hour there.

14:50Okay. Now we'll do our two laps. Okay, so we've started our fuel economy run. I'm just manually

14:57holding throttle here at around 100 kilometers an hour, so 99. What you can see here, 137 kilowatts

15:05of power. The vehicle's trying to maintain this speed and also trying to maintain the 70% state of charge,

15:12but you can see the battery is quickly discharging here. And keep in mind as well, peak output of the

15:19internal combustion engine is around 130 kilowatts. So the second you're over that,

15:23you're basically eating into your battery capacity and that's how you're going to end up draining the

15:27battery. Okay, so we have just completed our two fuel economy laps. So this is really interesting.

15:36So I mentioned that they did actually make some changes to this when it came to towing performance

15:42and they've been really clever with how they've done this and it's actually working quite well.

15:47So what they've done is previously when we tested this, it tried to stay in like it's EV mode and

15:54it just kept chewing through the battery and it got to the point where the battery expired really

15:58quickly. This time around though, it actually just kept running the internal combustion engine basically

16:03at peak RPM so that it could sacrifice battery energy and then it would tip in between sort of

16:09battery and then internal combustion. So it was just taking a little bit of both. And as a result of

16:15that, we've ended up using maybe 11% of battery, whereas previously we basically exhausted the

16:20battery doing the exact same distance. So it was really cool to see that they have actually taken

16:25that feedback on board and made this far better. And now what it's doing, it's actually running the

16:30internal combustion engine to bring that state of charge up to 70%. So I think those things have

16:36worked really well. It will come at the cost of fuel economy, like 30 litres per 100 Ks is a huge amount

16:41of fuel to be using for such a small engine. But what we'll do now, just to see what happens again

16:48when we exhaust the battery on that edge case, if you didn't have it up at 70% to start with,

16:53just so I can get a bit of an idea of how it performs once it expires one more time. So

16:58let's get up there, do a few more laps and see how we go.

17:13Okay, so what we've done now, we've basically dropped the battery to 23%. Pretty impressed with

17:20how this went when the battery was full. This edge case is basically you, you've gone camping,

17:25you've used vehicle to load, you've kind of drained the battery, and you're heading out of your camping

17:31area straight onto a sort of hilly road. And not a huge hill either, like based on the calculations

17:35we had, it was a sort of fairly standard size hill. And then you want to go highway speed. So

17:40let's see what happens now. We've got everything running, we'll set our trailer dyne to three

17:46kilonewtons, and then we'll just hold throttle at 100 Ks an hour. And we'll see what it does once the

17:52battery gets to its expired state, whether they've been able to tweak anything here to improve

17:58the way that it performs when the battery is flat. So okay, we're accelerating now.

18:04Let's see what happens.

18:09Now, I don't know if you can hear this, but the only downside to this fail safe method of running

18:14the engine at high RPM to maintain charge is that it's very noticeable. And it's quite sort of noisy

18:20inside the cabin here when the engine is running that hard. I'm just trying to do 100 Ks an hour

18:25here with the three kilonewtons on. And it sounds like it's a peak RPM here to maintain this speed.

18:31It isn't dropping the battery really all that quickly at all. So from that point of view,

18:36it is actually doing a decent enough job here to maintain that level of charge and pull the

18:41trailer as well. So let's see what happens once we get closer to that expired mark.

18:50Okay, so I've just released the load there. Okay, so I'm going to go through the performance

19:01figures in just a second and the fuel economy too. But I just want to say they have completely

19:06transformed this. So where last time it took us basically two laps to get to this stage,

19:11what they've done now is completely changed the strategy they have running here when it comes to

19:16how this whole system works. They've really lent into the internal combustion engine being on and

19:22loud and running to generate electricity, and then taking energy from the battery last. That is

19:27basically their holy grail, they want to have battery energy all the time. So you don't get into

19:32the scenario like we did just there where when your battery expires, you don't have enough power from

19:37that 1.5 litre to run this at 100 Ks an hour. But it took us forever to get there. And I'm really

19:43comfortable in saying that I don't think you would really ever get to that case, even if you were down

19:48to 20%. With the way that they're running this strategy now in towing mode compared to last time,

19:54this is going to deliver you the punch that you need to get up to highway speeds, by which point

19:58you will start recovering some energy using the battery save function. So I think that they have

20:04really taken that feedback on board and actually done something to fix it, which I'm so happy about,

20:10because if this was any other brand, you would basically be in a position where you're sitting

20:14here going, okay, well, that doesn't work. And in two or three years time, when they do a facelift,

20:18that would then roll out a fix. But this, this actually works. And I've had to go to pretty

20:23extreme lengths here to get the system to fail like it did last time. So I'm quite comfortable

20:28that they've fixed it. Yes, it still doesn't have enough power when the battery is expired,

20:32but it's going to take you a fair bit of effort to get there. Whereas last time,

20:36it got there really quickly because it was able to just keep using energy from the battery didn't

20:41really go towards just running the internal combustion engine. So yeah, good job, BYD.

20:52Okay, so let's go over the performance numbers first, and then I'll run you through my conclusion

20:57on all of this. So 0 to 90, 10.47 seconds, slightly slower than last time. 0 to 100, 13.2 seconds,

21:05so significantly slower than last time by a second or two. This kind of falls in with some

21:10of the feedback that we saw on one of the user groups, the towing mode has actually throttled

21:15back power from the vehicle. And it all kind of makes sense having a look at this new calibration

21:20that they've done. I'm going to take my hat off to BYD because they took the feedback we had in

21:25that first video and have implemented meaningful changes here to the point where you would really

21:31struggle to reach the edge case that we got to very easily last time. This time around,

21:36if you do start it at 70%, have battery hold in, it is preferencing that internal combustion engine

21:41far more. It's running it harder. It's making sure that it's preserving battery energy so that

21:45if you do reach some of those inclines that we calculated, it's going to then take a little bit

21:50of battery energy, but it will plummet back in using the internal combustion engine immediately

21:54after. That results in higher fuel use, which is a penalty of this. Even down to that edge case,

22:00when we got to that sort of 20 odd percent, you know, pretending like you're at a camping site,

22:04you've used all the energy from V2L, you had to work much harder to actually get it from 20%

22:10down to 13 when it reaches that failure condition, which it did again this time around, because if

22:15you're only relying on the internal combustion engine, it doesn't have enough power to maintain

22:19the speed at 100kmh with 3kN. But that took much longer to get to this time. So, you know,

22:26I really just have to give a big thumbs up to BYD for fixing this, because a lot of manufacturers

22:32would just ignore that feedback or maybe fix it as a product update, whereas these guys have fixed it

22:36as an over-the-air update and made the car, you know, one that I would now be very comfortable

22:41recommending as a tow vehicle at 2,500 kilos. Like, it really doesn't give me any concerns,

22:47because all of these fixes have made it actually far better to drive as a tow vehicle. I'm

22:51genuinely surprised and impressed that they've been able to turn this around so quickly. So,

22:56that is really cool. Overall, BYD Shark, first test compared to this test with new firmware.

23:03They still haven't sorted the four-wheel drive stuff out. They need to get that fixed.

23:06I don't know that software is going to fix it, to be honest. I genuinely think it is a reduction gear

23:12issue and a diff lock issue. And without those two things or more wheel articulation, which you

23:16struggle with on a car like this with IRS, it's just not going to be an off-road vehicle. And look,

23:21that's fine. I think a lot of people that buy these don't want to go off-road, which is fine.

23:25If you do want to go off-road, it's just not really going to be suitable for that type of

23:28off-roading. But if you are looking at a tow vehicle for 2,500 kilos, I mean, I'd be happy to

23:34recommend this. I really, really have been quite impressed by it. So, anyway, let me know your thoughts

23:39in the comments section below. What do you think BYD needs to do to fix the off-roading stuff?

23:43And are you satisfied with what they've done here to fix the towing issue? I think it's

23:49really well done. I am keen for your feedback. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure

23:52you like it and you share it with your mates. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to

23:55the channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.

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