Toyota Hybrid Challenge: How Slow Can You Go?

Toyota has launched the Toyota Hybrid Challenge to encourage Toyota hybrid owners to go as slowly as possible and get the best mpg.

We’ll be the first to admit it: Toyota hybrids can achieve some pretty remarkable feats of economy. Trouble is, only if you’re happy to drive like you hate it with a passion.

And that doesn’t mean thrashing the life out of your Toyota hybrid to get there as quickly as possible, because if you do you’ll probably get worse mpg than if you just had the Atkinson cycle lump without the hybrid gubbins.

No, we mean if you drive as if you are frightened of the controls; the most gentle of inputs. Then, and only then, do you get the exceptional mpg Toyota hybrids manage to boast.

All of which explains why being stuck behind a Toyota Prius or a Toyota Auris hybrid can be a liitle frustrating. It’s a bit like the modern equivalent of being stuck behind the Rover-driving geography teacher with a pipe in his mouth and leather patches on his elbows; you know getting home will take a while.

So we feel it incumbent upon us to warn you of a new danger – extra-slow Toyota Hybrid drivers.

Why, you might ask, are Toyota Hybrid drivers about to get even slower? Simple, Toyota has asked them to see what’s the best mpg they can get. Good grief.

Now we have no gripe with just how good Toyota hybrids are for those who don’t enjoy driving. When we reviewed the Toyota Prius recently we were stunned by just how clever it was. We admitted it was a brilliant transport appliance, even if no keen driver should ever buy it.

And in January, when we reviewed the Toyota Auris Hybrid, we did note that this is how small hybrids should be – if they have to be at all; an option on a mainstream car, and not a huge ‘Green’ statement.

But why, when Toyota hybrids are already driven more slowly than almost any other car on the road, do Toyota have to encourage hybrid drivers to go even slower?

Please, think of those who actually have to be somewhere.