Blue Tongue XH15 vs Toyota Prius

What's the difference?

Given that Blue Tongue is a relative latecomer to the hybrid caravan market, it’s done its homework.

For $50,000, the HX15 is a great value, highly capable off-road camper with a comprehensive list of features to keep it self-contained and self-sufficient when you're camping.

That it includes an island bed, 2000-watt inverter, grey-water tank and enough battery capacity to free camp almost endlessly, is a testament to all that. 

The Prius can rest its weary head. The Age of the Hybrid has begun. Even though this iconic eco car might have lost its ultimate purpose to more mainstream models in the last few years, it’s still the best execution of Toyota’s hybrid tech on the market and if you can look past its divisive-as-ever looks, it’s comfortable and practical, too.

The brand’s Australian division promises the Prius will stick around in one form or another, so we’re keen to see what its next iteration will look like. Plug-in? Fully electric? Time will tell.

A lot of these hybrid campers are little more than expensive metal boxes with a large bed inside, although the Blue Tongue is a little more than that.

It has a fold-out extension from the driver's side of the camper, which contains the queen-sized bed. By expanding sideways, rather than rearwards, Blue Tongue's managed to create access around the bed from three sides. The upside is, no one ever has to climb over the other, or shuffle along it, to get in. It's a feature almost unique in the genre.
Considering the XH15 also fits a small shower and toilet cubicle, cosy dinette, a small sink, bunk bed and heaps of storage, it's quite a practical little space that doesn't feel as cramped as it sounds.

The dinette lounge is good for the occasional meal away from the bugs, while the bunk above it folds up to improve access. And even if you're not travelling with a child, it makes a great shelf.

The en-suite, if we can call it that, is naturally compact. With its own toilet and shower plumbed into the grey-water tank, this is a fully self-contained camper, which is becoming increasingly more important at many free and remote bush camps.

If nothing else, all of the Prius’s edgy design gives it plentiful interior space. Toyota granted this generation of Prius a low seating position and tall roof, which combine with the distant dash elements to make for a spacious cockpit for the front two occupants.

The seat design in the top-spec I-Tech is also cushy, reminiscent of the seats in high-spec Camrys, and I had absolutely no trouble finding a comfortable driving position. If there’s one thing to be said for the annoying, centrally mounted instruments, it’s that you don’t need to consider the position of the wheel interfering with their visibility.

The Prius’s total glasshouse grants superb visibility out the front and sides, with large wing-mirrors, too. The only downside is that integrated spoiler at the back, which makes for a distracting view out the rear mirror that I’m sure any owner will quickly become accustomed to.

Soft trims across the doors and centre console, even in the back seat, make the Prius cabin a comfortable place to be, too.

Ergonomics have not been forgotten, with the multimedia screen and climate unit having useful and easy-to-reach physical dials and toggles for all the key functions. Even changing gear is a breeze in the Prius, with its odd little rosebud-shaped shifter simply a flick of the wrist from where your arm sits.

I do wish Toyota had made better use of the large area under the climate unit, however. The front part of the centre console is exclusively for the wireless-charging bay alone, and the rest of the space is constructed from a smoothly contoured gloss-finish plastic panel. It has looks to match the Prius aesthetic, but it’s no good for storing anything other than a single phone. It would have been better to make a large bay here with a rubberised finish.

Thanks to the lack of a physical handbrake in the centre or any other buttons or functions, there are two large bottle holders with variable edges.

A huge centre-console box and large door bins round out the Prius’s front-seat storage options.

Room in the rear seat is excellent, my 182cm tall frame had stellar amounts of space for my legs and head, as the roofline continues through to that raised rear spoiler. The comfy seat trim continues, although the padding in the base is notably not as good as it is in the front.

There are some useful pockets on the backs of the front seats and a drop-down armrest with cupholders for rear passengers, too.

Finally, the awkward rear of the Prius makes for a fantastic boot capacity, one advantage this car still holds over its hybrid Toyota stablemates. Capacity for the I-Tech is a mid-size-SUV rivalling 502-litres (VDA), which easily consumed our CarsGuide test luggage set and is even bigger than the base Prius, at the cost of the space-saver spare wheel. The I-Tech only has a repair kit to go with its larger alloys.

The 15-foot off-roader is well balanced behind our tow car. At tare, there's 150kg on the ball, which gives it room to move up once a load is added. We carried a load of camping gear, nearly 200 litres of water and the fridge, all of which helps add stability to the combination.

Towing the XH15 along the highway, it tracked beautifully and even with soft, off-road suspension it didn't wobble around. Onto the narrower, winding roads into Wee Jasper, it was compliant and followed without incident.

When the drive became a bit challenging, such as when we had to navigate steep, loose tracks into our campsite, the camper's high-clearance, angled cutaways and off-road hitch made sure none of its underbody scraped or bumped on the ground.

It rides on coil-spring, independent suspension with dual-shock absorbers each side and this is a robust, well-proven system, which is really great when roads become a little rougher. 

The Prius was responsible for popularising Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive, and fittingly, it still feels like the best execution of the technology on the market. That instantly available torque from the electric motor is sleek, quiet, and easy. It feels as though the Prius can make more extended use of purely electric drive than not only its rivals, but all other Toyota and Lexus hybrid products.

Despite its awkward exterior looks, the ride and handling of the Prius are excellent, thanks to its robust TNGA-C underpinnings (in fact, the Prius was the car to debut this platform for Toyota). It tilts into corners nicely, despite a frumpy ride height, and deals with bumps in its stride. This is a comfortable car, and the Lexus influence here is undeniable. The steering characteristics are also smooth and responsive. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Prius is fun to drive, but it is certainly comfortable and compliant.

What the Prius lacks is the lower, firmer, and more aggressive ride and handling characteristics of its Hyundai Ioniq rival, perhaps a telling insight into the trajectory of each brand.

These characteristics add up to an around-town driving experience that really is a breeze. It’s quiet in the cabin and at times genuinely hard to tell whether the car is using its electric motors or the engine. When it comes to bursts of acceleration, the Prius might surprise you. Using both the motor and engine in tandem, I found that the Prius can sprint from the line with an alarming urgency, more so than its Corolla sibling. With the same tech behind the accelerator pedal, it’s hard to imagine why.

Once the electric motor has reached its strictly defined limit, though, the engine breaks in with a vengeance, and this car does have an anaemic follow-through when the electric components fall to the wayside. As in other applications of this drivetrain, the 1.8-litre Atkinson-cycle petrol engine can be thrashy and noisy when a lot is asked of it.

Of course, driving in such a sporty manner is hardly the point of the Prius, and where it really excels is in that day-to-day traffic grind, where the hybrid system works largely in the background to maximise the time spent with the engine off. The best part? While you can really fall into the hybrid system’s addictive fuel-saving displays, which really encourage hypermiling, this is a set-and-forget system. You can drive the Prius like any other car, and it will be trim on fuel consumption anyway. It’s not like I was trying awfully hard to attain my weekly figure of 4.0L/100km, so I’m sure it can do better over the long term.