Help Required: 35000 miles / year - is hybrid suitable?

[Heidfirst]

11 hours ago, Jonty85 said:

So it may be worth sticking to Toyota servicing if we buy an Auris... Worth knowing! 

 

A Toyota dealer should also carry out a Hybrid Health Check foc as part of the service - this will extend the warranty on the Hybrid Battery by 1 year/10,000 miles (whichever comes first). https://www.toyota.co.uk/owners/service-mot-maintenance/free-hybrid-health-check.json

[Classic Iron]

I have just sold my Auris Touring Sports. My thoughts on it are that the press reviews about driving it are mainly wrong. The engine noise does go up when accelerating but overall it is an extremely smooth and quiet car, with reasonable performance for what it is.

With regard to economy I got  47mpg over my ownership, (measured from new on fuelly app) Anyone getting 50mpg + out of one of these cars is driving it very very carefully or mainly driving in traffic.

In my opinion they are not suited to motorway use. Economy is good (but nowhere near what Toyota claim) until you want to go over 60mph. I do not drive fast or accelerate hard and stick to 70mph on motorway.

I have a 10year old Zafira 1.6 which returns 39mpg on the same use, so I have ditched the hybrid.

Reliabilty is awesome, I have been in a 3 year old one with 160k miles and no issues, but dealer servicing is expensive. I was doing 20000 miles pa so mine needed a full and intermediate each year. This adds up to £500 per year for basic servicing, add on extras when required like brake fluid change, plugs etc. Toyota have missed a trick here as lower service costs could be a hybrid selling point.

 

[YarisHybrid2016]

@Classic Iron

If the "poor" MPG is still better than the Zafira, why get rid of the Hybrid?

Someone else was reporting similarly "poor" MPG from their Auris Touring Sport. Is the car really that much heavier?

[FROSTYBALLS]

Since Toyota changed their service schedules approx 1 year ago, 'extras' such as a brake fluid change are included within the Full service when it is required. Brake fluid changes are required every two years, and spark plugs have a longer service life than that. As regards the service costs, the current price for an intermediate and a full service for the Auris is £520 - and that is under the revised service schedules.

Prior to the service schedule and price changes, servicing would have been cheaper, but the services were less comprehensive.

As regards fuel consumption, the official EU tests that manufacturers legally have to use, aren't intended to reflect real life usage - they are obtained from a standard lab based testing regime which is intended to provide purchasers with a standard comparison between models. Anyone expecting to achieve the advertised figures isn't being realistic.

Another reason for buying a hybrid could be the lower emissions - something a 10 year old vehicle would be unable to match.

 

[Classic Iron]

7 hours ago, YarisHybrid2016 said:

@Classic Iron

If the "poor" MPG is still better than the Zafira, why get rid of the Hybrid?

Someone else was reporting similarly "poor" MPG from their Auris Touring Sport. Is the car really that much heavier?

I realised that as a private car owner paying £3000 a year in car payments to "save" £650 a year in fuel and road tax did not make sense. It also obliged me to pay £500 a year in service costs at dealer. Of the 2 cars the Zafira is more practical, has way more rear legroom (all going out as a family this car was the preferred choice) and is cheaper and easier to maintain.

Doing high annual mileage destroys the value of a car. I think if you are paying for it yourself then buying an older cheaper car is better value, I could scrap and replace a 10 year old car every year and it would cost less, I actually expect to get 5 years/100k more out of the Zafira.

This is just my personal choice, which I have arrived at after years of wasting money on cars. I realise not everyone will agree but it's the road I have now decided to take with vehicles.

With regards to the Touring Sport weight - I don't know if it's a factor but  I do know I'm not a fast or hard driver, mainly used eco mode and 47 mpg was the real average I achieved.

 

[haelewyn]

As to the original question : if Prius and Auris are chosen worldwide for fuel economy and low running costs, why doubt.. They are good.
A lot depends on what country you are driving it and on the tax benefits for hybrid cars, just as the local selling policy on hybrid Toyota's.

In my country the tax advantage is small for hybrid. We do get a low tax for registering it but the running tax, yearly, is rather high as it is calculated on the cc, being around 1800 in this car.
Good thing is that Toyota here sells their hybrid many times a year with a bigger discount than petrol or diesel.

For people who aren't doing a lot of miles and highway traffic a Euro6 diesel is not an option any more, it seems;
Toyota predicted problems with it and being unwilling to sell a diesel to me. Peugeot even said they will only sell diesel to a customer who does like 100 miles daily, several times a week. Otherwise : too many problems to be expected.

I feel the car is good (consumption) for small roads, going not faster than 40 mph, lot of village and town traffic.
Not good in winter, small trips, highway usage.
On highway I stick to 55 mph lately, just for the sake of testing the car. My consumption is 54 miles per gallon at that time.
Doing the perfect trip with a lot of cueueing (very nice to do with the automatic transmission and very good mileage) i managed to get 73 mpg but that is not the average at all.
Going 70 miles per hour and + on the highway is bringing the consumption up to 39 - 33 mpg. Cruising on highway is always silent, increasing speed makes a lot of noise. Too much for my likings. It bothers me and it's a major downside of the car imho.

Reliability :   They are still good but not the same as the old Corolla's were.
My Auris is making noise on the suspension in the front and that will be a warranty issue, i guess. I don't expect the dealer will make problems about fixing it. It's a known problem too.  Cost of maintenance ...   I think the maintenance at every dealer is expensive , for any brand. None is cheap.  There are no free health checks here. Need to pay everything here.

[YarisHybrid2016]

At 70 MPH it can be impossible to avoid the power band, especially if going up hill, but that is where a lot of economy is lost as the engine is doing a lot of work compared to the electric motor.

I did an experiment a week ago regarding cruise control. I find it is quite aggressive on the throttle (it doesn't hunt a throttle setting but it absolutely maintains speed). It went hard into the power band on up hill segments (exacerbated by doing 70 MPH). The car averaged 53 MPG.

On the way back, I drove without cruise, and managed 62 MPG. Caveat: I think the journey back was slightly downhill. I'm going to do another trip soon, so will try it the other way around.

[Cyker]

Yeah, I find that annoying and it's one reason I wish they'd put a higher-torque ICE in the HSDs - The one that's in there has to rev so much compared to normal engines when the system is loaded up, which offsets the efficiency of the Miller cycle gains it has. It's one thing that makes it hard for me to move away from my D4D - I've been so diesel'd that I find it psychologically difficult to rev an engine because the sound makes me feel like I'm wasting loads of fuel - My car almost never sees RPMs north of 2500rpm unless I'm being stupid (Like you say, it's fun sometimes... ;). Even at 1500 rpm I can go up most inclines in 4th without lagging the engine - I've not seen any petrol engine in the world that could do that and still do 600 miles on a tank!

(That was a real ***** when I had that courtesy car Aygo lemme tell you... I stalled that bugger so much at first...!)

I used to think a tuned diesel would have been a good pairing; One that just runs at a single efficient RPM to minimise vibration and emissions, but with the way things are going that's never going to happen, and TBH diesel is a bad fit for a HSD as they need to be run hard and hot to really get into their stride; The on-off nature of it would mean it never gets to do a sustained run at temperature, and diesels actually run worse than petrols when they're cold!

The 1.2 turbo might be a good alternative - It's got a surprising amount of low-end torque and should be smaller than the 1.8, even with the extra ducting for the turbo! (I have a thing for turbo whistle so I might be a bit biased...) Being a turbo, it should get up to operating temperature pretty fast too, but the intermittent running should make keeping it from overheating a lot easier.

I still want to see a HSD'd GT86...
 

[haelewyn]

One extra thing : altough i think the noise and high revs is annoying, you have to think about this also as follows :

The engine will behave like yourself on a bicycle on a steep mountain top having switched your bike in the most easy to pedal gear.
It will make many revs but still not have a lot of Nm (Ok...I regret that too) but thus not really 'hurting' itself to make the effort.

I added an Ultragauge small computer to my car (very happy about it !) and it shows me that according to the speed and revs, there is still a modest consumption. Let's say a momentary consumption between 14 and 20+ liters per 100 km (equals 16 - 11+ miles per US Gallon). My D4D went higher than that in consumption figures.
It does make a lot of revs and a lot of noise (imagine yourself cycling) but actually it is not making a real big effort. Same when you are driving 65 mph and want to overtake some car in front of you as fast as you can. You would be tempted to push the pedal deep and there the engine starts to make a lot of noise.
But as soon as the car has gained speed, you can use the throttle less and the noise will go away. But even if it was there for a few seconds, it's dreadful.  Just think that even your ICE complained a lot, it wasn't hurt. It's just a spoiled bugger.

May this be any comfort to all of you guys .. that would be nice.

[YarisHybrid2016]

The hybrid also limits RPM of the ICE to peak torque RPM, so the engine is always running optimally under maximum acceleration. The economy takes a hammering, but the engine not so much.

One really nice thing is how you can just ease out of the powerband and the engine drops RPM significantly, as well as becoming much quieter.

I think as long as you aren't doing drag racing (often  ) from a standing start to the speed limit, I think overall the engine on a hybrid has an easy life compared to a conventional car (again, adding to overall reliability).

Hybrids are just AWESOME!