With pump prices remaining high, any car that offer a range of 902km should make it past first base with a Fleet Manager. Unfortunately, when you mention a brand like Haval from Great Wall Motors (GWM), you’ll get, “Yeah, nah”, despite the long wait times on other hybrid options.
At $46k drive away, the Haval H6 Ultra Hybrid SUV is a ‘burger with the lot’ which will impress anyone trading up from an older fleet vehicle or novated lease.
Great Wall Motors launched it’s first electric vehicle in 2016 and has built many battery electric and hybrid cars since. In October 2022, GWM announced that it will launch more than 50 New Energy Vehicles by 2025, a number of which are already in advanced stages of design and development or already on sale in the Chinese domestic market.
So while the brand isn’t known in fleet circles locally, globally GWM is selling over a million cars each year.
I spent a week in the Haval H6 Ultra Hybrid and the first few days felt like starting a new job, or speaking a different language because the infotainment system and some of the settings were different to the popular fleet brands. Even the indicators sounded different.
For a family considering the H6 for novated lease, the interior space is impressive. There’s plenty of storage compartments in the front and the rear seat accommodated three teenagers comfortably because there’s no tunnel through the floor in the 2WD version.
The interior design is uncluttered thanks to the large digital screen to manage the climate control settings and other functions. There is a row of buttons below the screen to activate some functions with one touch. At first using the touch screen to adjust the A/C is distracting but once the automatic climate control was set to my preferred temperature, I didn’t need to use it again.
Powered by a 1.5 litre turbo petrol engine mated to a two-speed 130kW electric drive motor, the Haval H6 Hybrid offers 179kW and 530Nm and fuel efficiency of just 5.2 litres per 100km using regular unleaded fuel. Sometimes there was too much power with the front wheel losing traction briefly at takeoff.
GWM’s DHT (Dedicated Hybrid Transmission) smart hybrid system combines a petrol engine and electric motor with an electronically controlled transmission to offer excellent acceleration and performance at low speeds with increased efficiency and power at higher speeds to deliver a driving experience similar to that of a BEV.
With the ability to operate in multiple drive modes including EV, Series, Parallel and Regeneration, GWM’s DHT smart hybrid system has been designed to provide maximum efficiency across all speed and load conditions.
During the week I took the Haval H6 all over Sydney and put it through the same challenges it would face as a fleet vehicle. Overall, it passed with flying colours.
There were some quirks and areas where improvements could be made. Though this is coming from someone that drives a different car each week. For an employee getting out of a four year old company car into the Haval H6, they would be so impressed with the list of standard features and impressive styling that they would overlook everything else.
In the H6 Hybrid it carries over the extensive feature list found on the H6 Ultra including but not limited to:
- 19- inch alloy wheels
- Comfortek leather seats with 6-way electrically adjustable driver’s seat
- Heated and ventilated front seats
- Heated leather steering wheel
- 10.25-inch colour LED instrument cluster
- 12.3-inch colour multimedia touchscreen
- Apple CarPlay & Android Auto
- Electronic anti-glare rear view mirror
- Heads Up Display
- Wireless phone charging
- Panoramic sunroof
- Electric tailgate
- Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) with pedestrian and bicycle detection
- Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with stop and go
- Lane Departure Warning (LDW)
- Lane Keep Assist (LKA)
- Lane Change Assist / Blind Spot Monitoring
- Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR)
- Rear Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA) with brake
- Driver Fatigue Monitoring
- 360-degree camera
- Fully automatic parking
When launched in early 2022, Steve Maciver, GWM Head of Marketing & Communications said, “The addition of the Haval H6 Hybrid to our SUV lineup marks another milestone for GWM. We’ve made no secret of the fact that electrification will play an important part of our future product plans and it starts right here with the Haval H6 Hybrid.”
“With an efficient petrol engine, electric drive motor and hybrid transmission not only does the H6 Hybrid offer excellent fuel efficiency but a rewarding drive too.”
The new Haval H6 Hybrid is covered by the same 7-year unlimited km warranty as all GWM vehicles in addition to 5 years roadside assistance and a 5-year Capped Price Servicing Program.
