Pioneer role
The fifth generation of the Toyota Prius, which will hit the roads next year, has a much sleeker look than its predecessors and is therefore expected to attract many customers to Toyota’s showrooms. There, however, they can only order the Prius with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, because the car will not come to Europe as a full hybrid – while Toyota will build the model as such again. Why does Toyota choose this?
One of the highlights of the 2022 car year is without a doubt the unveiling of the fifth-generation Toyota Prius. Where that model never had to rely on its looks, the brand designed a pretty tight, dynamically proportioned carriage for the latest generation. The reactions were positive: the Toyota Prius would actually be bought again for its appearance.
Previous purchase arguments mainly had to do with the low fuel consumption of the model. Since the first generation Prius – the first production car with a hybrid powertrain – the car has been available as a full hybrid, with the last two generations also available as a plug-in hybrid. All Priuses also recorded favorable consumption figures in practice compared to cars of a comparable size without hybrid technology, without the driver having to fiddle with charging cables.
In 2022, Toyota offers many other models with that quality with its Yaris, Yaris Cross, Corolla, Corolla Cross, RAV4 and C-HR. “70 percent of Toyota’s European product mix consists of hybrid models and they are already doing very well,” says Wouter Spanjaart of Toyota Netherlands. The brand wants the Prius to continue to play a distinctive role in terms of economy within the European Toyota range. Because there are already so many regular hybrids in it, the Prius only comes with the theoretically even more economical plug-in hybrid powertrain.
Distinctiveness
“The Toyota Prius remains the pioneer within the European range, so we will only market it with the newly developed plug-in hybrid powertrain,” Spanjaart explains. In short: if the car also came with the hybrid powertrains as you find in the Corolla, among others, it would not distinguish itself sufficiently as an ‘economical car in the range’.
Now, with plug-in technology, its powertrain remains the Prius’s differentiator. That is why Toyota chooses to only introduce the car as a plug-in, while the brand also makes the Prius ‘normal’ with a fully hybrid powertrain for other markets. If you are in the market for a Prius in the Netherlands or Belgium, then you can only use charging cables. Now we are curious: would that be one for you deal breaker are, or not? Let me know in the comments.
The Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid (left) can hardly be distinguished from the Hybrid (right).
.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl