SLEEP EASY, BAR THE WHINING
Neil Lyndon finds the Toyota Auris comfortable if noisy
Last night I dreamt that I was driving the all-electric Nissan Leaf that I have kept on extended loan, zipping along at 70mph on a motorway. Then, suddenly, I noticed that the range indicator was showing the electric battery had almost run flat. How was I to get home? “Range anxiety” has, of course, become such a constant challenge for the world’s few owners of electric cars that it is almost a recognised syndrome in medical taxonomy. But has it disturbed the dreams of anybody else in the world – or might my gravestone record the fact that I was the first? We do love our Leaf so much that we are thinking of buying it – but, like a talented, wayward child, it needs special care and attention. No such anxieties would disturb the slumbers of the owner of a Toyota Auris Hybrid Touring Sports. Whenever the 73kW electric motor on this car isn’t up to the job (because the battery’s reserves are run down or because more power is called for), the 1.8-litre petrol engine kicks in to supply extra oomph. So long as there is conventional fuel in the tank, therefore, the range of this still-unconventional set-up is unlimited. Toyota/Lexus have been developing this approach to low-emissions cars since the last century. Remembering that the first Prius went on sale in January 1997 is a jolt, like seeing a niece for the first time for a few years and realising she’s just about to go to university. The hybrid form has come a long, long way in Toyota’s hands. In the Auris Hybrid Touring Sports, for instance, the chunky battery pack is now mounted under the rear seat (where it doesn’t obtrude at all into the car’s interior space), instead of under the floor of the boot, as before, where it bulked into the load space. The flat load area under the shapely tail of the Touring Sports is actually bigger than an equivalent Ford Focus estate or Volvo V40, so this car offers considerable practicality as well as green credentials. Meanwhile, I – a less-thanlissom six-footer – could sit comfortably in the rear seat behind the driver’s seat when that was set for my own height. So, for a compact family car, this Auris is big on space. Whether it deserves the word “Sports” in its name is a more debatable question. Toyota’s continuously variable transmission (CVT), which substitutes for an automatic gearbox on this car, is a whiny, noisy piece of work, and the response it produces when you put pressure on the throttle pedal, sounds more like a high-pitched yelp than a lusty roar. The comfort of the ride is, as always with Toyota/Lexus, as refined as it is possible to buy for less than £30,000; but the steering is as glutinous as a bowl of three-day-old macaroni. The handling of my mother-in-law’s Kia Picanto is livelier. My average fuel consumption of 50+ mpg may sound OK for a small family estate car until you start to compare it with the latest, most efficient diesels (which can routinely achieve 10 per cent more) and, especially, with the 70+ mpg that the manufacturers claim. However, the Auris’s 92g/km of CO2 emissions brings tax benefits and exemption from congestion charging, which no diesel can match. The financial case for a hybrid remains questionable – as it does, indeed, for a pure electric car such as our Leaf. Analysis of our household consumption shows we have been spending about £20 per month more on electricity since we borrowed the Leaf. This sounds good if you set it straightforwardly against the £60-£70 a month we would have been spending on conventional fuel, but it’s less appealing set in the context of the Leaf’s staggering depreciation (more than 50 per cent in the first year). There’s a figure to disturb anybody’s dreams.