Toyota appears to have cracked the code, working out how to make Australians buy petrol-electric hybrid cars in significant numbers. The means, in this case, is the Corolla.
A few months ago it put a campaign price on the Corolla Hybrid of $27,990 drive-away ($90 a week with a 3.9 per cent finance rate), making it $1000 pricier than a petrol SX. It’s also started spending on marketing, particularly aimed at a younger demographic.
Since then, this once-niche variant has captured about 20 per cent of all Corolla hatchback sales here. When you consider the Corolla is Australia’s top-selling passenger car, averaging more than 3000 units a month, you see what that proportion really means.
We’ll repeat. One-in-five of all Corolla hatches sold over the past few months have been hybrids. This about matches the hybrid ratio managed by the fleet-focused Camry — though it wants to drastically up this proportion on the just-launched new model.
“We reduced the hybrid premium and the mix of sales on that car have gone up substantially,” said TMC Australia’s vice-president of national operations.
“It’s for us almost a test of the market to see how it responds.”
“What it tells us is if you position the car right, people in Australia will buy hybrids,” he added later.
Henley did offer a caveat though.
“Right now it’s running over 20 per cent since we repositioned and narrowed the price gap. I have to qualify that, it’s a small sample of a few months… to get a genuine sample I think we need to wait 12 months.”
Hanley also promised Toyota would lob three new hybrid offerings by 2020, taking its total to eight. The current range comprises the Camry and Corolla, plus the struggling Prius, and the Prius C and Prius V spinoffs.
A hybrid C-HR seems a lock, the other two not so much — though one might guess a petrol-electric RAV4 would make sense in next-generation form.
One car that remains off the radar is the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid (PHEV), which seems an unusual omission since the whole point of the Prius is to move boundaries, and the regular ‘normal’ hybrid tech in our model seems a little mainstream these days.
“It was always our dream when we put Prius into market that when people think of alternate powertrains… they’ll think Toyota. They’ve been in market continuously for longest,” Hanley admitted.
“[But] to us right now, it’s a hybrid environment. You never rule out PHEV but frankly speaking I think Australians still want convenience and that’s hybrid right now.”
We disagree. Surely Australia’s market leader needs to set the agenda? Tell us below what you think.
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