Toyota Yaris ZR Hybrid: Meet the car that kills the Prius

Is a super-thrifty version of a car already known for its economy over-egging things? After driving the Yaris in its flagship Hybrid version, it’s hard to resist the petrol-electric option.

Price: $32,990.

Powertrain and economy: 1.5-litre petrol three-cylinder, 67kW/120Nm (85kW total system output), constantly variable transmission, FWD, combined economy 3.3L/100km, CO2 76g/km.

Vital statistics: 3940mm long, 1695mm wide, 1500mm high, 2550mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 270 litres, 185/55 R16 alloy wheels.

We like: Impressive thrift, playful chassis, strong spec.

We don't like: Drum brakes, overly-fussy dash displays.

CALL it Brutus … the car that not only stabs Toyota’s Caesar in the back, but puts a knife through its heart.

Okay, so the Prius has had it coming for some years. Other Toyotas with intrinsically the same battery-fed petrol-electric drivetrain that made its world debut in a gawky hatch (internationally, the sedan was officially Japan-only) have already proven themselves to be smarter buys in respect to driveability, comfort, social awareness and cost-effectiveness (and, in the here and now, that means you, RAV4).

Yet there’s one ace card the nameplate that ‘started it all’ has always held grimly. The one constant with the nameplate that kicked everything off and has been around since 1997 has been that it’s the ‘go-to’ car if you want ultimate fuel economy. All four generations have set that pace.

On release, Toyota let it be known, but not too loudly, that the 1.5-litre Yaris hybrid, entering the scene with the first three-cylinder petrol engine it has paired to an electric motor and battery, was a thriftier car than the Prius hatch.

However, it wasn’t by much – just 0.1 litres per 100km – and with all indication being that this result came from a lab result rather than the latest WLTP testing protocol, accepted as the measuring stick for cars entering our market, my own supposition was that it probably wasn’t that relevant for real world operability. 

So, anyway, with the ZR Hybrid the aim was to drive normally for a week; over a cycle that might be considered usual for an average owner. No special consideration to economy. Just driving. Air con on, going with the flow speed-wise and so on.

Before giving away how it went, a quick recap on what the brand reckons is ultimately achievable. An official combined consumption of 3.3 litres per 100km represents a 0.1L/100km advantage over the full-sized Prius, a 0.6L/100km advantage over the Prius C and also 0.1 up on the most parsimonious non-Toyota here, Hyundai’s Ioniq Hybrid. Also well up on the non-hybrid Yaris, which also has this 1.5 but in different tune. That car’s a guts in this company, with an optimal 4.9.

So, the ZR Hybrid clocked just under 300kms. Around half of that was in urban driving, the remainder dedicated to an open road drive. Sounds like something you might do?

I expected the best thrift coming up around town and, sure enough, it was certainly sipping then, dipping to as low as 2.1 litres per 100km in stop-start traffic. I also expected that the burn would increase on the open road. And, yes, that happened; just as it does with a Prius. Except not to the same degree. Not even close.

My experience with Prius is that you have to work diligently to extract a sub four litres’ per 100km average from open road driving. The Yaris?

For the first half of the trip, the car was run in its economy mode, with an average of 3.8 litres per 100km by halfway. I drove a further 20kms in a 50kmh zone, in a busy traffic stream, then retraced the open road trip, this time with the transmission in its Power mode. Sure enough, this made the car feel noticeably brisker. Yet … and here’s the kicker … the average by the end of the trip was 3.4L/100km. When the car was returned to Toyota three days on, it was up to 3.9L/100m. With no effort involved. That’s thrifty. 

Will a Yaris ever be considered by a Prius purchaser? The cars are unequal in size and price, yet the prospect cannot be ignored; the cheapest Prius, the SX, is $7000 clear of the dearest Yaris but if you want specification comparability, then the gap widens by a further $6500.

It’s something of a moot point. Even though Toyota hybrid sales keep strengthening, it’s driven by interest in versions of regular cars: Camry, Corolla and, now, RAV4. Market interest in Prius, a car that was once a must-have for every one whose was anyone, has eroded to the point it barely achieves double registrations figures in any month. Now that the old hero has been outgunned on economy … well, is that the sound of a nail being hammered in?

Fratricide isn’t really what Yaris is all about, of course. As always, expectation is to continue supremacy in the supermini zone, which though eroded by those pesky crossovers is still a core business.

The brand has gone in hard in respect to maintaining profile. This is a completely fresh start – new from the tyres up, and the biggest change in philosophy and shape in 15 years.

Going big means going a touch smaller. The shift to the make’s smallest adaptable platform yet, known internally as TNGA-B, allows the car to be 5mm shorter, 50mm wider and 40mm lower than the old model, but with a 50mm longer wheelbase to generate additional interior space. It also sits closer to the asphalt and has a squarer stance, which makes it look more serious this time around.

So much of how the car is shaped reminds the small cars are a design nightmare; there’s huge impetus to deliver a sense of individuality, of course, and character is important as well, yet the abiding remit above all is to maximise the interior capaciousness without affecting exterior compactness. In short, panache is all well and good, but it has to be practical. 

Toyota’s perhaps treading a fine line. The Yaris is definitely bold. It’s also … well, a bit quirky, too.  A more aggressive nose is attached to a body that appears slightly inflated, with some weird creases, angles and push-outs. It’s a new look for the street, no argument, if not necessarily for Toyota – the profile is strongly reminiscent of a car we never got here, the even smaller Aygo, a co-production with PSA purely for Europe. One tip if you’re keen to be noticed: Sidestep the dull colours, including the dark metallic red on our tester, and instead plump for a vibrant primary hue, then spend the extra $500 on achieving a black roof. Doing so will really lift its kerbside character.

Being big where it counts delivers when you slip inside. The front half of the cabin is a top spot. There’s a good amount of room and, with the front chairs being set quite bit lower and a touch further apart, it not only delivers a far more natural driving position but also one less prone to shoulder-rubbing.

This revision doesn’t impinge on the rear, where a lofty driver doesn’t have to give too much consideration to allow taller passengers to achieve reasonable back seat comfort. Short distances are better than long, perhaps, but there’s foot space beneath the front seats, a sensible amount of kneeroom and decent headroom.

To optimise occupant space they’ve reduced real estate further behind, fortunately not to the cruelly detrimental effect that has really hurt the Corolla. While still better than some, in a sector where every skerrick of space counts, a 16 litre reduction in capacity, to 270 litres now, with all design accommodations – a false floor for hiding valuables, a skinny space saver, hybrid battery under the back seat - it’s coming close to marginal.

If it lightens the load there, it packs it on in another key area: Specification. When it comes to the equipment level, even cynics will have to admit Toyota has upped its game, not least in respect to safety this time around. 

The Yaris has yet to undergo the ANCAP crash test that matters most here, but it is surely well-prepared. The new TNGA platform has performed well in its other representations and all models come with eight airbags in total, including twin centre airbags (on the inboard cushion of both front seats) to better protect occupants in a side-impact crash.

On top of this, it’s gone all serious about avoidance tech, with far more than has ever previously been seen in a Yaris. Now everything specifies with speed sign recognition, lane-tracing assistance, autonomous emergency braking with intersection assistance, reverse camera, and automatic high beam, while the ZR chucks in blind-zone warning, rear cross-traffic alert, and front and rear parking sensors. It’s a pity the latter only go into the optimum level, as those functions are increasingly standard on new models, but all in all it ticks a lot of boxes and it’d be churlish to criticise it for that.

All these functions require display space and the priority spot, a modest-sized panel adjacent to the speedo, can become busy. You can be facing a load of icons, all vying for your attention, spanning quite a lot of interest points, from lane keep and speed sign awareness to economy, range and the hybrid system’s operability. Oh yeah, and a few sub-menus that, realistically, shouldn’t be explored until you’re parked up. 

Just too much? There’s surely some risk newbies will become bewildered to the point of simply ignoring what the car is relating. Which is surely counter-productive to all the good deeds it can perform.

The ZR has other displays. There’s a head-up projection that’s well designed and comprehensible at a glance; just as it should be. The touch sensitive head unit on the console directly ahead of the transmission lever is right-sized, well sorted in respect to finger-prodding functionality and looks swish. Arrival, at last, of Apple CarPlay integration means you needn’t use any of the in-build functionality, which is just as well, because Toyotas own displays haven’t progressed in years. The fonts, graphics, washed-out colours and slightly whiffy resolution has a staleness and operability is slow. You’d never bother with the in-built sat nav. Google maps are so much faster and better resourced. This, some hard, shiny plastics and use of old-style switches deliver unnecessary cheapness to a cabin that, on the whole, really represents as a step up in quality and style and could, with a bit more effort, have set a new bar for the category.

Given that Toyota has been making hybrids since last century and this is actually the fourth compilation of a petrol-electric drive system to go into a Yaris (though the first for our market), you might start to wonder when a petrol-electric set-up starts to be considered time-worn.

Well, not in this sector. For one, because Toyota alone presents this level of tech in the category and also because this is a fresh approach; not as technically advanced as the system implemented in the RAV4, similar in basics to those in the Corolla, Camry and … ahem .. the Prius but sharper and smarter.

What you’re getting is a three-cylinder version of the more familiar 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, utilising the Atkinson cycle and running a high compression ratio of 14:1.

It’s linked to a new electrical motor producing almost 60kW and 140Nm of torque, along with a lighter lithium-ion battery pack, still driving the front wheels via a CVT automatic gearbox, of course, though even that seems sharpened.

This Yaris is the first to use this new type of battery pack, allowing double the recharge capacity and 50 percent more output. The battery cools through the use of the cabin’s air temperature, negating the need for a stand-alone liquid system.

Impression Toyota has made another step forward increases with operability; the car still doesn’t go wholly electric for prolonged periods, but it does deliver more battery-first involvement: It’s the default when you punch the Start-Stop button at start-up – though, the colder the morning, the shorter the delay before the engine might also fire as well – but once warmed and with a light throttle from standstill you can stay on EV power for almost a kilometre if you don’t go over 40kmh. At higher pace and even under a more enthusiastic approach, the classic Toyota hybrid experience that occurs once underway seems slightly more oriented toward electric optimisation. Hence, I guess, why there’s such a clear fuel-saving benefit.

The thrum that’s a trademark of all three-cylinders is not too obvious here; yes you can hear when the engine is toiling, but it’s not overly obvious. A shame in a way, as it has quite a nice note. When both energy sources are working as one, the car feels quite sprightly and you can feel when the instant torque from the electric motor in lending to the job. 

Fun to drive, I hear you say? Well, yes, I’d have to agree with that. It’s quite a world away from those earlier hybrids, where the science project approach was all too obvious.

Of course, there’s a very good reason why Yaris is stepping up for driver involvement. The TNGA was designed to deliver this and, beyond that, the mainstream model is the basis of a genuine hot hatch, the GR Yaris, that’ll be here at year end. Different body (three-door, not five), a substantially different powertrain and drive system (all-wheel-drive) and quite in another league for performance .. yet, underneath it all, the same basic car. I can’t wait. 

The ZR Hybrid doesn’t ache for racing stripes, because it’s never sporty. And why should it be? Yet the ride and handling is improved and the bigger footprint is a plus point; all the previous jauntiness has been replaced by a more grown-up feel. It’s settled on surfaces that would jolt the predecessor and is a much more precise-feeling car. At same token, out on the open road, it is less wearying. There’s clearly been huge effort put into making it more refined and much quieter. The engine is rarely outright vocal and, at a steady pace, the mechanical involvement is hardly obvious. More obvious is the tyre roar over coarse chip.

I don’t particularly like CVTs, I’d have to agree this one works competently in this application; it still flares a bit and doesn’t encourage manual intervention but will probably still come across as being well-sorted and in tune with buyer expectation. 

The Yaris arriving with rear drum brakes is a bit of an eyebrow raiser. The emergency stopping performance isn’t brilliant; that could also be down to the low-friction tyres as well. 

Even this, the overly-complex dash displays and that it has some obviously cheap plastics inside that doesn’t keep the Yaris from winning a lot of plaudits.

It’s thoroughly executed product; the chassis delivers the road manners of cars in the next class size up; the drivetrain has verve beyond its size; the car has flair. We don’t mind the look and look forward to trying out the other family members. The Yaris Cross and the GR are clearly coming off good bones.

 Why bother with a hybrid system when small cars are generally fuel-ekers by nature anyway? Fair question: It’s probable the standard Yaris will also take its time to empty a tank. Yet highly improbable it will come close to emulating the efficiency discovered here.

If not quite as technically advanced as that in the RAV4, the Yaris hybrid is a technical tour de force; it’s hard to imagine it not going into other existing cars. It’d be a good fit for the Corolla, I’d suggest. For sure, Toyota has to push on into more overly electric fare – a plug-in hybrid option for the Yaris facelift would seem only logical and, ultimately, it has to front up with a compact fully electric vehicle.

Even so, the Hybrid as it presents now is pretty decent, what adds to the allure is how easily it appears to accomplish its efficiency.

 In that respect, you shouldn’t be surprised if you see a death notice for a legend. It’d be sad to see the Prius go, given its history and major impact, but unless it manages to find another ace card, it’s really surely now on borrowed time.

Toyota Corolla Hybrids: Form versus function

Twin-test time, with the Toyota Corolla hybrid in sedan and hatchback formats.

Prices: GX hatch (as tested) $33,490, SX sedan $35,490. An SX version of the hatch has also just been introduced, at $35,490.
Powertrains and performance: 1.8-litre four cylinder  petrol engine, 72kW at 5200rpm, 142Nm at 3600. Combined with Toyota hybrid system for total system output of 90kW. Front-wheel drive. Hatch 4.2 L/100km, 97 g/km CO2, sedan 3.5 L/100km, 81 g/km CO2.
Vital statistics: Hatch: length 4370mm, width 1790mm, height 1435mm, wheelbase 2640mm. Sedan: length 4630mm, width 1780mm, height 1435mm, wheelbase 2670mm. Luggage: hatch 208 litres, sedan 470 litres.
We like: Hatch: better looks, better drive. Sedan: more interior room, superior fuel economy.
We don’t like: Hatch: That lack of interior room. Sedan: Those conservative looks. 

THIS is a tale of two Toyota Corolla hybrids – one a hatch, the other a sedan.  We’re comparing one model against the other because it could be said that while one body style puts form before function, the other puts function before form.

The comparison had its beginnings back in 2018 when Toyota New Zealand launched the new 12th generation Corolla hatch, which went on sale in petrol and hybrid forms.

This powertrain choice was important, because it represented the latest step in Toyota Motor Corporation’s grand plan to offer a hybrid version of every popular model by 2025. And especially important for TNZ, because it was known that the Government intended introducing a proposed Clean Car Initiative from 2022.

Remember that? The initiative, introduced in July last year, proposes a Clean Car Standard (a fuel efficiency standard) and a Clean Car Discount (a feebate scheme that would apply a rebate or penalty depending on exhaust emissions), all with a target for 2025 of exhaust emissions of no more than 105 grams per kilometre (g/km) of CO2.

Not much has been heard of a proposal since.  Submissions closed in August last year and presumably are now being considered. Then in February New Zealand First took action to put the kybosh on the whole plan anyway, but the Greens countered by saying they would make it an Election issue.

MMP politics, huh? But what is a constant through all this proposal, submission and debate is the acknowledgement that something has to be done about the role transport plays in the level of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. After all, light vehicles – which are all vehicles of 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight or less – account for almost two-thirds of our country’s transport emissions, which in turn account for 20 per cent of all emissions.

So with that background, it was good that Toyota NZ launched the 12th generation Corolla hatch with a choice of variants with petrol-electric hybrid powertrains.  In hatch form the Corolla hybrid has an official average fuel consumption of just 4.2 L/100km and exhaust emissions of 97 g/km of CO2.

That’s way below the Clean Car Initiative’s 105 g/km target for 2025. Corolla has also helped Toyota NZ reduce the average CO2 emissions  by close to 10 per cent across its entire vehicle fleet, because the hatch immediately became among New Zealand’s most popular passenger vehicles, with a high percentage of sales (current 68 per cent) the hybrids.

But as popular as the new Corolla hatch has been, it also has some glaring faults. It has a lovely exterior design, particularly the rear where the hatch gracefully sweeps down from the roofline. But these swept lines also translate to the car’s biggest design issue – a lack of rear space.

The rear seats are cramped for legroom, and with all seats in use there is a mere 208 litres of cargo space under the tonneau cover (300 litres in the top ZR model which carries a tyre repair kit rather than a spare).

In every other respect the new Corolla hybrid is a really good car that offers an excellent drive and which carries leading-edge technology. But the vehicle’s interior function has been compromised by its exterior form, and the end result is a Corolla hatch that is not quite as good as it should be.

So what to do about it? Toyota has come up with an obvious solution – it has released a sedan version of the Corolla that offers a lot more interior room. Even better, it includes a hybrid variant that is cleaner than even the hatch, with claimed average fuel consumption down to 3.5 L/100km and exhaust emissions a low 81 g/km of CO2.

By the way, as I wrote this article, the news broke about the UK couple who had been allowed to breach the Covid-19 lockdown requirements and had apparently driven non-stop from Auckland to Wellington to attend a funeral. This prompted the mainstream media to speculate whether it was possible to drive this 640 km distance on one tank of fuel.

Well, the Corolla sedan hybrid is so economical that despite the fact its fuel tank carries just 43 litres of petrol rather than the usual 50 litres, theoretically  it could not only be driven from Auckland to Wellington on one fill – but also back to Taupo. That’s impressive. And I’ve got to admit it’s a comforting feeling when you fill up the vehicle and the onboard computer tells you your distance to empty is 1032km.

The sedan is able to achieve better fuel consumption than the hatch not only because its body design is more slippery, but also because whereas the hybrid hatch at GX and SX level has 16-inch wheels shod with conventional Dunlop 205/55 R16 tyres, the sedan (which is only available as an SX) has 15-inch wheels shod with low rolling resistance Bridgestone 195/65 R15 tyres. Overseas experts say such tyres can achieve fuel savings of as much as 15 per cent.

Mind you, I have to say that during a long trip in this sedan, I was unable to achieve an average fuel consumption that was any better than  4.0 L/100km, which is what my wife and I regularly achieve with the Corolla hybrid hatch that we own. And I tried hard, too – I was really looking forward to seeing if I could get the consumption down to at least the claimed 3.6 L/100km open road figure.

I suspect it was all because low rolling resistance tyres or not, it is impossible to achieve any vehicle’s official consumption figures when driving on coarse chip sealed roads that wind through New Zealand’s rolling landscape.

 The sedan is also 260mm longer than the hatch but slightly narrower, and its wheelbase has been extended by 30mm to 2670mm. All this has allowed the load space in the boot to be 470 litres, more than double that of the hatch.

A personal test of any vehicle’s load space is to load my golf clubs into it – you’d be surprised how many vehicles, even some substantial European SUVs, can’t accommodate a bag and clubs side-on.  With the Corolla hatch this task is impossible without first taking the woods out, but with the sedan there’s heaps of room.

Let’s go to the back seats. There’s more room in the sedan back there, too. In the hatch, the gap between the rear of the centre console to the front of the rear seat squab is 230mm, while in the sedan it is 300mm.

Both the hatch and the sedan are powered by the same Toyota hybrid system that combines a 1.8-litre petrol engine with an electric motor to provide a total system output of 90kW, and which is mated to what has to rate as one of the best CVT transmissions on the market.

Overall, it all presents an interesting choice. From the visual perspective, personally I feel the hatch is the more appealing of the two body styles – it has more character to it, while the sedan body shape is smooth to the point of being just a little boring. The hatch is also the more entertaining drive, because it is lighter and has the bigger wheels and tyres.

But what the hatch lacks, the sedan certainly doesn’t.  The hatch doesn’t have sufficient rear legroom or rear cargo space, but the sedan does.  The sedan also has the superior fuel consumption, which is saying something because the hatch is quite capable of returning figures of less than 4 L/100km when driven quietly.

So there we go. In many respects the Corolla hatch leans towards form over function, while the sedan favours function over form. And they’re both hybrids. It’s an excellent choice presented by one (or should that be two?) of the best small cars on the market.