South Africa’s first plug-in hybrid bakkie is here – How much it saves on petrol

The BYD Shark has finally landed on local soil, offering a very different take on a design that we all know and love.

The Shark is South Africa’s first plug-in hybrid (PHEV) bakkie, marrying a traditional combustion engine with two electric motors for a combination that is both powerful and efficient.

The real question, of course, is just how efficient the BYD actually is, since there are multiple fan-favourite pickups that get pretty good mileage out of their dinosaur-burning powerplants.

Crunching the numbers

The Shark features a 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine with two electric motors – one over each axle.

The result is an impressive 321kW and 650Nm, which is already a big selling point for the Chinese newcomer.

However, the other major benefit of the dual powertrain is that it comes with a 29.58kWh battery, which has enough juice to let the e-motors drive the bakkie for up to 85km without evaporating any fuel.

That may not sound like a lot on paper, but the theory behind any PHEV is that the battery has enough range to support most day-to-day trips.

In other words, it’s theoretically possible to use the Shark as a fully electric vehicle for your daily commute while only relying on the petrol tank for the occasional longer journey.

This raises an interesting question regarding just how much fuel you can potentially save, provided you plan your weekly route to use the electric mode whenever possible.

According to Discovery Insure, the average client travels around 54km per day, which means a typical BYD owner should be able to get to and from work every day without using any fuel, assuming they recharge the battery every night.

Over that same distance, a combustion engine bakkie will obviously use fuel, which we can calculate using the average consumption figures for a handful of popular models

We looked at the fuel stats for five of South Africa’s best-selling bakkies, including the Ford Ranger, Isuzu D-Max, Mahindra Pik Up, Nissan Navara, and Toyota Hilux.

All of the models are four-wheel-drive double cabs with automatic gearboxes in order to give a more accurate comparison to the Shark.

Interesting to note is that the Hilux is available as a mild hybrid, which we included to show the difference between the two technologies.

The cost of fuel was determined based on the current rate for diesel 0.05%, which is sitting at R19.32 per litre as of April 2025.

The results are shown in the table below:

The Shark may not be using fuel, but electricity is not free, which means we also need to consider the cost of recharging the battery.

This varies dramatically depending on the type of outlet used, as public fast chargers cost about R7.35 per kWh.

A personal charger installed in a garage, on the other hand, only costs around R3 per kWh, so hybrid and electric owners are heavily incentivized to charge their cars at home whenever they can.

Provided you top up the Shark’s 29.58kWh “tank” at home, you’re looking at an electricity bill of around R88.74.

This means the Ford Ranger is roughly 38% more expensive to run than the BYD, while the Mahindra Pik Up is 72.2% heavier on propellant, showing that hybrids are indeed a viable way to cut down on your fuel expense.