Yaris Mk4 Ownership - Initial Thoughts

[CPN]

10 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

You can't compare the two systems of VED.

Pre April 2017, VED rates were  based on CO2 emissions.

From 1st April 2017, for petrol and hybrid cars, the first year VED is based on CO2 emissions and subsequent years are a standard rate. The standard rate for hybrids is currently £10 less than for petrols. This is for vehicles with a list price of less than £40K.

Nothing to do with fuel consumption.

Good point, well made. Even so, thinking laterally, you could argue that bringing in fuel consumption as a factor might just encourage people to slow down a bit? (yeah, I know... silly thought... 🤣)

[MikeSh]

1 hour ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

You can't compare the two systems of VED.

Pre April 2017, VED rates were  based on CO2 emissions.

From 1st April 2017, for petrol and hybrid cars, the first year VED is based on CO2 emissions and subsequent years are a standard rate. The standard rate for hybrids is currently £10 less than for petrols. This is for vehicles with a list price of less than £40K.

Nothing to do with fuel consumption.

Yes. But what's to stop them changing it so all cars (PLG or whatever) over a year old will now pay the £150ish amount?

Apart from upsetting a few people that is 🙂

[FROSTYBALLS]

57 minutes ago, MikeSh said:

Yes. But what's to stop them changing it so all cars (PLG or whatever) over a year old will now pay the £150ish amount?

Apart from upsetting a few people that is 🙂

Nothing.

And it will change. The April 2017 VED system was originally intended to be in place for five years.

Since before WW2, road tax has been part of general taxation, rather than being used to maintain the road network

To continue with some type of vehicle taxation (road pricing seems to have lost favour currently), at some stage, EVs will have to be included in whatever vehicle taxation system they use in the future. 

Also to make up for lost revenue from reduced petrol and diesel taxes, there may be major implications for electric vehicle owners. OK, probably be some time in the future.

Example: a level of tax on kwh's used to charge electric vehicles, which would be similar to taxing litres of petrol and diesel. Smart meters will probably be in more widespread use, and these could be modified to track EV charging.

[Catlover]

Zero and low duty payable can be altered by the government at will it can be used to encourage people to change to a certain type of vehicle ie to move away from polluting vehicles, to encourage more use of environmentally friendly vehicles… whatever expressions they want to apply. Even if everyone changed to electric vehicles tomorrow, do you think road tax would stay at zero. Something has to pay for the roads (plus more), so today’s zero ved vehicles will very likely be taxed higher “tomorrow”. Don’t be surprised.

Week last Saturday we travelled from Chester to Norfolk on holiday, and there was a part of the M6 Birmingham where the speed limit was reduced to 60mph so to reduce pollution levels. So what needs to be done to achieve any objective will be done, guaranteed. Personally, travelling at 60 on the M6 didn’t bother me. I could set either cruise control at 60 or max speed at 60. Actually max speed at 62 just to allow Speedo indicator error (Waze sat nav was showing 60 when Speedo was 62).

[FROSTYBALLS]

3 hours ago, Catlover said:

Something has to pay for the roads

VED is part of general taxation, and has been since before WW2, so isn't spent directly on road maintenance.

However, from 2020/21 part of VED has now been ring fenced for spend on road maintenance.

[Cyker]

As it should have been - I've always felt it's an injustice that drivers get shaken down for so much tax revenue but get nothing back but more shafting; The current state of roads, at least the ones I use, are absolutely disgraceful (Part of the reason I went from 17's to 15's!), and places to park without extortionate pricing and time limits are getting increasingly rare.

I must admit I'm not looking forward to the next tax scheme - Because of the massive loss of fuel duty from moving to EVs, either they will have to levy fuel tax on public chargers, which will again penalize the poor and benefit the rich (Who won't need public chargers most of the time), implement some sort of mileage-based scheme which will either mean all cars have mandatory GPS and will be a privacy nightmare, or the cost will be rolled into the MOT when they record your mileage and we'll be seeing £1000+ MOT bills, which will start a cottage industry of people hacking their odometers, or we'll see a dramatic flat-rate increase in VED to like £1000ish a year to make up for the shortfall.

Either way, I bet whatever they do it will be all stick and no carrot.

@CPN - Interesting... so a summary would be only a small improvement over the Mk3, but not a totally fair comparison as you are driving it a bit harder than the Mk3? (I know what you mean tho', the car does feel like it wants you to give it the beans  It's just so responsive!!)

I'm curious... What sort of journeys do you do and what sort of mileage? I'm getting low-mid 70's on average and I drive it like I stole it!  But I tend to do a lot of miles a day, with a mix of A-roads and horrible horrible london streets.

I think my average journey is probably optimal for the car, as it starts with a bit of local street (Just enough to get the engine warm), then right into an A-road run (Good to get the Battery up), then slow 20 and 30 and traffic start-stop crawls for the final leg, then similar throughout the rest of the day going from site to site, which means the car can use EV mode a lot (I was surprised as, according to the computer, it reckons I'm doing 70-80% of the slow crawly bit in EV mode! I thought they were just BS'ing about that in the blurb but again, like my old yaris diesel's rated MPG, it's a shock that the manufacturer numbers are actually achievable in real life!)

[CPN]

8 hours ago, Cyker said:

I'm curious... What sort of journeys do you do and what sort of mileage?

At the moment, any journey is under 4 miles and not very often. I've only done 3 "long" trips out so far and all of those were under 50 miles. However, for those journeys only, I got into the high 60's for all 3 so it is obviously achievable... (even driving to all the relevant speed limits)

[flash22]

Mpg will improve when the engine starts to break in, the only car i had from new took 7-8K miles before it started to return good numbers

[CPN]

18 minutes ago, flash22 said:

Mpg will improve when the engine starts to break in, the only car i had from new took 7-8K miles before it started to return good numbers

Indeed. That was my experience with my last Yaris also... This one is still an infant in that regard.

[Cyker]

1 hour ago, CPN said:

At the moment, any journey is under 4 miles and not very often. I've only done 3 "long" trips out so far and all of those were under 50 miles. However, for those journeys only, I got into the high 60's for all 3 so it is obviously achievable... (even driving to all the relevant speed limits)

Ahhh, that's why your mpg's are so low compared to mine!

In that case you're actually getting pretty good mileage; For short journeys like that most other cars, even diesels (especially diesels!) would return far worse mpg.

 

[Cyker]

1 hour ago, flash22 said:

Mpg will improve when the engine starts to break in, the only car i had from new took 7-8K miles before it started to return good numbers

That would be stellar - If I'm getting low-mid 70s now and the engine is still wearing in maybe I can get into the 80's!

Although saying that I have a feeling the E10 will offset a good chunk of that gain (If it hasn't already - I noticed my local petrol station has already switched to E10 labelling on their pumps and I suspect they are actually pumping E10 as my mileage seems to be a bit down lately...  )

[CPN]

1 minute ago, Cyker said:

Although saying that I have a feeling the E10 will offset a good chunk of that gain (If it hasn't already - I noticed my local petrol station has already switched to E10 labelling on their pumps and I suspect they are actually pumping E10 as my mileage seems to be a bit down lately...  )

Is that a provable effect of using E10 fuel? (worse mpg)

[MikeSh]

9 minutes ago, CPN said:

Is that a provable effect of using E10 fuel? (worse mpg)

From gov.uk:

"Using E10 petrol can slightly reduce fuel economy (the number of miles you are able to drive on a gallon of fuel). You may see a reduction of around 1%, but it is unlikely to be noticeable in everyday driving."

Provable? Yes.

Noticeable by any normal user? No.

It's a 2/3rds of 5/8ths of FA sorta thing. At 50mpg 1% is a 0.5mpg difference. If your mpg is consistent to less than 0.5mpg between fills you and your car are flipping miraculous. 🙂

[Cyker]

Yeah - They say the more efficient the car the more noticeable the effect is too!*

Partly it's because Ethanol has a third-less energy per litre than petrol per litre, but also more efficient cars tend to not be optimised for high-octane fuel, and can't take advantage of the higher octane boost that ethanol provides.

It's only a few percent (Something like 3-6%? I forget off-hand), but small things make a big difference in more efficient cars.

They keep saying it's to help the environment, but from what I've read the lower CO2 (Like, 2-4%) is offset by the fact you need to burn more fuel so it might actually be worse for the environment; I read somewhere the average driver will need to fill up 1-2 more times per year on the new fuel.

The only tangible benefit is that the ethanol comes from renewable sources, so the limited supply of dinojuice in the ground can be eeked out a bit longer.

 

*On normal petrol engines anyway; Weirdly I've not seen anything on how much hybrids are affected in comparison

[flash22]

With E10 it may take an ecu 50-100 miles or even more with a hybrid for it to adjust the map and correct the timing

[CPN]

23 hours ago, flash22 said:

Mpg will improve when the engine starts to break in, the only car i had from new took 7-8K miles before it started to return good numbers

Just did an 18 mile round trip today and the car reported 65.5 mpg for the whole run, so, taking account of the car's optimism, that will make it at least over 61-62mpg plus and if that's what I'm getting after just 1255 miles on the odometer, roll on 7-8K! 😁

Oh, I didn't mention... I was driving like a grandad! 😉

[Bemused2]

Driving like a grandad???. Please clarify your meaning. 🥺

[Mikw]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:50 PM, CPN said:

Just did an 18 mile round trip today and the car reported 65.5 mpg for the whole run, so, taking account of the car's optimism, that will make it at least over 61-62mpg plus and if that's what I'm getting after just 1255 miles on the odometer, roll on 7-8K! 😁

Oh, I didn't mention... I was driving like a grandad! 😉

I did a 70 mile round trip at the weekend, a mixture of round town, and A roads and a bit of dual carriageway - i was also driving like a grandad.

My overall economy for the trip was 80.3 mpg.  Very happy with this.

[CPN]

11 minutes ago, Mikw said:

I did a 70 mile round trip at the weekend, a mixture of round town, and A roads and a bit of dual carriageway - i was also driving like a grandad.

My overall economy for the trip was 80.3 mpg.  Very happy with this.

Wow! That's darn good! 😃 You must have been more like a grandad than I was lol!

[CPN]

15 hours ago, Bemused2 said:

Driving like a grandad???. Please clarify your meaning. 🥺

Well, since I am also a Great Grandad also, I think I'm well qualified! lol! Slowly, gently and without a care in the world...

[john p williams]

I`m  a Grandad  and I follow the Highway Code !

[Cyker]

At last fill my quoted average was 75.6 and my calculated was 71.9. I was not driving like a granddad  

This is a flippin' good car! 

 

[CPN]

1 hour ago, Cyker said:

At last fill my quoted average was 75.6 and my calculated was 71.9. I was not driving like a granddad  

This is a flippin' good car! 

Yes, it is but is that UK or US mpg? 😉

[Munbun]

On 7/18/2021 at 7:21 PM, Grompix said:

In answer to Cyker’s original question in the 'Disable Annoying ECO-Score Topic', I’m finding my new Mk4 Yaris Excel a bit of a mixed bag. A good many exceptional features but positioned alongside a few highly disappointing ones (IMHO for such a top-spec car).

Firstly, I love the technology behind Toyota’s hybrid system. It’s smooth, quiet, reliable performance, relaxing drive, and power when you want it. I loved my Mk3 Yaris Excel because of that and this Mk4 continues to build on that theme.

Secondly the design and styling of the car suits my idea of neat ‘easy on the eye’ looks. In other words - if it looks good, it must be good - well perhaps!

Both the Mk3 and Mk4 look good IMO - the Mk4 in particular.

The Mk4 scores better because of extra performance. It feels punchier on the road, yet is still smooth and quiet - love that. I’m not into raucous cars!

BUT…

I think Toyota has cut a few corners in other areas though. I don’t know why they have done this, maybe to get the car quickly into worldwide circulation - just guessing.

I’m noticing a definite deterioration in the build quality compared to my Mk3. The metal body is composed of thinner steel and flexes quite alarmingly if leaned on a bit too hard. I grabbed one of the door handles to pull myself up from a kneeling position yesterday and it flexed in a way that gave me more than a moment of consternation!

I know the new Yaris is 20Kg lighter than the old one, they say because of the lighter battery, but I’m sure a good deal of that weight-saving must be owing to the thinner steel.

When I took delivery of the car two weeks ago, I noticed a fair number of squeaks and rattles from the interior trims. Now, my car is not new; it is a September 2020 ex-demonstrator having done some 8600 miles, but it has the rattles of a much older and much more well-used car.

On examination, it turned out that the driver and passenger doors were the main rattling culprits, together with the glove compartment. Pulling the door-handle trim away from the doors revealed the clips not fitting very well. I needed to cut away plastic moulding flash from the clips to allow them to fit better. While doing that, I noticed a threaded hole in the door-supports of each door - but no screw or thread had ever been fitted in the factory - as there was pristine paint still in the threaded hole. I found a couple of screws which fitted and tightened the trim panels better than they were before. They still rattled however, but a lot more quietly!

This has now been cured by an old trick I learned a long while ago of taking a small brush and running some liquid masking fluid in between the rubbing / squeaking trim joints and allowing to dry. This seals the join (stopping the rattle/squeak) but still allows the trims to come apart in the future as the masking fluid dries as a thin latex sheet and peels off without damaging anything.  

The rattling glove compartment needed more work with some felt pads stuck on the interior lip of the door-surround.

This is all very well on an old 2^nd hand car (and I’ve owned a fair number of those!) but a 10 month old Toyota Yaris Excel - and supposedly top of the range at that - not a good advert for Toyota reputation in build-quality.

Last week, I wired a dash-cam to my new Yaris via the fuse-box under the passenger foot-well (as I did with my Mk3). Lo and behold, I found the fuse-box lid just left loose and tied with a plastic cable-tie to the footwell lighting wiring; not clipped to the fuse-box at all! What on earth is going on there? Surely it would have taken a factory worker longer to fasten a plastic cable-tie than just to clip the lid into its proper place!

Moving on to ‘top of the range’ spec of the Excel; no footwell lights at all, the wiring and plugs are there but no lights. The only interior lights you apparently get are courtesy lights under the windscreen and a meagre boot-light - that’s it! So, if the Excel is ‘top-of the range’ which spec gets the footwell lights? I think its the Launch Edition only. But it’s more than a bit mean not to include a couple of LEDs in their Excel spec too!

Then there is the Tyre Repair Kit saga - groan…

Both my Yaris’s are/were the Panoramic roof choice, and you don’t get a spare wheel with those. It isn’t even an option. But of course, mention it as a deal-breaker and a dealer can usually come up trumps. My old Yaris Mk3 had a space-saver spare wheel thrown in as part of the deal and I made the same dealer arrangement with my new Mk4.

Imagine my surprise however when I eventually found out that there is no car-jack with this new Yaris! Toyota obviously don’t think you need a jack if you have a Tyre Repair Kit now. There is space in a compartment in the boot for one but no actual jack. My old Yaris Mk3 had a Tyre Repair Kit and a jack (under the passenger seat). Fortunately, £9 on e-bay was enough to acquire the right one for this car.

But this is another example that gives (me at least) the strong impression of Toyota cutting corners.

 Now having moaned about all that.

I still like the car - a lot - but maybe not quite as much as I did when reading about the new Yaris Mk4 and anticipating it’s delivery.

These niggles, although minor in themselves, are of sufficient quantity to make me think a bit harder about whether my next car will be a Toyota.

Does it make a difference where a car is actually built? Mine was built in France. Has my car been a Friday / Monday car or do such things still exist from manufacturing stories of old?  

I don’t know.   

It would be very interesting to hear from other members about their Yaris Mk4 ownership.

Cheers

Chris 😉

Hi Chris

I've just joined the TOC after buying my Yaris Design last week.  I travelled from South London to Southampton to get the car I wanted (160 mile round trip and £1000 deposit paid to test drive the car).  Its 5 months old with 2500 miles on the clock (Ex courtesy car).  On inspection the paint, wheels and trim looked in excellent condition.  During the test drive I noticed a rattling on the passenger side door. I decided to ignore this as I liked the car so much and I wanted to buy it there and then.  Driving it back home I put on some music which made the rattling much worse depending on the song and degree of bass.  I am intrigued to find out how you managed to take off the door trim to investigate your rattle and insert a screw into the threaded hole?   I just love doing stuff like this but don't want to damage the car whilst investigating the source of the rattle.  I have stuffed a velvet hair scrunchy in between 2 panels and this has reduced the rattle whilst driving but there is still a vibration when I play certain songs.  

Its my first Toyota and I have to say the build quality is indeed not as good as I had hoped.  Toyota have cut corners on this generation of Yaris and the optional extras are minimal.  Only thing I miss are the rear and front parking sensors and a heated windscreen which came as standard on my Fiesta.  I don't understand why we can't have the City pack option on all the trim levels.  Having said that I absolutely love driving the car as much as I loved driving my Fiesta and thats saying something!    The Yaris mark 4 looks like its on steroids and performs really well.  I'm still getting used to the Hybrid technology and safety features which are mind blowing for a hatchback.  

I just want to sort out this rattle although it does sound like my car is singing along to my music so I may just get used to it eventually...... 

Thanks

All the best

Munna

[john p williams]

Munna, can you not take it to your local Toyota Dealer to fix as it is still under the factory warranty ?