TTACers have known it for quite some while: Europeans won’t get a Prius C / Aqua compact hybrid, they will get a hybrid Yaris. Today, the first one rolled off the line at Toyota’s plant in Valenciennes, in the north of France.
The first Yaris hybrid won’t have it far, it is already on the way to a customer in the north of France. The Valenciennes plant is proud of being the first French and first European automotive manufacturing facility to produce a full hybrid vehicle for the B-segment.
Easy for them to say: Hybrids are not necessarily in high demand in diesel-obsessed Europe, something the Yaris hopes to change.
The Yaris Hybrid uses the downsized Toyota H HSD system, people learned to love in the Prius c / Aqua. It delivers (ahem) game-changing numbers: CO2 emissions of only 79 g/km, and a fuel consumption of 3.1 l/100km in the urban cycle.
Am I the only person bothered by the inherent contradiction in labeling a vehicle as “100% hybrid”? By their nature, hybrids cannot be 100% anything, at least as far as the drivetrain is concerned.
This doesn’t bother me. What does bother me are all the different Toyota models. What is the difference between Prius C, Aqua and Yaris hybrid?
Too many nameplates for me to feel jazzed about how they fit.
It’s like logo city!
“It delivers (ahem) game-changing numbers” Can anyone tell me when was the last time a car manufacturer released a game changer?
Second gen Prius? First Gen Taurus? Second gen Chrysler Mini Van??? And when will there be another.
Given Toyota’s modest sales in Europe, and the even more modest sales of hybrids, I wonder if it was worth the trouble to engineer a Yaris hybrid, instead of opening another line for the Aqua and sending a few of those over.
Why would Toyota bother having both a Prius c AKA Aqua and a hybrid Yaris in different markets? What significant differences justify development of the two different cars? (Granted, they are related – but why bother?)
Maybe Yaris has more brand equity in Europe than Prius.
how much more expensive will the hybrid be compared to yaris 1.3?
This _is_ a Prius C right? Or rather, the Prius C is a Yaris hybrid?
They certainly look similar enough, and I can’t imagine Toyota re-did everything to for Europe
Imagine it – the drivetrain is the same but the bodyshell is different, 100mm wheelbase difference for starters
The wheelbase difference between the Yaris hybrid and Prius C / Aqua is actually 40mm (2510 mm/98.8″ for Yaris versus 2550mm/100.4″ for Prius C / Aqua). The latter, by the way, is spot-on the outgoing Yaris sedan wheelbase.
It’s fairly evident that both share a lot under the skin, and both share Toyota’s NBC (New Basic Car) platform with Scion xD and a number of other not-for-North America variants.
As to why Europe doesn’t get Prius C / Aqua, it’s surely the still-strong yen versus the Euro and other world currencies. A hybridized Yaris built in Valenciennes, France with European content can be sold in Europe more cheaply and yet turn out more profit for Toyota than shipping over the Prius C / Aqua from Japan.