Toyota Prius C i-Tech 2012 Review

The Toyota Prius c may just be the most significant hybrid to go on sale in Australia to date. As a new benchmark for hybrid affordability and a new fuel-conserving paradigm for younger buyers, its importance can hardly be overestimated. So it better be good...

And in many respects the Prius c is good... It's just those who judge cars by acceleration times and lateral g forces need not apply. Toyota's latest hybrid is aimed fair and square at buyers concerned for the environment (or vehicle running costs), and intrigued by leading-edge communications and infotainment. The Prius c addresses both those criteria with a well-packaged design and offers the promise of Toyota's build quality and reliability.

Our test Prius c was trimmed to i-Tech level and came equipped with satellite navigation, alloy wheels, fold-in electric mirrors and premium interior materials, for $3000 over the asking price of the base Prius c.

For the right sort of buyer the Prius c excels with such on-board electronic gadgetry as audio streaming via Bluetooth, keyless entry/start and the advanced trip computer drive functions. To illustrate, the car effortlessly pairs up with an iPhone and the keyless entry saves the driver even pressing a button to open the locked driver's door — in a car selling for under $27,000. And the multi-function display in the centre fascia is more informative and more sophisticated than we recall of the setup in the third generation Prius.

Sadly, switchgear placement and instrument layout don't meet the same standard in the Prius c, the centrally-located instrument binnacle being one example. At least the only information readout that the driver MUST watch like a hawk is the digital speedo — and that is placed in the binnacle closer to the driver's line of sight. One virtue of the instrument binnacle's location is that finding an appropriate driving position poses no problem.

Toyota's infotainment touchscreen is intuitive to use, but set a little low for the driver. There's a massive HVAC temperature adjustment dial that's located too close to the driver's left hand, considering cabin comfort tends to be a set-and-forget affair most of the time. Switches for the EV and Eco modes are situated in the centre console near the driver's left thigh. They're hard to find readily and, as we've learned from the Prius in the past, the EV mode needs to be constantly reactivated once its 40km/h speed ceiling is exceeded and it automatically disengages.

Notwithstanding the placement of the instrument binnacle, the Prius c looks more conventional inside than the larger Prius. The gear selector of the Prius c is located on the floor, rather than the dash, and materials are more of what you would expect in a light-segment hatch.

Overall the car's space age interior style and cheap plastics in a two-tone combination conspire to look less than classy. Oddly enough, however, while the seats look like they're made from bits of tyre inner tube, they're actually nicer to touch than they look. Comfort is commendable, although the seat squab seems just a little short.

Rear accommodation provides adequate knee room for adults of average height and we had no complaints about the head room.

Boot space in the Prius c, with a full-size (alloy) spare wheel and seats that fold flat, came as a pleasant surprise. It's slightly better than the Mazda2's (260 litres versus 250), but falls well short of the 370-litre capacity of a Hyundai Accent, the segment champ. While the build quality of the Prius c is typically Toyota, the doors of the hybrid close securely and easily, erring on the side of inoffensively soft.

The first impression from driving the Prius c is that its steering is really direct and the car turns in rapidly. At the straight-ahead the Prius c is slightly prone to meander and there's not a lot of feedback through the wheel, but the Toyota tracks better in bends and handling approaches neutral with a touch of understeer in tighter corners.

Powering out of bends won't induce much more understeer and there's decent grip from the 185/60 R16 Bridgestone Potenzas, but the tyres end up being a compromise solution.

For starters, the car's ride can be punishing; there's some impact harshness over lesser bumps, and it's the tyres that seem to be the main culprits, although there's not a lot of initial compliance in the suspension either. The ride evens out on country roads, over longer undulations, but the car can still be knocked offline with a moderate hit mid-corner.

Road noise is also present to a significant degree, even on freeways at the open-road limit. In the same circumstances wind and driveline noise contribute to the amalgam.

The petrol engine in the Prius c emits substantial noise and vibration on start-up and while accelerating. It's a major contributor to NVH in a light-segment car that's generally fairly quiet otherwise. The electric motor takes on a coarse, vibrating presence generating power for the battery while the vehicle is coasting. And there were also some atypical squeaks and rattles from soft fittings in the interior of this Toyota.

While the Prius c will keep up with traffic, or even stay ahead, it takes a determined stab at the accelerator pedal to make it so.

The c's competitive edge is its fuel economy — and extracting the best from the car for that purpose can be something of a black art. EV mode will drop out above a speed of 40km/h, even if the vehicle is coasting down a hill at the time. In the Australian urban context it's practically superfluous... when the car can run in all-electric mode without manually selecting 'EV' — as long as the driver can exercise some discretion. Being able to call upon that electric power for a kilometre or more of bumper-to-bumper traffic is, however, spectacularly productive and makes a sizeable difference to the Prius c's overall fuel use. Over a 19km daily commute the Prius returned a figure as low as 4.7L/100km, which is highly laudable.

From a cold start the car will post an 'average' consumption figure of 15.0L/100km, which falls rapidly once the car has travelled a few hundred metres and the engine warms up. The best figure posted on the trip computer during the week was 4.0L/100km for an 18km trip from the wilds of Melbourne's eastern suburbs to carsales HQ, during off-peak hours.

On one brief trip from the local hardware megastore to home base, the Prius c used as little as 2.7L/100km — because the car started off in electric-only drive mode leaving the carpark, and didn't crank up the petrol engine until the car was on an arterial road.

To achieve sub-5L/100km fuel economy occasionally required the driver to do what an eco-sensitive driver of a conventional might do anyway — coasting up behind halted traffic from a long way back in anticipation the lights will change to green, or accelerating more slowly than 'normal'.

It's in the nature of the Prius c's design to encourage such driving. Maybe the novelty will wear off though, once everyone's driving economical, environmentally-friendly cars like this one.

And that's arguably only a matter of time. Younger buyers are reportedly beginning to see cars as nothing more than a mobile telecommunications platform with room for four and creature comforts to match. The Prius c seems overqualified to meet those expectations.

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site…