Hot on the heels of last week’s success at the ETA Green Car Awards, Toyota has picked up two awards for its fuel-efficient engines. The 2010 International Engine of the Year jury has named Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive powertrain as the ‘Green Engine of the Year’, while the 1.0-litre VVT-i engine found in Aygo, iQ and Yaris has won ‘Sub-1.0 Litre Engine of the Year’ for the fourth year in a row.
With CO2 emissions starting at 89g/km, we know the new Toyota Auris Hybrid is a low emissions car. But how ‘green’ are the manufacturing plants, and what efforts have been made to improve their efficiency? We go behind the scenes at Toyota Manufacturing UK (TMUK) to find out.
Would you like a car that offers over 100mpg? How about CO2 emissions of just 59g/km? That’s what we had the chance to drive yesterday. Two things shouldn’t come as a surprise though: it was a Toyota hybrid, and it carried the familiar Prius badge. But this was unlike any Prius we had experienced before. This was Prius PHV.
We think we know quite a lot about Hybrid Synergy Drive here on the blog. After all, Toyota has been developing hybrid technology for over 10 years, having already produced three generations of the award-winning Prius. But we’re not sure we can quite live up to the standards set by Toyota Manufacturing UK - its members now have their own national qualification in hybrid technology!
Tags: Auris, auris hsd, Auris Hybrid, Avensis, Burnaston, HSD, Hybrid Synergy Drive, Prius, TMUK, training
It’s a sign of the innovative iQ’s success that, two years on from launch, it’s been named overall winner at the Green Car Awards 2010. On the way to winning the main prize, Toyota’s smallest car also claimed first place in the city car category, while the Yaris D-4D took top honours in the supermini class.
We were very impressed by the new Auris Hybrid when we drove one for the first time in Barcelona at last month’s press launch. It wasn’t just the excellent real-world fuel economy figures that caught our attention - no matter what we threw at it, from mountain roads to heavy rush hour traffic, the car coped with consummate ease.
