Camry Hybrid interior glimpse revealed
BY MARTON PETTENDY | 28th Sep 2009
The single image of the vehicle’s unique instrument cluster is the latest instalment in Toyota’s slow-release reveal campaign for the first hybrid vehicle to be made in Australia.
It shows that the Camry Hybrid will feature a dominant 240km/h speedo similar to that found on the recently facelifted Camry sedan, to the left of which is a fuel consumption gauge that reads from below 0L/100km (during electric-only running mode) and up to 30L/100km.
As on the Prius, a ‘Ready’ display resides within the fuel economy clock to indicate that the vehicle is switched on and ready to run (even if the petrol engine is not running), while a digital display inside the speedo shows basic trip computer functions under the ‘Hybrid Synergy Drive’ banner.
Either side of the blue-backlit fuel economy and speedo dials are conventional engine temperature and fuel-level gauges.
According to Toyota, the interior image was released to coincide with the start of the second and final stage of pilot production of the Camry Hybrid, in which Toyota will test all its processes, parts and assembly methods.
The official start of pilot production at Toyota’s Altona manufacturing plant in Melbourne was attended by Victorian premier John Brumby and Federal industry minister Senator Kim Carr a month ago, before GoAuto and other media outlets drove the first pre-production examples.
Full-scale production begins in December, ahead of the Camry Hybrid’s showroom release in February. Toyota expects to produce 10,000 hybrids next year when the petrol-electric version is forecast to comprise about on-quarter of all Camry sales.
The Camry Hybrid is expected to carry a price premium of less than $3500 over an equivalent Camry sedan, and should cut the 8.8L/100km official average fuel consumption figure of standard four-cylinder Camry by at least 20 per cent, to around 7.0L/100km.
At the same time, the addition of an electric motor generator to the standard Camry’s 2.4-litre petrol engine should also give the Camry Hybrid about 20 per cent more power and 30 per cent more torque.
As our first drive proved, the Camry Hybrid is consistently quicker than the petrol-only Camry, and should accelerate to 100km/h in about nine seconds.
Toyota Australia’s senior executive director of sales and marketing David Buttner said the hybrid version would take Camry efficiency to new heights.
“Hybrid Camry will have substantially more power than the petrol-only car while using at least 20 per cent less fuel,” he said.
“It will save motorists hundreds of dollars a year in fuel – and the more you drive, the more you'll save on fuel.” Toyota says it has started final quality assurance testing of the Camry Hybrid, with comprehensive trials including long-distance endurance evaluation by Toyota's Quality Control Division.
It says development and tuning of the Camry Hybrid’s steering and brakes was supervised by Toyota Technical Centre Australia, a Melbourne-based subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.
As we noted from our pre-production drive, the Camry Hybrid benefits from a tauter suspension tune that eliminates some of the bodyroll and rear-end ‘float’ of the garden-variety Camry without reducing ride quality.
