Hybrid Reviews

At $34,990 plus on-road costs, the Essential trim level is the first step in the BYD Sealion 5 range. The vehicle is a mid-sized SUV with seating for five and features a plug-in hybrid driveline.Powering the vehicle is a 1.5-litre non-turbocharged engine which basically keeps the 12.9 kWh battery charged, although the petrol engine can also drive the wheel if maximum performance is required. A single-speed transmission is fitted and the Sealion 5 is front-wheel-drive. Peak power is 165kW and torque is 300Nm.The Sealion 5 can be charged on a household socket in under four hours, but there's no provision for using a commercial fast-charger.Standard equipment includes a central info-screen and separate driver-display unit, full wireless connectivity, digital radio, alloy wheels and dual-zone climate-control. The front seats are cushy and comfy, although the rear cushion feels a bit flat. There is, however, plenty of room in the rear seat, even for adults.Safety gear runs to seven airbags including a front-centre airbag, and the full range of driver aids including autonomous emergency braking, lane keeping assistance, rear-cross traffic alert and active cruise-control. There's also an on-board tyre pressure monitoring system. The Sealion 5 has not yet been crash tested by ANCAP.The Sealion 5 carries BYD's six-year/150,000km warranty with an eight-year/160,000km on the EV battery.

The Sealion 8 Premium is the flagship variant in BYD's seven-seat plug-in-hybrid SUV line-up.

BYD's Sealion 8 is a full-sized family SUV with seating for seven and a plug-in hybrid powertrain.

The Leapmotor C10 REEV has entered the Chesto family garage, and it’s a model I’m pretty interested in. Well, its powertrain specifically. And that’s because I suspect I’m a lot like most of you; all aboard the EV train, right up until we find ourselves too far from the bright lights of the city.See, an EV mostly makes perfect sense for our little urban family, and when I have one through the garage I generally charge it once a week, if that. The suburbs are an EV’s best friend, and we can take seemingly limitless short hops before needing to top up.I say ‘mostly’, because (and this is just a hard fact of EV ownership, so don’t shoot the messenger in the comments) they are indisputably more annoying than their ICE-powered counterparts on really long trips.We duck off down the NSW South Coast every now and again – about 2.5 hours from our place in Sydney – and it’s on these adventures that I sometimes forget the ease of EV life in the city and begin cursing the lack of regional charging infrastructure, and pondering why my wife doesn’t enjoy spending her holidays sipping bad coffee in a service station forecourt while we wait to top up.The C10 REEV, though, promises to fix that. I’ve got the fancy Design variant (currently $47,990, drive-away, but usually $47,888, before on-road costs). And the REEV bit — or Range Extender Electric Vehicle — refers to the fact its rear-mounted electric motor is supplemented by a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that acts as a mobile power generator for the C10’s 28.4kWh lithium iron phosphate battery.In simple terms, it drives like an EV, but when charge is low the engine kicks in to provide power to the battery. I have driven my C10 with a near-flat battery, and it keeps moving – albeit very gingerly at first as the battery recharges. And I’ve driven it with no fuel, surviving just on battery power. And both work, suggesting it really does offer a pretty comprehensive safety net for those motoring incompetents like myself who insist, against all odds, that we’ll make it to the next fuel station/public charger before we run out of juice.Leapmotor reckons that, with battery and tank topped up, you can expect a combined driving range of 1150km, albeit according to the more lenient NEDC testing protocol. Still, my car has promised a range of about 1000km via its on-board computer.There is a catch, though, and that is that you need to treat it like an EV and keep it topped up, because otherwise you’ll be using a lot of fuel. My test car’s on-board computer says over the last 2613km the REEV has averaged 7.3L/100km of fuel, which is worse than a good conventional hybrid. Get real lazy with the electrons and things are tougher still — I’ve seen 12.3L/100km pop up, which is almost dual-cab ute country.Still, the Leapmotor shouldn’t be punished for its owner’s laziness. It says EV in the title, so plug it in judiciously and you should see those numbers plummet, which is exactly what I’m doing from here out, so stay tuned for the next dispatch.What Leapmotor should be punished for, though, is the worst keyless entry system I have ever encountered. Mostly because it’s not keyless, and you can barely enter.The brand provides a credit-card-style fob which has no buttons. Easy enough, you think, because the proximity lock and unlock must be flawless. Um, nope. It doesn’t have that. Instead, you need to hold the card against a small square on the driver’s mirror to unlock the car as well as lock and switch off the vehicle. I discovered the latter when I got a call from my neighbour at 10pm asking me why my car was lighting up the street like a UFO landing.Now, to fully understand my hatred of this system, you need to know a little more about my life. We have a 14-month-old son, and so my relationship with Woolworths and Chemist Warehouse is at VIP level. And when we get back from the shops, I need to grab my son from his seat, grab the groceries from the boot, then carry both to the driver's door, dig around in my pocket for the card, and then lock the door. And then the same in reverse when we try to leave the house. It would be tricky if I had three arms, and it's near impossible with just the two I've got.Happily, Leapmotor does have an app that you will be downloading immediately, allowing you to lock and unlock the car remotely, as well as pre-cool the cabin.With all of that sorted, the C10 REEV has slipped pretty comfortably into our family life. There’s enough backseat space to comfortably fit my son’s baby seat, and the boot will swallow a pram with space to spare for shopping and all the other stuff we now require.So far on the road the Leapmotor has proven pretty easy living, too, with the power (158kW, down slightly on the all-EV version of the C10) ample for getting up and moving. Comfort over athletic capability is the order of the day, though, with some floatiness to the ride. The brake pedal also takes some getting used to. Presumably there’s some internal tussle over how the regenerative braking should respond to my foot, but the pedal can at times feel worryingly spongy, then overly grabby.But I think I’ve now got the getting-to-know-you stuff in hand, so we push on into month two to see how this relationship develops. And it could be important – if I make my wife sit by a dusty charger somewhere too many more times, it might well be my only relationship.Acquired: January 2026Distance travelled this month: 650kmOdometer: 2613kmAverage fuel consumption this month: 7.3L/100km

BYD has held nothing back in extending its Sealion line-up. Not only do the new Sealion 8 variants adopt a plug-in hybrid powertrain, they're also the first to offer a seven-seat solution. There's plenty of choice in trim levels and even a pair of drivelines to choose from; one pretty mild, one very wild. But can the BYD redefine the three-row SUV concept in any meaningful way?

The push towards plug-in hybrids has taken another step with BYD adding just such a powertrain with its Sealion 5 line-up. As well as the EV-only range and equipment levels a lot of families are searching for, the BYD also arrives at a super-sharp price-point. But will that be enough to make it stand out in what is becoming a sea of mid-sized plug-in SUVs?

There's a new people mover but its offered with a unique PHEV powertrain which positions it in a weird corner of the market. Has GAC made a compelling argument for its new M8?

We’re only a month into our long-term test of the Chery Tiggo 8 plug-in hybrid SUV and we may have already set a record: most kilometres travelled on a single tank of fuel - 869km.And we weren't even trying to be fuel efficient, the opposite actually. I hardly charged it, drove with the climate control blasting non-stop, carried heavy stuff in the boot, drove on motorways for hours, did short trips just to buy hot chips and sat in the car idling for ages doom scrolling while our toddler slept in her car seat.And still we got 869km from one full 60-litre petrol tank and only charged the 18.4kWh battery twice. From experience I can tell you most large SUVs with a four-cylinder combustion engine will give us about 450-600km of range from their tanks with our kind of driving. Regular hybrids tend to go a little further. About 650-700km. I have yet to test a plug-in hybrid properly, long term, but the Tiggo 8 isn't even one of those. It’s a super hybrid. That’s what these long-range plug-in hybrids with large batteries are called and they live up to their name with the ability to go a long way on a tank of fuel. According to Chery, the range of the Tiggo Super Hybrid is more like 1200km and it official combined cycle (urban/extra-urban) fuel consumption figure is 1.3L/100km. Our average on test was 6.1L/100km.To hit almost 900km without trying is impressive. Really impressive.The Tiggo 8 has a 1.5-litre, four cylinder engine which produces 105kW and 2145Nm, as well as a 150kW/310Nm electric motor driving the front wheels. Charging the lithium-ion battery is done through a fast charger which can quickly top up this battery when depleted in about 30 minutes. There was so much varied driving this month, spanning mid-December to mid-January, I feel for our Tiggo 8. It's been through torture, thrown into the end of the school year, the start of the holidays, as well as three birthdays and one Christmas, all of it requiring us to be places near and far. Our little family of four includes a three-year old and an 11-year old, together creating a perfect storm messiness and being rough on a car. From reappearing biscuits to doors being slammed way too hard the Tiggo 8 has seen it all and probably can never unsee it.The Tiggo 8 handled its baptism of chaos perfectly. This large seven-seater is comfortable, spacious and practical. I can also testify, it hasn't shown any signs of wear and tear... unlike me. It's also excellent value for money.Our Ultimate grade is $49,990, drive-away, at the time of writing and the list of included features is extravagant, from three-zone climate control, heated and ventilated front seats and 15.6-inch media screen to the head-up display and 10.25-inch driver display. There’s also an excellent-sounding 10-speaker Sony audio system, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto plus built in sat nav.However, while the front passenger seat has a massaging function the driver's seat doesn't. That’s a bit odd.Adding to the value equation is a long seven-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, plus an eight-year, unlimited kilometre battery warranty.As for the way the Tiggo 8 drives, the ride is comfortable, but handling isn’t superb. Despite having It doesn’t enjoy twisty roads as much as some I've piloted on my test runs, with traction and body control systems sometimes struggling.But most of the time we were doing urban duties and for that the Tiggo 8 performed well - apart from the way stationary gear shifting requires a lot of pressure on the brake pedal to enable engagement of Reverse or Drive. This makes three-point turns slow and frustrating for everybody involved including other drivers.The Tiggo 8 scored it's maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating in 2025. And I'm happy to report driver-assist safety tech isn’t overly intrusive, unlike many new cars we've experienced recently.Well, that’s it for the first month and now that I know how fuel-efficient the Tiggo 8 is, I want to see just how far I can go on one tank. That said, I'm already off to a bad start, the battery is on 20 per cent and I keep putting off charging it. Anyway, let's see how far we get this next month.Acquired: December, 2025Distance travelled this month: 869kmOdometer: 7757kmAverage fuel consumption this month: 6.1L/100km (measured at the pump)

Hyundai's Kona sits at the top of the Aussie small SUV sales chart with multiple options across naturally aspirated, turbo and hybrid models. We've spent a week with Hybrid Elite version to see if it's more than a one trick fuel economy pony.

My time with the Forester Hybrid AWD Touring has come to an end, and I have some thoughts for you on what is Subaru’s most important model, should you be considering putting one on your driveway.And I do mean important. Subaru sold a total 39,005 vehicles in Australia last year and a whopping 15,179 of those were the Forester. Only the Crosstrek (10,842 sales) got close, with none of the brand's other models cracking the 10K barrier.Important that this model stays popular, then. To try to ensure it, Subaru has finally taken aim at the Toyota RAV4, introducing a proper hybrid system (it calls it a 'strong hybrid', by the way) so it can go head-to-head with the country's best-selling SUV.The system pairs a 2.5-litre petrol engine that produces 121kW and 212Nm all on its own with an electric motor that kicks in another 90kW and 276Nm. Total system power is 145kW, and the brand reckons you’ll sip 6.2L/100km on the combined cycle, and get around 1000km from every 63-litre tank of fuel.Intrestingly, Toyota owns around 20 per cent of Subaru, and the two companies have collaborated on models like the 86/BRZ and bZ4X/Solterra, but there's no crossover between the RAV4 and the Forester. This one is all Subaru.There are two cheaper hybrid models sitting below my flagship model — the Hybrid Sport and the Forester Hybrid — but my Touring is the most expensive, listing at just under $56K, before on road costs. That’s quite the investment. Mind you, the RAV4 Hybrid tops out above $58K, so it’s all relative, right?Having now spent a little over three months behind the wheel – tackling everything from freeway jaunts to city running, and ferrying my 13-month-old boy and the Ikea's worth of stuff he needs every time we leave the house – I found some things I really liked, and some things I really didn't.Let's start with the good stuff, shall we?It’s boringI know, I know, that doesn’t sound like a compliment. But in this case it really is. I drive a lot of cars, newcomer and legacy brands alike, and the thing I have appreciated most about the Forester is that is has offered up zero surprises.It drives nicely, if a bit firmly in places, it steers well, its safety systems don’t appear tuned to drive people insane, the tech is pretty flawless and it has done exactly what we’ve asked of it with very little fuss. And in the world of new cars, sometimes no surprises is the best surprise of all.The ride can feel a bit harsh at times (weirdly it's more noticeable from the passenger seat) and the driver monitor is easily fooled by sunglasses, but both are liveable quirks.You don’t want for much in terms of equipmentThe Touring tops the Forester tree, and while it’s not cheap, you also don’t want for much. Our car rides on silver 19-inch alloys, gets standard roof rails and there are leather and suede seats that are heated and cooled up front. Elsewhere, there’s a 10-speaker Harman Kardon stereo, a sunroof, an 11.6-inch central touchscreen (with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto) and a 12.3-inch digital dash. There’s also on-board navigation, though most will surely be running Google or Apple Maps instead.It can fit a family (or my family, at least)Not all mid-size SUVs are built equally, especially when it comes to fitting child seats in the back. In some, the seats take up so much room that the front passenger finds themselves sitting too far forward. That’s not the case here. Plus the privacy glass, easy-access ISOFIX anchors and the fact the rear doors open super wide make family life easy. Even the boot, which swallows 484L with the rear seats upright, was big enough for all the gear we had to carry, including prams and the like.But every silver lining has a cloud. And with that, it's onto the negatives.The priceI know we said there are more expensive Toyotas. But in a world where you can drive away in a mid-size plug-in hybrid SUV for less than $40K, putting this on the road for around $60K is a bit of an ask, right? I dedicated the last long-term dispatch to trying to figure out what price tag you can apply to legacy. But I guess the ongoing success of models like this and the RAV4 goes some way to answering that question.The fuel useSubaru reckons you should see about 6.2L per hundred kilometres on the combined cycle, but I have covered A LOT of kilometres, and done a lot of long-distance freeway driving, and I can’t get the number to drop below 7.0 litres. Toyota claims an impressive 4.8 litres per 100 kilometres for its AWD hybrid, and real-world testing suggests a number with a five in front of it is pretty achievable.Some hybrid sacrificesIt’s not all good news on the Hybrid front. You pay more for the car, obviously, but you also get a heavier vehicle with marginally less boot space, and while petrol-powered cars get a full-size spare, hybrid owners will be left fiddling with those horrible repair kits should they ever get a flat tyre.Acquired: September 2025Distance travelled this month: 1184kmOdometer: 4460kmAverage fuel consumption this month: 6.9L/100km