Toyota Hybrid Range

It’s probably quicker and simpler to tell you what passenger and SUV hybrids Toyota DOES sell in Australia (as well as reducing the chance of missing some obscure, foreign-market variant). So, right now, that list is made up of the Toyota Yaris Cross, C-HR, Corolla Cross, RAV4, Kluger, Yaris, Camry and Corolla (the latter in both hatch and sedan formats).

It’s a bit surprising to find you’re having trouble getting parts for a Prius C as this model was sold here by Toyota between 2012 and 2020. It was more or less replaced by the Yaris Hybrid, or at least that’s how many buyers saw it. Toyota has one of the biggest dealership networks in the country as well as plenty of dealers in regional areas, and that remains one of the brand’s strengths as far as servicing and parts supply goes. By the way, now that that all new cars sold in Australia are imported, nearly all spare parts beyond normal servicing items (filters, belts etc) will also be imported.

Even though your car has a hybrid driveline, the bit that runs on petrol uses the same technology as any other Toyota petrol engine. So E10 is fine according to Toyota, although it also says 10 per cent (hence E10) is the highest percentage of ethanol you should consider using. Likewise, 95 RON petrol presents no problems.

It all sounds a bit counter-intuitive, doesn’t it: That a smaller engine could use more fuel thana larger one? But, in fact, it’s all down to the hybrid driveline in the 2.5-litre version of the RAV4. Because the hybrid version also has an electric motor to help propel the vehicle, the petrol engine has less work to do. So, it uses less fuel, particularly on the official test cycle that determines these numbers.

In fact, in the hybrid RAV4, the petrol engine isn’t even running a lot of the time, especially in stop-start traffic. The electric motor can draw from the batteries on board to get the vehicle rolling, and when it’s slowing down, the electric motor recharges those batteries for the next green light. And when the car is running on electric power, it’s not using any petrol at all.

By contrast, the non-hybrid RAV4 is running its petrol engine the whole time (apart from when it’s at a complete standstill). And that, in a nutshell, is how a bigger engine can use less fuel than a smaller one in the same make and model.