Goodbye to Toyota

[frenchreg068]

I have to say that after 2 ½ years of ownership, which I think is a fair trial I have P/ed it for a full EV.  Although the Yaris Hybrid is in its own right a reasonably good car, I found that it failed (for me) on several points. The fuel consumption never achieved any where  near the 3liters/ 100km the best was 4.9L/100km and with only 36 litres fuel tank was forever filling up.(and I am a gentle driver living in a semi rural area fo France). The second point was it always struggled up hills needing full down on the gas pedal to keep up with the traffic flow.  Lastly a little quibble, the washing it the egg box type front grill was a pain to get clean in all the corners.

So now I can plug in to recharge at home overnight on cheaper electric (aprox 2 euros per 250km) whenever needed according to the next days journey.

[Stopeter44]

Interesting you've made the choice to move to EV, is it going to be the only car in your household ? I see you have the Yaris III. the mileage figure 3L/100 was under the old NDEC classification, and quite far from real life conditions. 

I, too, live in France, but quite definitely in a rural area, I imagine you live on the outskirts of a big city ? The Yaris III was supposed to be quite decent in city traffic. I have a Yaris IV on order, it should arrive shortly. On the website www.spritmonitor.de (there's a French language choice on there) the Yaris IV averages are showing at around 3,5L/100, mind you with winter coming up I suspect that will increase.

Where I am, although the town has 6 charge points and I could charge at night and it would cover most of my use for the car, I just couldn't see myself being within range on a 300 km round trip, and especially in winter, with something like a Zoe or e-208.

Which car did you choose ?

[Yugguy1970]

I don't understand, a few people have talked about the Yaris struggling on hills but we just don't find this with ours.

But I do hope you enjoy your new EV.  It would be interesting to see how you get on with it if you get chance to let us know.

[Stopeter44]

36 minutes ago, frenchreg068 said:

The second point was it always struggled up hills needing full down on the gas pedal to keep up with the traffic flow.

Did you use "ECO" mode ?

[Bernard Foy]

I have owned the Mark 3 Yaris Hybrid and now the Mark 4 Yaris Hybrid. I’m surrounded by steep hills and never found the Mark 3 Yaris Hybrid to struggle on the steepest of them. Something wrong. Nor does the Mark 4 Yaris Hybrid struggle either.

[Cyker]

I guess struggle is the wrong word, but I found the Mk3 really unwilling to 'Go'. It was sprightly off the line, but if I demanded any kind of load from it, like accelerating up a hill, I got nothing but a lot of rev noise and very little feeling of progress. If you're used to eco box petrol engines it might feel normal, but as I had a Mk1 D4D at the time I just couldn't stand how gutless it felt in comparison. It's partly why I hated the Mk2 1.33 I was forced to switch to by KHAAAAN!, as it had the same feeling - Had to drop 2 or 3 gears to effect a fast overtake and still had to wait for the engine to wind up. It's a bit unfair as the D4D is a mighty engine - Revved as high as a lot of petrols and had so much torque at 2000rpm onwards!

The Mk4 is much much better in that regard - It has so much more 'Go' at higher speeds than the Mk3, and is almost like driving a diesel in that you can just press the accelerator and it just goes! It's made my journeys much more enjoyable  - Especially when I'm exploring the B-roads on the way up to my bro's house  

 

[preperationlaunch]

I've found the mk3 Yaris Hybrid takes a bit of aggression on the pedal to really feel like it wants to go.

It seems to meter the power depending on how aggressively you push the pedal. It's certainly not a quick car, but it has enough grunt most of the time. It can be fun off the line when the Battery is charged too.

[Cyker]

That was the thing, it actually felt really powerful in town, but as soon as I went 'extra urban' it dropped off really disappointingly.

That and the absolute lie about its mpg (80!!) put me off and helped me decide to stick with the diesel.

To be fair that Mk1 D4D was a hard car to beat; It was incredibly reliable as it predated things like DPFs and DMFs, and was so frugal on fuel that it still rivals most modern cars! At the same time it was really fun to drive because it had so much torque, and I didn't get low-fuel regret after going for a hoon because it could do 600+ miles on 40L!  Not bad for a 15 year old car!!

It made finding a replacement incredibly difficult as there's been literally nothing, until the Mk4, that even came close. I still miss things like the sliding rear seats and the proper slide/tilt sunroof, but the HUD is a decent successor to the lovely collimated dash tunnel, and we finally have a car that has better real world mpg than it did! (Still dead impressed the Mk4 returns such good mpg - I was absolutely booking it to my brother's and back on the weekend, and still only got it down to 65mpg on a 200-mile round trip!   And just driving it normally for work and such the last 2 days has already got it back to 69mpg!!  )

 

[TonyHSD]

Toyota hybrids never straggle going up hills but indeed they do leave the car driver with that sort of feeling and this is because of the drive train and how the power has been transferred to the wheels. Yes they do need to push the pedal because there are no gears and pushing harder delivers more torque along with some not so pleasant engine noises sometimes but that’s how it works, it’s not because they have no enough power. There is one trick though, when going uphill instead of pushing halfway or pass halfway the accelerator just smash it to the floor and the car will come to life and will pull away nicer and once you have reach your speed release a bit and will continue to pull you up with less noise and effort. 

[Cyker]

That's the big difference with the Mk4 - You only have to squeeze it a bit more and it'll happily accelerate up said hill without the revs needing to climb significantly, and if you do floor it and make the revs shoot up it'll launch up the hill like a rocket ship!  

They've somehow given it a lot more low-end torque (Or at least the feeling of) compared to the previous gen HSDs.

The engine is a *lot* noisier than the buttery-smooth 4-pot in your Auris tho' (When me and a work colleague were comparing, we just had them in Ready mode while we were outside talking about them, and they both fired up the ICE to charge the Battery - The Auris' you could barely hear it was on, but mine sounded like a diesel engine firing up and you could see the bonnet vibrating slightly  )

 

[Rosgoe]

42 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

Toyota hybrids never straggle going up hills but indeed they do leave the car driver with that sort of feeling and this is because of the drive train and how the power has been transferred to the wheels. Yes they do need to push the pedal because there are no gears and pushing harder delivers more torque along with some not so pleasant engine noises sometimes but that’s how it works, it’s not because they have no enough power. There is one trick though, when going uphill instead of pushing halfway or pass halfway the accelerator just smash it to the floor and the car will come to life and will pull away nicer and once you have reach your speed release a bit and will continue to pull you up with less noise and effort. 

Thanks for tip will try that next time I go up telegraph hill on the way to Devon💨

[Mikw]

1 hour ago, Rosgoe said:

Thanks for tip will try that next time I go up telegraph hill on the way to Devon💨

Well, it's got to be better than the Ford Escort Mk1 1100 we had when i was a child, we were in first gear by the time we got to the top of that hill!

[baxuz]

19 hours ago, frenchreg068 said:

The second point was it always struggled up hills needing full down on the gas pedal to keep up with the traffic flow. 

I have a 800m 6-10% incline to my house. Driving for 14km in Eco mode, freshly reset average, my consumption was 3.4/100km. After I went back uphill it climbed to 3.9, which is insane for such a small stretch of road.

Too tired to do the math now but the consumption was way above 10l since the monitoring gauge maxed out. This is also a small niggle I have — the car doesn't have an option to show realtime numerical fuel consumption except on the small [B] bar which is constrained to 10:

[Yugguy1970]

10 minutes ago, baxuz said:

I have a 800m 6-10% incline to my house. Driving for 14km in Eco mode, my consumption was 3.4/100km. After I went back uphill it climbed to 3.9, which is insane. I have to rev the engine quite high into PWR to get above 35kph.

Unless my maths is wrong you have gone from 83mpg to 72mpg up the hill? That doesn't seem that bad to me?

 

Ah I see you mean the average.  Do you have average set over all time or just last journey?

Even for instant mpg, 5.0l per 100km is 56mpg which is still good uphill.

 

[baxuz]

It was just the last journey. And I double-checked, it was 18.7 km, not 14.

Also, the uphill part is 1.3km:

So it was 3.4l/100 for the first 17.4km and 3.9/100 for the total 18.7km.

[frenchreg068]

For those interested I got a great deal on on a top of range Nissan Leaf.  I also forgot to mention the poor headlights of the Yaris, driving through dark forests had to have both full beam and fog lights on.  With the Leaf  all lights are LED and it was a revelation driving the same route with just dipped beam.

Both my wife and I love the Leaf, and find it much more comfortable than the Yaris.  We have yet to do a really long trip but with various route planning apps know we will not have too much trouble charging along the way.

Edited December 8, 2021 by frenchreg068
Some extra info

[Stopeter44]

9 minutes ago, frenchreg068 said:

Both my wife and I love the Leaf, and find it much more comfortable than the Yaris.  We have yet to do a really long trip but with various route planning apps know we will not have too much trouble charging along the way.

It’s not surprising it’s more comfortable, it’s a step up in size and, along with it, comfort. It’s about 4 years more recent, too.

Profitez-en, enjoy your new car👍 !

[TonyHSD]

Absolutely, good choice for an ev and obviously it will be better than Yaris, upper class vehicle. Enjoy your new car. 🔋👍

[Cyker]

Yea, the LED headlamps in my Mk4 are insanely bright compared to my previous Yarisisueussuis... so clear on unlit roads! Good for me but not for other drivers I suspect! I look forward to when matrix LEDs are the norm!

 

[Mikw]

6 hours ago, Cyker said:

Yea, the LED headlamps in my Mk4 are insanely bright compared to my previous Yarisisueussuis... so clear on unlit roads! Good for me but not for other drivers I suspect! I look forward to when matrix LEDs are the norm!

 

Yes, the LED lights on the MK4 are really bright! I get flashed all the time for dazzling other drivers. The auto dip works quite well though. I've noticed on motorways thought my full beam comes on sometimes so i turn that feature off on the motorway

[Cyker]

40 minutes ago, Mikw said:

Yes, the LED lights on the MK4 are really bright! I get flashed all the time for dazzling other drivers.

Thanks, that makes me feel better - From the other thread I was starting to think it was just me!!!

[Yugguy1970]

So on my uk imperial display the thin white bar on the left shows your current instant mpg, with the higher the better.

Is that not the same for the metric display?

[Sooty]

No Guy,

In europe they measure fuel consumption by how much fuel is used in 100km or approx 64 miles. so the lower the amount is better.

In UK we measure how many miles we get per gallon so the higher the better.

It confused me for ages when I lived in Germany many moons ago.

[yossarian247]

14 minutes ago, Sooty said:

No Guy,

In europe they measure fuel consumption by how much fuel is used in 100km or approx 64 miles. so the lower the amount is better.

In UK we measure how many miles we get per gallon so the higher the better.

It confused me for ages when I lived in Germany many moons ago.

Me too, although arguably measuring fuel consumption the way most of Europe does it makes more sense.

Miles per gallon is really 'fuel non-consumption' 😉

[TonyHSD]

When I do my fuel calculations I always convert miles to km range then divide fuel quantity to km range multiply by 100  and have the real numbers ltr/100km then convert again to uk miles and the car shows spot on correct. Recent fuel consumption of 5.57/100 or 50.8mpg 👍