New Toyota Corolla cars hybrid were added in the Autonapůl fleet. For now, you can find them in Prague and Brno and they belong to the Comfort price category. Let's introduce them and take a look at how their hybrid mode actually works.
No more cables and chargers
When you think of the word hybrid, you may think of the need for charging, range solutions and similar constraints. Don't worry, it's not a plug-in hybrid that needs to be recharged regularly from a power outlet. Toyota has been working on a so-called full hybrid for several years now - a combination of an internal combustion engine, an electric motor and a tiny battery. The battery is either recharged by regeneration while driving or can be recharged by the combustion engine. In practice, this means that you either run on petrol or electricity and the car decides everything on its own without you having to do anything.
The result? Low consumption in the city, where the car can store the energy generated by frequent braking and use it to get moving again (e.g. a dense network of intersections, etc.).
Rich equipment is commonplace in Toyota
The equipment package is rich: a spacious estate boot of almost 600 litres, Apple Carplay/Android Auto, wireless phone charging, heated seats, automatic high beams, DAB radio with navigation, front and rear parking sensors plus camera, adaptive cruise control and traffic sign reading. And above all: the reliable and economical Toyota hybrid powertrain, with automatic transmission as standard.
For more technical information on shared hybrid Toyotas, visit our website.
Presentation of the Toyota Corolla hybrid
If you'd like to take a peek inside the car before you drive and see what it has to offer, we've prepared a video summarising everything that's important. Unfortunately with Czech commentary only. Here's how to drive a hybrid or what you can try out. Driving fuel-efficiently is very addictive in a car. 🙂
So why Toyota hybrid?
Why did we choose Toyota and their hybrid drive? If you've been driving with us for a while, you'll know that at Autonapůl we regularly participate in the Bike to Work initiative, we want to create more space for people in cities with our carsharing strategy and hybrids can help reduce emissions in cities and create a better environment for its inhabitants. In urban and suburban traffic lies the biggest advantage of the so-called full hybrid, which Toyota began mass-producing in 1997 with the very first generation of the Toyota Prius (it didn't arrive in Europe until 2000).
A full hybrid can compensate for the weak points of an internal combustion engine (acceleration, braking and loss of kinetic energy). If you are driving around town, you have to stop and start very often in a conventional internal combustion car - the energy spent is lost and cannot be reused. A full hybrid can capture the energy from braking into the battery and use it when starting up again. Driving a hybrid is also very similar to driving an electric car - the electric motor and automatic transmission take care of smooth starts. You can just concentrate on driving.