2021 Toyota Yaris Cross review: The most frugal SUV on the market?
Is this the world's most frugal SUV? The 2021 Toyota Yaris Cross Urban Hybrid aims to take the Yaris, make it bigger and then keep the ultra fuel efficient hybrid drivetrain from the smaller Yaris. Paul Maric tests out Toyota's latest SUV to see if it's any good.
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Toyota content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/toyota
More Toyota Yaris Cross content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/toyota/yaris-cross
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:54
Interior 03:20
Infotainment 04:53
Safety Tech 06:03
Practicality 06:59
On the road 10:54
Verdict 16:33
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#review #toyota #yariscross
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Toyota content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/toyota
More Toyota Yaris Cross content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/toyota/yaris-cross
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:54
Interior 03:20
Infotainment 04:53
Safety Tech 06:03
Practicality 06:59
On the road 10:54
Verdict 16:33
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
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#review #toyota #yariscross
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So just when you thought we'd reached peak SUV, Toyota thought they'd roll out
00:04 an SUV version of their mini hatch, the Yaris. It is called the Toyota Yaris Cross, and this one here
00:11 is the Urban 2WD Hybrid version. It's one of the big advantages Toyota has over its competitors.
00:17 They're able to put hybrids into virtually anything and then charge a little bit more for
00:22 them. So this is priced at just under $35,000, and it competes with things like the Mazda CX-3,
00:28 the Kia Seltos, the Hyundai Venue, all of those small SUVs that have come from hatches. Today,
00:34 we're going to do a detailed review of this car. If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of
00:38 this review, you can use the time codes up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube,
00:42 just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you hit
00:46 subscribe and press the bell icon so you can find out every single time we drive an SUV that's come
00:51 from a hatch. Okay, let's talk exterior. So you have eight external colors to choose from, and
00:57 all but black is an additional $500. You can also get a black roof for an additional $450,
01:03 so you can see that fitted to this car. I think it looks good, adds a bit of character to it.
01:07 Now let's talk about the design. So this actually looks really different to the Yaris. The Yaris
01:12 kind of just has a very small hatch, pedestrian kind of look. It is a little bit out there,
01:16 but the Yaris Cross takes it one step further with those SUV proportions. It's got this big
01:21 grill over here, despite the fact most of it is actually blocked out. Just got a little section
01:25 there for air and cooling. Then you have the radar sensor up the front, plus a camera too.
01:31 Now, if you have seen our other Toyota Hybrid reviews, you'll know that you can tell a hybrid
01:35 Toyota apart from the rest because of the blue inside the logo. Now in terms of headlights,
01:40 you have full LED headlights with LED daytime running lights. The indicator looks pretty cool
01:45 as well. It takes up that entire side section. I like this color too. Toyota's kind of trying to
01:51 buck that boring image that they have by offering a whole bunch of colors that stand out along with
01:56 your standard colors that kind of just blend into everything. So it's good to see a number
02:00 of options there. Then around the side here, we have 18-inch alloy wheels. I like this design.
02:06 You've got that sort of brushed chrome look on the outside and then dark on the inside. Now,
02:11 18-inch alloy wheels, a fairly low profile tire. I'll be keen to see how this goes in terms of
02:17 ride and then have a look at this. It's not as bad as the Mazda CX-3, which takes up half the front
02:21 end of the car in terms of plastic cladding, but you can see that Toyota wants everyone to think
02:26 that this can go off-road, even though it only really has 170 millimeters of ground clearance,
02:30 the same as a Kia Carnival. Our Hybrid badge off to the side here as well, just in case you missed
02:36 the blue on the Toyota badge. A little bit of piano black on that mirror and then you have a
02:40 camera built into the bottom section. There's that black roof I was talking about. This section here
02:45 is actually a wrap and then the rest is painted and then privacy glass and cover to the rear.
02:50 This is where Toyota has really sort of taken it to the next level in terms of design. Have a look
02:54 at this. This is the type of stuff you wouldn't expect to see on a Toyota three or four years ago.
02:59 Those big pronounced wheel arches, you've got these flat sections, LED lights built into that
03:04 entire part there. You've got this little spoiler here as well and then a shark fin antenna. Let me
03:09 know in the comments section below, what do you think about the design? I think it is quite a
03:13 neat looking car and it is quite expensive when you consider what the Yaris used to cost, but I
03:17 think they've actually done a good job with the design to justify it all. Okay, we are inside the
03:22 Yaris Cross. Before we talk styling, let's start off with the key. Here it is here. You have lock,
03:27 unlock, boot, the Toyota logo, nothing on the back and it is a proximity sensing key. So just
03:32 leave that in your pocket, grab the door handle to unlock the car and then use the push button start.
03:38 Okay, styling. Yeah, look, there's a lot going on here. So you have the top tier of the dashboard,
03:45 it's broken up by this silver trim highlight. Then you have this brown. The brown sort of
03:51 follows its way through onto the seats as well and then the seats have this sort of tartan style
03:56 material on them. I don't know, I think it looks cool. Maybe I'm definitely not the definition of
04:02 cool, but I think it looks cool. It is kind of let down by this infotainment system. We'll run
04:08 through that in a second, but it just looks tiny and poxy. But outside of that, I think it is
04:12 vibrant and youthful, which is kind of what they're trying to aim for with the Yaris Cross.
04:17 Now in terms of the materials, you can see here most of that's soft. It does get quite scratchy
04:22 the further you go down the cabin, but this top section is nice and soft. Touch points over here,
04:26 there's no center armrest, there's nothing to lean on. And then over on the door, that's
04:30 pretty firm there as well. So while you're driving, you kind of don't really have anywhere
04:34 to rest your body bits. Now how firm are those surfaces? Well, we've tested them with our
04:40 geometer. If you want to see how the Yaris Cross compares with other cars that we've tested,
04:44 just scroll down and use the link in the description. What about build quality?
04:48 Well, it all feels pretty solid actually. Yeah, nothing to complain about. Righto, infotainment.
04:54 So I mentioned before that it kind of looks a little bit small and a little bit chintzy that
04:59 they've gone with a seven-inch screen here instead of actually filling up that entire space. Today,
05:04 we're going to do just a brief overview of the infotainment system, but if you do want a detailed
05:08 review of this infotainment system, click up here. So that's what it looks like on the home screen.
05:14 In terms of audio, you have AM/FM/DAB+ digital radio along with smartphone mirroring audio
05:22 sources. A six-speaker sound system comes as standard, but the good news is you have Apple
05:27 CarPlay and Android Auto. Both are wired, so you're going to need a cable to connect to those.
05:31 I'll show you what that looks like. That's Apple CarPlay. It tacks up the entire screen
05:35 fairly quick and easy to use. You can also use the car's voice recognition system without a phone
05:40 paired or by forwarding commands through your smartphone. I'll show you what Android Auto
05:44 looks like. Full screen integration, and that works well also. Nothing to really complain
05:50 about. All pretty straightforward. Now, ahead of the driver is all you have a tiny little screen
05:54 with trip computer, and then on either side of that you have controls that relate to driving,
05:59 which we'll go through when we hit the road, but outside of that, it's a pretty straightforward
06:02 setup. Now, what about safety? Pretty important for a car in this segment. So you have autonomous
06:08 emergency braking with pedestrian detection, works in forwards and reverse. You have blind
06:13 spot monitoring built into that wing mirror, lane keeping assistant, lane departure warning,
06:18 radar cruise control. In addition to all the standard airbags that you have, you also have
06:23 a center airbag that prevents your front passenger and the driver from colliding in an impact.
06:29 Generally, when there's a second vehicle or something else involved, it prevents you from
06:33 knocking heads, which can really just ruin your day further than the accident you've already been
06:37 in. So really good technology, and it's good to see that it's standard here. You also have rear
06:41 cross traffic alert, and let's have a look at the reverse view camera. So 360 degree camera with the
06:47 reverse view there. You can also manually switch between different views. The quality is pretty
06:52 poor, but for the most part, you're going to be able to tell what you're looking at. It's also
06:56 front and rear parking sensors as well. Let's talk connectivity. So we'll get rid of this. You have
07:02 one 2.1 amp charging USB-A port on the left, another USB-A port on the right, 12 volt outlet,
07:10 no wireless charging though. Now, storage. Where are you going to put your phone when you're not
07:14 using it? So it does fit conveniently up the top there. You can slide it in down the front.
07:20 You can use your bottle holders as well, or this little slot up the back. Coffees. Okay,
07:26 you're going to spill your coffee everywhere. No, that fits in really nicely, and the lid is not
07:31 compromised. Bottle storage, same story. The bottle fits in there. It does move around a fair
07:35 bit though without those teeth, but you do have bottle storage inside the door as well if you need
07:41 it. There is no center console, but you have a slot up the back. Then also a glove box that isn't
07:48 really that big. Kind of taken up by papers in the manual. Okay, what about comfort? You have
07:53 single zone automatic climate control, heated seats for the first row, electric seat adjustment
08:00 for the driver. Really interesting controls as well. They're not the standard type you'd expect
08:05 to see on a seat, but cool nevertheless. The seats themselves are really interesting because
08:10 you've got this fascinating design with this sort of stripe that goes down the center,
08:16 and then this, you know those old CRT television units when they lost reception, they go all fuzzy.
08:22 Kind of looks like that. So yeah, I think the design's interesting. It's cool.
08:27 The seats are comfortable, which is great. Steering wheel sits really nicely in your
08:32 hands. There are no paddle shifters, and all of this is easy to reach. We're on the second row
08:37 of the Yaris Cross. Before I get started on the space, I'm not a huge fan of these doors not
08:42 opening any wider than that. It'll make it a little tricky to get baby seats in. So I obviously
08:47 know this isn't a medium-sized SUV that everyone's going to to buy with kids and all that sort of
08:52 stuff, but it will make getting baby seats in a little tricky. Anyway, once you're in here,
08:57 it's got a whole amount of room. So my knees are wedged into that seat. Toe room's okay. Headroom
09:04 is kind of reasonable. This seat's pretty far back, and I am a plus-sized man. It's actually a
09:10 big bone thing rather than eating pies. But anyway, so in terms of other features you have
09:16 back here, ISOFIX on the two outboard seats. Looks like there's no center armrest, but you pull this
09:21 little thing here and you get two cup holders pop down that you can fit a bottle into, and then a
09:27 bottle also fits into the door. There's no air vents down here. Mat pocket only on one side,
09:33 and it is worth pointing out as well that this door is super plasticky. So even the section
09:38 where you're meant to rest your arm, it's just really firm and not very pleasant to rest on.
09:43 Okay, let's talk cargo space. So Yaris standard, Yaris, not the Yaris Cross, doesn't have a huge
09:50 boot. This is slightly different though, because have a look at this. You have 390 litres of cargo
09:55 space available, but the space expands. So this is a dual-tiered floor. I'll show you how that works
09:59 in a second, but beneath here you actually have a space saver spare tyre, and that's despite this
10:05 being the hybrid model. So it's not like it used to be where the entire boot was taken up by
10:09 batteries. So I can slide this down so you get a little bit of extra space, and I'll show you what
10:14 it looks like with the bags in there. Bang, and then bang as well. Actually, nope, gonna have to
10:20 go bang sideways. There it is there, so plenty of room for your bags. You can also expand the space
10:27 by dropping that second row and get rid of this cargo blind. A lot of manufacturers are now moving
10:32 towards these flexible cargo blinds instead of the hard units, so that just folds away nicely.
10:38 And then what you can do is just drop these rear seats. Keep in mind though, because it is a fairly
10:43 compact car, you're first going to have to move the front seats out of the way for them to fold,
10:47 but you can see there if you elevate the floor you can have a flat load space as well.
10:51 So it is a pretty practical small SUV. We've just hit the road in the Yaris Cross. Now, this is a
10:59 hybrid, which means it has an internal combustion engine and also an electric motor with its own
11:03 little battery pack. The internal combustion engine is a 1.5 litre three-cylinder petrol
11:09 engine. It's nice and small. It produces 67 kilowatts of power and 120 newton meters of torque.
11:16 Now, that's an Atkinson cycle engine. If you want to understand a bit more on what that means,
11:21 you can click up here to watch one of our other videos where we go into a bit more detail there,
11:25 but the electric component helps provide a combined power output of 85 kilowatts of power and
11:31 141 newton meters of torque. And it does that when you get hard onto the throttle, it combines the
11:37 internal combustion engine and the hybrid components to give you all of that extra oomph
11:42 in parallel. But for the rest of the part, you actually drive a lot of the time with the internal
11:48 combustion engine off. So right now, I've got the little EV light on, the internal combustion
11:53 engine is off. It's not until I actually hit the throttle that you hear it come on. And it gives
11:58 you all of that detail just ahead of the driver here and also on the head-up display. You can see
12:02 as I roll out of the throttle, it goes into charging mode. And then as long as I stay within
12:06 the eco band, EV stays on. And then if I push harder, the internal combustion engine comes on.
12:11 And that's all mated to a continuously variable transmission. That means it really just has one
12:16 gear. It doesn't step through gears. What does all that feel like? Well, let's give it a little
12:20 kick up here. It's okay. I mean, it doesn't pin you back in the seat, but it does the job.
12:29 That battery pack's only around 0.7 kilowatt hours. So really just there to provide you that
12:34 assistance when you step off or when you get stuck into the throttle. And it is worth pointing out as
12:39 well, I don't want to harp on too much about this hybrid stuff, but a lot of energy is consumed
12:44 moving a car off a standing start. You can imagine like pushing a box on carpet, initially getting
12:49 the box moving on carpet takes a lot of effort, but once it's moving, it comes along nicely.
12:53 Well, it's the same story with a car. The hybrid components help move it off the line to start
12:58 with. And then the internal combustion engine takes over. Now, the big advantage here of all
13:02 these hybrid systems is fuel economy. Toyota claims 3.8 litres per 100 kilometres. Normally
13:07 manufacturers can't really be trusted when it comes to fuel economy. A lot of cars are, I'm
13:11 not going to say built for the fuel cycle test, but they often just are not realistic in real life.
13:17 This on the other hand, it's really surprised me. So if I go down here to the fuel economy,
13:21 4.6 litres per 100 kilometres. We've been giving this a fair old thrashing and that is really
13:29 impressive. It shows you that you can have fun, but not use a huge amount of fuel in the same
13:34 process. So you've got a number of different drive modes to choose from. You select them by
13:39 pushing this button. It goes from normal to eco to power. So eco is just dulling the air conditioning
13:45 and the throttle response. And then power sharpens everything up. It makes the steering heavier,
13:52 makes it more eager to run into the mode where the engine is switched on.
13:55 All right, I've got a couple of corners coming up, but before I do that, I'm just going to give
14:00 it a little bit of a squeeze. See what it feels like once we're moving. Yeah, look, it feels okay.
14:07 Like it's not groundbreaking. And this being the front wheel drive, you only get that assistance
14:13 at the front end. You don't have anything on the rear axle, but it feels really nice behind the
14:17 wheel, even in terms of handling. There's a little bit of body roll, but it holds together really
14:23 nicely. And it's just not too phased when you come into corners. In terms of steering, the
14:28 artificial weight they add in doesn't really help with the handling because there's just no feeling
14:33 to it. You can just feel that they've just made it more resistive. So there isn't a great deal
14:38 of steering feel. But look, for the most part, I don't think anyone's buying this expecting it to
14:42 be like a GR Yaris. So Toyota doesn't quote a zero to 100 time, but we thought we'd put it up
14:47 against our stopwatch anyway. So we're out on the country road at the moment. It's a course chip
15:03 road. It's not the quietest environment in the world. There's a bit of wind noise coming in over
15:07 those wing mirrors, a fair bit of tyre noise as well. So while the platform generally deals really
15:13 well with these things, I think if you are going to be spending a whole lot of time on the freeway,
15:17 it's something worth considering. And that's always why we recommend a 24-hour test drive,
15:21 because you want to be able to drive on roads like this if you do spend a lot of time on them.
15:25 If you don't, it's not the end of the world. But if you are spending a lot of time on highways,
15:29 it is worth putting that into your test drive to make sure that you're not going to get any
15:33 surprises once you finally take delivery of your new wheels. Despite riding on 18-inch alloy wheels,
15:38 the ride is fantastic. So Toyota, certainly their most recent platforms, have really just
15:45 dialed in beautifully to accommodating a ride in and around town, but also out on the freeway as
15:50 well. They've really just rounded everything out nicely. So they haven't gone in too hard on
15:54 sportiness or too hard on softness. It just sits in beautifully in between. It means when you hit
15:58 speed humps and that kind of thing, you're really not going to be thrown around the cabin too much.
16:02 Visibility is really good. So despite its SUV appearance from the outside, I can clearly see
16:08 down the front of the car, the sides are easily visible thanks to those decent wing mirrors with
16:13 blind spot monitoring. And then at the back, it's not too bad. The tops of the headrests on the side
16:19 to rear seats get in the way a little bit, but you can see through the centre of them.
16:23 And in terms of turning circle, 10.6 metres, which is pretty reasonable. It means you won't be doing
16:30 three-point turns every time you want to go for a U-turn. So the Toyota Yaris Cross Urban Hybrid,
16:36 bit of a mouthful, but overall a really fun car to drive. The ride is sensational. It is so
16:41 economical, like you would never visit the fuel station in this. It is really, really economical.
16:46 But what about the negatives? So rear legroom, it is a bit of a joke back there. You really can't
16:51 fit anybody in there. The tech already feels outdated, despite the fact it's brand new.
16:55 That small screen just, I don't know, should just be a bigger screen, and Toyota has bigger screens
17:00 available in the rest of the range. It's also pretty expensive for what it is. The Yaris took
17:04 a big step forward in terms of price, and they built on it with an SUV version of the car that
17:10 was meant to be small and cheap. So anyway, if you put those things to the side, though, it is
17:14 nice and fun to drive. It's got a punchy enough engine, and it handles the city and then the
17:19 country all fine. There is a little bit of that road noise, but in and around the city, speed
17:23 humps, potholes, cobblestones, all that kind of thing, you're not really going to notice them.
17:26 So let me know in the comments section below, what do you think of the Yaris Cross? Overall,
17:30 I'm a big fan of it. So did you buy one? How's it all going? And are you getting the fuel economy
17:35 that we saw on our trip computer here? Let me know in the comments section below. Now, if you did
17:39 enjoy this video, make sure you share it, and don't forget to hit the like button, and subscribe
17:43 to our channel, and watch the rest of our videos, and all that sort of fun stuff. But until next
17:46 time, take it easy.