(Images form Toyota PH)

Fuel efficiency is still on the top of the list of Filipino prospective car buyers. Even if electric cars are becoming a norm in places all over the world, the Philippines is still quite stuck with fossil fuels with little alternative. Often, an alternative is quite unreliable and has certain limitations. Think of the road scooter which runs on battery called e-bikes – you wouldn’t bring it to Marilaque on weekends right? Just your typical service for short neighborhood-wide errands. You wouldn’t be using it for profit, like food delivery and courier services, because the range and speed is limited. But there are bikes which run on batteries but can run on petrol or pedal power (ever hear of mopeds?) when the battery is drained. Now think of these in cars – what do you see?

Well, there are hybrid engines. Even if electric cars haven’t made its mark in the country, hybrid engines are getting more traction. Technically, these types of cars offer better fuel efficiency as they also run on batteries. Enter the Toyota Corolla Altis – something which you would think, “hey, that runs on gas”.

The Corolla Altis name has been known before and until now as a gasoline powered car. A hybrid, we think, should sport a weird and hi-tech kind of name (like Tesla?). But Toyota tries to break us Pinoys gently by offering a hybrid on a known platform, because if the hybrid offers fuel efficiency, your mind goes, “so how much will it take me back for maintenance”, and this is a topic for another rambling. What is important is that Toyota is sending a message to consumers to trust the Corolla Altis platform. Imagine if a Vios becomes hybrid, it will be better accepted than a future- or space-linked witty car name.

Alright so let’s just dive into the topic of fuel efficiency – how economical is the Corolla Altis hybrid? It produces 11-12 liters in the city, *but plot twist* in heavy traffic. An awesome 16 liters in regular driving in the city, as this is already like what regular cars are doing on the highway, while a whopping 27-28 liters for the hybrid in the highway.

Now, doing some primitive math, if the hybrid Altis is about three hundred thousand pesos more expensive than the Corolla Altis GR-S, then how many tanks of fuel does it take the gasoline powered car to reach the difference in price? Pegging the price of gas at about PhP 80 per liter (conservative estimate), at the time of writing, to be multiplied by 42L as this is the tank capacity of the car, then after 89 to 90 refuels in the gasoline GR-S, you would have spent the same amount of money to upgrade to the hybrid. Now if you ask me, you would be doing serious years of driving before you rack up 90 full tanks of gasoline. I don’t actually know too, how much one would have saved when using a hybrid Altis.

So which is better? If you have the money to spend, go for the hybrid, especially if this car is your daily. If this is a spare car you will use on coding days, probably get any model you like. With the gas prices going up, it will always be logical to go hybrid, but also consider how much of this hybrid technology right now will be used in the future as technology can also dictate whether or not there is ample support for your car as the years progress.