Published:
5 March 2024Toyota’s hybrid powertrains have always delivered fuel economy that's better than the class average, but it has generally come at some cost to drivability.
This remains the case for the Yaris, even though the 114bhp 1.5-litre parallel hybrid system has been designed to feel more natural under load, with the e-CVT transmission (which isn’t strictly a CVT at all) exhibiting less of the so-called ‘elastic band’ effect than it once did.
With revised tuning and more electric power at hand, those yawning stretches of fixed-rpm din are if not banished then at least ameliorated somewhat.
This set-up nevertheless puts its best foot forward on light to middling throttle applications, when only modest force – if any at all – is asked of the naturally aspirated three-cylinder engine.
The Yaris is therefore especially effective in urban environments because the electric drive motor endows it with the usefully sharp step-off and a healthy measure of the linear initial acceleration for which pure-electric cars are known.
The official claim is that the Yaris can operate on electric power for 80% of the time at low speeds and it seems a plausible statistic if you can learn to use the accelerator pedal deftly enough.
