Toyota has sent a packed and raised test model out the door. Although the car looks like a Yaris, it is not quite!
At the Geneva Motor Show, Toyota would present one of its perhaps most important new models in recent years. The brand would present a compact crossover based on the new Yaris during the canceled Swiss fair, a car with which Toyota finally opens the attack on compact crossovers such as the Renault Captur, Peugeot 2008, Nissan Juke and Volkswagen T-Cross. . We may get to see the car later this year. First we will have to do it with espionage plates.
Don’t be fooled by the test specimen photographed near the Arctic Circle from the previous Yaris. While Toyota’s newcomer uses the brand’s new modular TNGA-B platform just like the Yaris, it’s not just an elevated Yaris and certainly not an elevated Yaris from the previous generation. The car in the photos is therefore a so-called ‘mule’, a test car with a well-known body but with (partly) new technology under the skin. Earlier teasers already gave away that the new model gets a completely own body in which design elements of RAV4 are incorporated.
In any case, the crossover will be available with a hybrid powertrain that will be broadly comparable to the hybrid powertrain in the new Yaris. In any case, count on a 1.5 that works with an electric motor, although the specification can of course differ from that of the Yaris Hybrid. In addition, the crossover will in any case be available with iAWD drive, four-wheel drive with the rear axle driven by an electric motor if the circumstances require it.
Toyota has high expectations for the new model, which is not surprising. Compact crossovers are quite popular and therefore Toyota expects the as yet unnamed newcomer to account for 30 percent of European sales by 2025. The new crossover will be built just like the new Yaris in Valenciennes, France.
