Business Car Manager road test verdict
This is one of a handful of cars where the most appropriate question for a truly cost-conscious company car driver is not “why should I buy it?” but “how can I justify not buying it?”.
Admittedly, for the enthusiastic driver, the Ford Fiesta-sized Yaris Hybrid lacks emotional appeal or sheer driving pleasure. It looks smart enough. The interior is well planned and surprisingly roomy (Toyota deserves a pat on the back for not noticeably compromising interior space with the hybrid battery pack). Materials quality is high and the cars are well put together by Toyota’s Valenciennes plant in France.
The Toyota Yaris Hybrid is also relatively refined for a small car, with mechanical noise well suppressed. But straight line performance is best described as leisurely; ride and handling are undistinguished; and the extra weight of the twin drive systems (engine and battery) has induced a certain vagueness to the steering. 
And while city driving, with battery-only operation in frequent use, should see up to 70mpg fuel consumption, in higher speed, open road driving with petrol engine and battery pack working necessarily in parallel, BCM’s assessment is that the average driver is likely to fall up to 20mpg short of the “official” 80.7mpg EU combined cycle economy of the base Yaris T3 hybrid, or the 76.3mpg of the range-topping Spirit version. 
For truly cost-conscious, efficiency-seeking, pragmatic company car drivers as well as their employers, however, the financial pros will far outweigh the dynamic cons, minor fuel consumption reservations regardless.
At an on-the road starting price of £14,995 – no more than a reasonably specified Fiesta and £2,000 less than Honda’s Insight Hybrid – Toyota is making the benefits of a hybrid available to almost all.
And, as already set out above, the financial benefits are considerable: minimal company car tax, zero VED, nose-thumbing to London’s congestion charge and, for the employer, 100 per cent first year writing down allowances if you buy – all thanks to the Yaris Hybrid’s miserly 79g/km CO2 emissions.
If there’s a chink in the Toyota Yaris Hybrid’s financial armoury, it’s the need to improve the business car lease rates against Fiesta rivals in the open contract hire market. In a business car comparison, a similarly priced 100PS Fiesta EcoBoost costs from £189 a month to lease compared to the Yaris Hybrid’s from £212.
For significantly more competitive business car lease rates, though, head to Toyota dealers where you’ll find the Yaris Hybrid from £184 a month. 
Jon Williams, Toyota GB’s president and MD, suggests that, with the Prius plug-in range extender Hybrid having also just joined the company’s hybrid line-up of Auris, Prius and Yaris (with another model to come), hybrids will become an ever more major force in the company’s sales line-up and that the Yaris Hybrid will account for at least 20 per cent of all Yaris sales in 2013/14. 
