Haval H6 Ultra 2WD HEV Kills Toyota and Hyundai Here’s Why

Chinese SUVs were once a sad joke, a pastiche, and home brand imitation, but not any more. That argument’s done, dusted, and debunked. The question now is can something like the Haval H6 Ultra Hybrid hold up against a RAV4 Hybrid, Tucson Hybrid or Sportage Hybrid when you live with it? The answer is, “hell Yes baby!”

The H6 doesn’t try to win that fight with spit and polish. It does it with with space, equipment, a great hybrid, and a price that lobs a grenade into the showrooms of just about every other carmaker offering an SUV. There is nothing on offer from legacy brands of this size, with this gear, for this price, nothing.

Legacy brands have long since lost sight of the buyer, offering less, costing more, and are often with far shorter warranty.

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ABOVE: 2025 Haval H6 HEV and PHEV

The Looks

The H6 doesn’t try to be sporty, aggressive, or anything it’s not. It isn’t writing cheques it can’t cash.

It is a very conservative design, but has slim lights, a big grille, and tidy proportions. It looks like a medium SUV that was designed to be used, not designed to be different. The Ultra trim adds bigger wheels, panoramic roof, and some chrome, but it never tips into anything outrageous.

Park it anywhere in Sydney and it disappears into the background, but who cares?

The Cabin is where it starts making trouble for rivals

Open the door and it stops feeling like a “value” car.

Space hits first. Rear seat room is utterly capacious without compromise, and the boot is equally handy. Big and bodacious but not boasty and bloated.

Then the equipment list starts rolling out like a Christmas wishlist: heated and ventilated seats, heated wheel, big screen, wireless charging, powered tailgate, head-up display, electric passenger seat.

It’s all there, no extra boxes need be ticked.

Materials are decent too. Its not pretending to be luxury, neither is it falling apart. Soft where your elbows go, clean layout, no nonsense, and functions well. It’s a cabin that feels like it was designed this decade. You look at Rav4, and you could be forgiven for thinking it is 20 years old.

And yes, it’s the kind of cabin where Google Maps is running on the phone, and the directions are in the HUD. Nobody is arguing about which system to trust because it just works, and it is always up to date without needing to phone home to mummy to get an OTA.

Tech has a brilliant HUD, but is slightly chaotic everything else

The head-up display is the standout.

Google Maps via CarPlay shows turn-by-turn directions in front of you. Not a half-baked version. Not a “close enough” interpretation. Just there, clear, doing its job on the windscreen at eye level. That alone makes daily driving easier than it should be at this price point.

The rest is a mixed bag.

Adaptive cruise has moments where it feels like it’s thinking about your request before agreeing. We could not find resume, and activation isn’t always intuitive because it needs two stabs at the button to bring the full steering function online. Why not set and forget like everyone else does.

Lane keep and safety systems mostly behave, but Australian lane markings occasionally confuse it into speaking up when nobody asked. It doesn’t like off-ramps either. It simply has no idea where to go.

Radio software has the odd glitch. Nothing dramatic, just enough to remind you this isn’t fully ironed out. It almost never starts where you left it, and trying to find your station means spelunking through menus. Use voice instead to save a little of your sanity.

Once you set the bong behaviour where you want it, it calms down a lot, including overspeed warning. Thatalone deserves a big blousy clap.

Hybrid system is quick off the mark while occasionally overthinking itself

It is a 1.5 turbo, an electric motor, and 179kW/530Nm worth of power.

Around town it’s in its element. Pulls away on electric, no fuss, no delay, just thriftily moves off when asked, no gears involved. Traffic lights, roundabouts, stop-start crawling, it handles it like it’s been doing it forever.

Ask for more and it doesn’t hesitate. Overtakes are clean with no drama. Just press and go.

Then there are moments where you feel it shifting between ideas. Petrol, electric, both, neither can’t tell what it’s doing unless you’re minding the power flow monitor. Don’t do that, watch the road instead.

6.2L/100km over a 200km run sits right where you’d expect for a real-world hybrid SUV this size.

Nothing magical. Just solid.

Ride is comfort first, everything else later

This is not pretending to be sharp.

It floats a bit at higher speeds, but around town it takes the edge off broken roads. Potholes, expansion joints, rough surfaces, it deals with them without turning the cabin into a punishment zone. It isn’t as sorted as Kia, but it costs much less.

Steering is light. Easy in car parks, easy in traffic, completely uninterested in telling you anything useful.

On wet roads, if you get greedy with throttle, the front tyres will remind you they’re doing all the work. A bit of scrabble, a bit of traction control sorting it out, then it’s fine again.

It’s not trying to be a driver’s SUV. It’s trying to make commuting boring in a good way.

Daily life stuff

Walk-away locking isn’t here. Once you’ve lived with it in other cars, you notice straight away when it’s missing. Get out, walk off, look back oh right, manual button push locking again. First world prblems right?

Driver assistance systems behave once you’ve tamed them, but out of the box they’re a bit eager.

Speakers are fine. Not good, not bad, just there.

There’s a general sense that most of the software is close, but not completely finished. Nothing broken. Just the occasional “why did it do that” moment.

The real value

The H6 isn’t trying to beat a RAV4 or Tucson on polish.

It’s smashing them with more space, more equipment, strong hybrid efficiency, and a lower price.

What you give up is the final layer of refinement. Steering feel, software smoothness, that tight cohesion the long-established players have nailed over years.

What you get instead is a lot of car for the money, and nothing that feels half-baked.

Verdict

The Haval H6 Ultra Hybrid is not the best medium SUV you can buy, but it’s one of the easiest to justify.

Big cabin, strong equipment list, proper real-world efficiency, and a hybrid system that mostly just gets on with it. The ride is comfortable, the tech is useful when it behaves, and the whole thing feels built around everyday use rather than bloated brochure claims.

There are rough edges. Cruise control logic is fiddly. Software has the odd moment. Steering feel is light to the point of being absent, but none of it breaks the experience.

What it does do is make a very simple point: you can spend a lot more money and get more polish, or you can spend less and still get most of what you actually use. You can take a 1st class holiday with the change.

And that’s where the H6 stops being a “Chinese SUV story” and becomes another car people will seriously cross-shop properly. Legacy brands may have already missed the memo.

More GWM Stories

• 2026 GWM Haval H6 Ultra PHEV AWD a Fair Dinkum Cracker
• 2026 Subaru Forester Hybrid Sport AWD vs GWM H6 PHEV Ultra
• 2022 Haval Jolion HEV vs H6 HEV a Surprising Result

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