Taunted for being a bland green-mobile, the original Toyota Prius was in fact as big an automotive engineering achievement as the Bugatti Veyron
The quiet ones at school often turn out to make the biggest impact.
The 1995 Tokyo Motor Show was like a typical high school year. Flashy concept cars such as rotary Mazdas, flat-six Subarus and convertible Nissans were popular – noisy, a little too concerned with appearance, and trying to get as much attention as possible.
A small, banana yellow Toyota sedan (pictured below) with the dullest name for an engine – the Toyota Energy Management System – sat up the back, making barely a squeak. But it and its quirky ‘hybrid’ powertrain would go on to change the world more than all the other cars at the motor show combined.
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It was called Prius, Latin for ‘first’. An unremarkable vehicle today – a car you just hope doesn’t smell too bad when it’s coming to get you as an Uber – in the mid-90s, the Prius with its energy recuperation and even stop-start was a radical vehicle.
Its 3.3L/100km combined fuel economy was as remarkable a number and engineering achievement as the Bugatti Veyron’s original 407km/h top speed. In 1995, the little Prius concept used half the fuel of a conventional vehicle in its class – an outstanding achievement.
The idea for Prius first came in 1993. Toyota’s brightest engineers were debating a “vehicle for the 21st century” – and decided it would be one with groundbreaking efficiency. The original plan was to decrease fuel consumption compared to an equivalent small car by 50 percent – that was, until a Toyota bigwig, executive vice president for R&D Akihiro Wada, told them to double it.
The almost impossible target demanded new thinking – a hybrid system. Toyota combined an ultra-efficient 1.5-litre inline-four with a nickel-metal hydride battery pack, which stored scavenged energy under braking, redeploying it with a 30kW electric motor under acceleration. On sale in Japan in 1997, it was the world’s first mass-market hybrid vehicle.
The original Toyota Prius went on sale in Japan in 1997
Just as big a statement as the efficiency was the price. In Japan, the Prius cost the same as an entry-level Corolla. Industry insiders privately confessed this was well under break-even – not that Toyota was concerned, with $6billion of R&D money to play with. “We can afford to fail,” chief engineer Hiroshi Okuda told reporters at the time.
Luckily, the Prius was anything but a failure. Its second generation saw it morph from small sedan into a slippery fast-back with a drag coefficient of just 0.26Cd. Two more generations followed, introducing innovations such as an electric water pump and an internal vacuum flask storing hot coolant to reduce warm-up time between use – further aiding efficiency again.
The original ‘green’ car, Toyota has since sold more than 15 million Priuses globally including 20,000 in Australia. In America, a new, fifth-generation Prius evolves it into a sexy, futuristic four-door ‘coupe’ – but sadly, there’s no plans for it to come to Australia.
Instead, with local sales having slowed to a trickle, last year the Prius was discontinued entirely. Hybrid powertrains now proliferate across the Toyota range – from Yaris to Corolla, Camry to Kluger – and have robbed the Prius of its unique selling point, leaving it as merely a dumpy, dorky lift-back.
Sadly, Australia won’t get the sleek latest generation Toyota Prius
But it’s done its job. As Toyota releases its first proper all-electric car, the bZ4X, held up against the original Prius it appears a car the Japanese automaker had to make, rather than wanted to make.
The Prius is a symbol of a Toyota that took risks and set the agenda, telling and not asking, the world what cars it wanted – and it paying off.
A quiet little car that went on to big things.
Have you ever owned a Toyota Prius? Or do you own one still today? Tell us a bit about your experience in the comments below.
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