Toyota Innova Hycross hybrid owner tries out the base variant

Excellent ride quality, down to the higher profile tires and almost perfect suspension tuning!

BHPian CEF_Beasts recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

HyCross; Petrol vs Petrol Hybrid

Drove a self-drive Innova HyCross G Variant rental in Goa for 2 days with 7 onboard.

Things I liked in the lower variant:

• Excellent ride quality, down to the higher profile tires and almost perfect suspension tuning!
• The fabric seats on the lower variants are much softer than the hard seats found on the top spec ZX trims.
• Competent CVT with 10 virtual gears.
• Base variant gets some high-spec features like Auto-Hold and Electric parking brake.
• Good to see a rear wiper and wash available in the base variant, with the rains lashing it was pretty much a safety feature for me!
• Chiller of an AC, had to turn it off at times.
• This particular example had run 20k kms and had no rattles.
• Rock solid stability at 80kmph (car had a speed limiter) even with very strong crosswinds on the bridges in Goa.
• Drive in a sedate manner and the car is extremely silent and relaxed.

Things I loathed in this Petrol base variant:

• 205Nm is just not enough with 7 people onboard while climbing hilly terrains.
• The car doesn’t like itself being pushed. Just to get the car to move, have to press the accelerator till the halfway mark atleast with 7 onboard. Had to wring the motor hard just to get it moving on slopes! The 6500rpm redline mark was often being used…
• Some plastic trims were broken in the car, maybe due to rough usage by previous users.
• Mileage we got was 7-8 kmpl over 300kms that we drove, the car requires very frequent filling! A full tank’s range is just 300-350kms with 7 onboard till the Refuel warning pops up. For a people carrier this is the first downer! An Ertiga that we used on the first day was a manual and was returning 11.2kmpl in comparison.
• Drove over Goa’s famous speed rumblers on NH66 (which are more than speed rumblers) at 45-50kmph and the SRS Airbag Malfunction warning popped up! Which didn’t go away after switching on the car the next day!!
• Since the car had a speed-limiter at 80kmph, the gearbox didn’t upshift to the highest gear to save fuel. The car held the 6th gear at 80, had to manually upshift to the 8th gear, just to save some fuel.

If there was an option of the Petrol variant in the top-spec ZX variant, I would’ve still gone with the Hybrid variant, just because the Hybrid is the superior powertrain in the line-up, is well worth the premium and is the powertrain I would always recommend for the HyCross. If you will be using the car with only 5 passengers then the petrol only variant can just about suffice as long as you don’t want to drive fast.

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