Driven: 2026 Denza B5 Leopard PHEV

With Australia likely to remain at the mercy of high fuel prices for some time yet, hybrid vehicles represent a happy compromise between driving a car with an internal combustion engine (ICE) or driving an EV.

A hybrid vehicle – i.e. one with a traditional fuel source (petrol or diesel) and electric power – is a cheaper alternative to a EV and it yields better fuel economy and less environmental impact than a standard ICE vehicle (those powered only by a petrol or diesel engine).

Better still, if you can charge your car overnight at home and stick to electric-only driving during the day, then you've effectively optimised your hybrid and drastically reduced your actual fuel consumption to next to nothing.

Chinese-made hybrids and EVs are inundating our market and so we are all currently spoilt for choice.

The Denza B5 Leopard PHEV is the one of newest arrivals in China’s plug-in hybrid incursion into Australia.

Denza is a premium sub-brand of BYD and the B5 is a luxury body-on-frame 4WD wagon with five seats, 16 drive modes, a low-range gear-set on the rear axle, and a front and rear diff lock. 

It has a packed standard features list, a premium-style interior, about 100km electric-only driving range, and real off-road adventure potential.

So is this plush plug-in a viable daily driver?

How much does the Denza B5 Leopard PHEV cost?

The Denza B5 Leopard PHEV is available in two specs: entry-level B5 and top-spec B5 Leopard, which is our test vehicle. 

The Leopard has a recommended retail price of $79,990 (excluding on-road costs); the B5 is $74,990 (excluding on-road costs).

What features do you get in the Denza B5 Leopard PHEV?

Standard features in the Leopard include a 15.6-inch touchscreen multi-media system (with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), a 12.3-Inch driver instrument cluster, 360° camera, hydraulic adaptive suspension, 16 driving modes, and front and rear diff lock.

The Leopard has Nappa leather-accented seats. roof rails, a sunroof and 20-inch alloy wheels.

The B5 and its bigger stablemate, the B8, mark the debut of Denza’s Dual Mode Off-road (DMO) hybrid 4x4 architecture, consisting of the plug-in hybrid powertrain, which umbrellas a Blade battery, twin electric motors, and turbocharged four-cylinder engine. 

Also of note is the fact that this B5’s 31.8kWh battery supports Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) functionality/capability, which means you can power your camping gear (for example, your lights, fridge, karaoke juke box etc).

Eclipse Black paint is standard. Optional paint choices – including Alpine White, Juniper Green, Glacier Blue, Granite Grey and Leopard Gold – each costs an extra $1500 (including an interior colour-scheme and materials to match).

The B5 is on a par in design terms with rivals, such as the Toyota Prado (aka 250 Series).

Its interior is premium-looking and -feeling and it features quirky touches, such as the crystal-look buttons including a ruby-red start-stop button, and enough leather-accented surfaces and brushed-metal-type sections to keep you intrigued.

Though the dash may be a confusion of buttons and controls, on- and off-screen, the whole she-bang is superficially impressive. Case in point: the auto shifter lowers and self-stows away in the centre console when the car is switched off and rises for use when the car is switched on.

The B5’s cabin is plush, spacious, and comfortable.

The driver’s seat is eight-way power adjustable (plus four-way adjustable lumbar support), while the front passenger seat is six-way power adjustable. As mentioned earlier, all seats are Nappa leather accented.

Elsewhere the dash and centre console is, at first, a confusion of buttons and controls, on-screen and off. But you soon get sort of used to all of it.

The second row is a 60:40 split-fold split and it has a flip-down control console rather than a basic centre armrest with cupholders.

The rear cargo area has four tie-down points and volume is listed as 470L (with the second row up and in use) and 1064 litres with the second row stowed away.

What is the Denza B5 Leopard PHEV like to drive?

The B5 has a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine, a 31.8kWh battery and an electric motor on each axle (front 200kW/360Nm and rear 285kW/400Nm) – and that combination all-up produces total outputs of 400kW and 760Nm.

The 31.8kWh battery provides up to 100km of electric-only driving and supports 100kW DC fast-charging. 

The top-spec Leopard has a CVT, low-range 4WD gearing, as well as a front and rear diff lock.

The Denza B5 has 16 selectable drive modes: daily drive modes (Comfort, Eco and Sport), as well as terrain modes (Snow, Sand, Mud, Mountain, Rock, Intelligent, Creep, Wading, Sport+, Custom, Burst, Climbing, Tug-of-War (towing), L Function (low-range 4WD), and Leopard Turn (the B5’s equivalent of the Tank Turn, which brakes the inside rear wheel during tight, low-speed off-road turns, reducing the turning radius, and so enabling the B5 to navigate a particularly tight turn).

The B5 Leopard is 4921mm long (with a 2800mm wheelbase), 1970mm wide, 1930mm high. It has a listed kerb weight of 3007kg and a 11.8m turning circle. 

On road, there’s a lot to like about the B5: it's comfortable, refined and composed and it has such a premium feel about it that it really is a top spot in which to spend a lot of time, on road trips, day-to-day driving or long road trips – it's very impressive.

Denza reckons the B5 is capable of doing the 0-100km/h sprint in 4.8 seconds but I didn’t try to prove or disprove that claim.

On dirt tracks the B5’s suspension – double wishbone independent and coil springs – yields a firm and jittery ride over minor irregularities in the track but otherwise it’s mostly controlled

Off-road, the separate body-on-ladder chassis B5 has up its metal sleeve an effective combination of mechanical low-range 4WD on the rear axle, electronic torque vectoring at front, diff locks front and rear, and well-calibrated off-road traction control.

This plug-in hybrid optimises a combination of driver-assist technology – including 16 drive modes with the bulk of those designed for off-road scenarios – and with nicely dialled-in off-road traction control and mechanical diff locks on-board it is formidable in most off-road situations. 

In action, all of those modes adjust vehicle systems, throttle, and engine output to give the driver the best chance possible of getting safely through every off-road challenge.

And it does a great job of it. 

The B5 tackled our steep rock-step test with ease there's plenty of torque available and again that off-road traction control system is well calibrated, sharp and precise in its application.

Off-road angles on this vehicle are on the right side of good and the fact that the Leopard has hydraulic-adjustable suspension to suit each driving mode is also a handy feature because you can maximise those off-road angles – approach, departure and ramp-over – as well as ground clearance. In fact you can set ground clearance anywhere between 220mm and 310mm and that means you have greater flexibility in terms of what you can drive, how you can drive, how severe an obstacle you can tackle and how safe you are while doing that. 

This plug-in hybrid works through a continuously variable transmission (CVT) and it works well in this vehicle, in this package. It's clever, smooth and seamless in its operation 

Another bonus is the B5’s off-road camera / 360-degree camera which actually offers a decent image rather than the muddy, fish-eye view of some other on-board camera systems.

But it does have flaws…

There’s little to no wheel travel; there’s not a lot of stretch to those wheels when the height-adjustable suspension is maxed out at its top point – in Crawl mode – so you are sacrificing that. 

The B5’s tyres (Pirelli Scorpion Elect SUV tyres – 275/55R20) are marketed as “all weather” tyres but they're not suited to four-wheel driving of any great difficulty. If you’re thinking about using your B5 as an off-road tourer, get rid of the showroom-standard tyres and replace them with more aggressive all-terrains. 

Payload in the Leopard is 490kg (600kg in the standard B5).

In terms of towing capacity: the B5 Leopard is rated to tow 750kg unbraked, and 3000kg braked. GVM: 3497kg / GCM: 6232kg

Official combined fuel consumption is 3.9L/100km and the B5 runs on regular unleaded fuel (91). 

Official fuel consumption is 10.9L/100km when state of charge is lower than 25%. 

On this test, I recorded 10.2L/100km.

The B5 has a 83-litre fuel tank so, going by my fuel figures, you could expect a total driving range of about 900km out of a full tank and a full charge (electric-only driving range is a claimed 90km; combined is a claimed 975km).

The Denza B5 Leopard PHEV has the maximum five-star ANCAP rating from testing in 2025.

As standard, it has 11 airbags (curtain, front, side, knee and centre airbags) and a comprehensive suite of driver-assist tech including AEB, adaptive cruise control, tyre pressure monitoring, a 360-degree around-view camera, as well as front and rear collision warning, and front cross traffic alert.

The Denza B5 Leopard PHEV is covered by a six-year/150,000km warranty. 

The B5’s 31.8kWh battery has an eight year/160,000km warranty.

The first service is scheduled at six months/3500km; the rest of the servicing appointments are set for every 12 months/20,000km.

Total cost is $3220 (plus GST) via five-year capped price servicing.

Is the Denza B5 Leopard PHEV any good?

The Denza B5 Leopard PHEV is an impressive five-seat premium-style 4WD wagon: it’s reasonably nice to drive, it’s comfortable and it’s a capable 4WD – and Denza has claimed that a new software update is on the way and that will make it even more of an effective off-roader.

It doesn’t offer the level of fuel economy you’d hope for, and there are issues with elements of its driver-assist tech suite – some of which are jarring and over-reactive – but the B5 looks and feels like a premium 4WD and represents decent value for money, especially when cross-shopped against something like a new-generation Prado. It also makes a lot of sense if your daily-driving duties only total its claimed electric-only range of 100km – and then you can recharge it at home overnight. That's a big plus for a vehicle in this day and age.