Toyota Camry Hybrid to save 1100 litres of fuel per year

By Matt Brogan | November 17th, 2009

The upcoming Australian made Toyota Camry Hybrid will save approximately 1100 litres of fuel in a year of city driving compared to locally made six-cylinder rivals.

Corporate manager of product planning, Mr Peter Evans, said Hybrid Camry’s fuel consumption and emissions would rival small and compact cars. ??The fuel savings during 20,000km of city driving will be at least 1100 litres or $1329 a year, based on pump price of $1.20 a litre of regular unleaded petrol.

“Those savings will be multiplied by two, 10, and even hundreds for fleet owners – and many of their drivers will save even more by covering far greater distances,” Mr Evans said.

“At the same time, Hybrid Camry – with combined power of around 140kW from its 2.4-litre petrol engine and powerful electric motor – will produce less than 150 grams per kilometre of CO2.

“That’s the sort of result you’d expect from a car with less than half the power of Hybrid Camry and a much smaller engine displacement of around 1.3 litres.”

Mr Evans said that most Australian’s do most of their driving in built up areas making the city cycle more relevant.

Final testing will confirm the Hybrid Camry’s fuel saving ability, expecting at least 5.5L/100km on city cycle.

“Using the same amount of fuel, a Hybrid Camry could travel at least 175km compared with just 100km for the most efficient six-cylinder car produced in Australia.

“Even on the open road, we expect the official figures to show Hybrid Camry will use around 25 per cent less fuel than the best of the local big sixes.

“Looking at the combination of city and highway driving, we are confident of recording fuel economy in the low 6.0 litres per 100km range.

“By driving Hybrid Camry, the savings on fuel and therefore on people’s wallets will be huge – and there is also a significant environmental benefit,” he said.

Mr Evans said Hybrid Camry will also have other fuel saving features as well as the petrol electric motor.

“Our engineers have tuned the suspension and steering for Australian conditions – and they have included technology that improves overall driving performance and safety,” he said.

Toyota plans to release the Hybrid Camry in February 2010.

by Adam Marshall

Philthy

If this is marketed and priced properly I think it’s a good opportunity to bring hybrids into the mainstream in Oz. I’m personally more interested in full electric cars than hybrids, but they’re a stepping stone to make the tech more widely available and cheaper.

Makes the normal Camry seem redundant.
Jay

Definately a step in the right direction.
Improving battery technology and other power sources is the way to go.

Beats flogging the diesel (soon to be) dead horse.

Car Fanatic

yes cause the world has embraced Hybrids so much that diesel worldwide is a dieing horse! Grow up you idiot, diesel is a growing segment and will continue to grow and in the next few years you will be eating your words!

Tomas79

Too Right!!

Hyena

CarFanatic and Tomas 79, do you even follow the automotive world..?

Jay is right, tightening emission standards and falling tax subsidies in Europe will see diesel start to die off over the coming years as a passenger car fuel, but it will still be used in developing countries. It is why so many euro players are developing highly efficent small turbo/supercharged petrol engines to take over. It is also why many car makers have gone straight to the petrol hybrid route rather than diesel hybrid.
Diesel has always been a very flawed choice in fuel for passenger cars, but has been used extensively due to very favourable taxation treatment in Europe.

Car Fanatic

Yes I do follow it. Why don’t we wait and see Hyena, cause I’m gonna laugh when you have egg on your face.
Tomas79

Hyena,
Before embarrassing yourself further, i suggest you do a bit more research on diesels!!

Old Dog

Great, a coal burning camry

S

The battery recharges itself, no coal used. This is not a plug-in vehicle.

Toyota Guru

Old Dog how about you think before you speak. It’s funny how many ppl out there think all hybrid vehicles need to be plugged into a power point every night. This Camry Hybrid (and the Prius) are self-sufficient. They NEVER need plugging in to a power point, ever.

Old Dog

my bad, got confused with the kelvinator.

Car Fanatic

Kelvinator doesn’t have wheels Old dog and is more useful on a daily basis!
Yonny

Yeah, I stuck some prawns in a Camry once – went back 2 hours later and they’d all gone off. That would never have happened in a Kelvinator.

MrQuick

hmm, yeah 1100 litre fuel saving “compared to locally made SIX-CYLINDER rivals”

A much better comparison would be to compare it to the normal camry 4-pot, or if you want to take into account the increased power, the fuel consumption compared to the honda accord, which has a similar displacement and power.

Comparing this car to the local big sixes is kind of misleading, i don’t see many people buying falcodores cross-shopping a camry. Hell you can’t even buy a camry in a v6 anymore, so the whole statement comparing it to 6 cylinder cars is completly irrelevant.

Having said that, 5.5l/100km in city conditions is pretty awesome. As soul-less as people will claim this car is, the gains in city conditions almost completly jusitifies this car, you could drive around in sydney peak hour just doing 5.5l/100km. Thats almost a third of what I do at the moment.

Reality Check

5.5 litres per 100 km’s is a P.R. design fantasy that’ll never happen.

Even if they can get it somewhere near that in the lab, back in the real world it’ll probably be in the 9 litres per 100km’s range, i.e. worse than most two litre diesel’s which have more torque and are a more rewarding drive.

Lexus RX450h’s are getting nowhere near what they offically claim, and the pattern will most probably repeat with these Camry’s.

milobob

5.5L/100km in the city is a fantastic figure. I believe the actual city figure is around 10-12L/100km for the normal city cycle 2.4L so this would mean a 50% saving!

Not to mention now that it has a 2.4L engine, highway driving shouldn’t be too strained as the prius.
lazybones

Toyota already make a Hybrid Camry for the US market. So i’m wondering how different the aussie version would really be. The US figures are 33Mpg city/34Mpg Hwy. So basically 7L/100km combined.

Conversion is wrong

The US has a different Gallon than what Australia used to have

M P G

34 mpg (US) = 6.92l/100km = 40.83 mpg (imperial)
the conversion is correct,
the criticism (like most in these comments) is wrong

Yanzo

1100 for us car enthusiasts to put in our car
Robin Graves

Does the fuel saving offset the damage to the environment for digging up rare-earth minerals for the battery packs, the chemical effluent and damage processing the battery material and manufacturing them, and the dead batteries after 10 years? I’m curious why no-one has ever done a study on the environmental impact of the batteries themselves. I’m sure the magnets in the motor are rare-earth as well. Seeing as most of this stuff comes from China, there are probably a few two-headed babies born every year downstream from the battery plant. I could be severely mistaken but it just nags me whenever I see manufacturers bashing the hybrid and its miraculous environmental saving.

Car Fanatic

LOL, normally I would bag you out Robin, but you make a valid, yet funny point.
Graham

Many tests have been done Prius has a bigger enviromental footprint than a Holden commodore. when worked out cradle to grave.
milobob

Until we can harvest minerals from the moon whatever we make on earth will always be bad for the environment

That said I think everyone should ride bamboo bikes. Biodegradable.

Car Fanatic

Yeah great idea, until a Hungry panda sees it.

from the Future

Point well noted and can be applied to all new technologies, but you have to start somewhere mate.
lazybones

Given hybrids basically have 2 engines I can’t imagine their foot print would ever be smaller than that of a normal car. I see hybrids as a stepping stone technology to pure Electrics.

As for digging up rare earth minerals. Its kind of a given that any mining operation is bad for the environment.

tekkyy

Really? 5.5L/100km city cycle?
That would be quite different to the earlier media reports/estimates of 7.0L/100km combined cycle.
Gilly

“Even on the open road, we expect the official figures to show Hybrid Camry will use around 25 per cent less fuel than the best of the local big sixes”.

So are they talking people out of buying an Aurion, or Falcadore?

As previously mentioned about rare earth materials used in the electric motors are at such a critical stage already, the future looks pretty bleak for electric/battery cars unless a substitute or synthetic material is available in abundance!

milobob

we need one of those star trek material synthesisers
lazybones

Not really, its more a case of most of the materials are coming out of China and they are strugglying to cope with the boom. There are many other mines world wide, which are no longer operating because they couldn’t compete with China. So now boom could see other countries benefit.

Robert Henry

Come in suckers, even at 5.5l 100 it still does not match a v5 VW at 4.7 or a Audi diesel at 3.7, who would buy one, plus no one has said how much a battery will set you back
The Real Car Fanatic

New Battery will set you back about 4500
Shaun

Doesn’t matter how much we bag it everyone will be buying it thinking they are saving the planet. The reality is that they are just killing it slightly slow than the rest of us (or slightly faster than some). Eliminating the need to drive so often would be much more fruitful. Riding a bike or taking public transport even better!