Rumour: Toyota Camry Hybrid India bound

The Indian government's ambitious 20,000 crore rupee National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 (NEMMP) has whetted the appetite of a host of car makers in India. Apart from offering direct subsidies to car makers on the ex-showroom price of the car, the NEMMP will also subsidize research and development in the field of electric and hybrid vehicles. The plan aims to put over 1 million electric and hybrid vehicles on Indian roads by the end of 2020 and to do this, the plan even offers attractive benefits to vendors involved in producing parts for electric and hybrid vehicles. 

Mahindra Reva, which has already made the first move by launching the E2O electric hatchback earlier this year and has lined up electric variants of the Gio, Maxximo and the Verito for the coming years. Japanese car giant Toyota, which already sells the Prius Hybrid in India, has charted out its own plans as well. Toyota will launch the Camry Hybrid luxury sedan in India, in the second half of 2013. Team-BHP, through vendor sources, learns that Toyota even has plans of localizing its hybrid car range to drive down costs and make its hybrid cars a more attractive proposition. 

Team-BHP has learnt that Toyota has begun talks with vendors in India to localize specific parts of its hybrid cars such as the Prius and the Camry. The localization content, which could be minimum to begin with is expected to rise to significant levels once Toyota manages to get sufficient volumes for its hybrid car range. Vendors too stand to gain out of this arrangement given the attractive sops expected from the Indian government through the NEMMP 2020 project. 

Coming to the Toyota Camry Hybrid, the car uses the series-parallel hybrid structure (Hybrid Synergy Drive in Toyota speak) wherein the 2.5 liter VVT-i petrol-4 cylinder engine is complemented by the electric motor. While the Atkinson cycle based petrol engine, codenamed 2AR-FXE, alone produces 154 Bhp of peak power, when combined with the NiMH battery powered electric motor, the peak power output rises to 200 Bhp. The torque is transmitted to the front wheels of the car through a e-CVT (electronic CVT) automatic gearbox that channels power from the petrol engine and the electric motor.

The Camry Hybrid is not just faster than the petrol engined variant but is also 30% more fuel efficient. In other words, Toyota is offering diesel engine like fuel economy with better performance to boot through the Camry Hybrid. The Camry Hybrid comes with brake energy regeneration, fully electric power steering and air conditioning, and a cooled battery pack. These measures make the car more fuel efficient while also boosting the performance of the electric motor/battery pack. The car will be assembled in India through CKD kits.

On the outside, the Camry Hybrid gets a revised front end, 17 inch alloy wheels and hybrid badges on its flanks. To differentiate the Camry Hybrid from the regular Camry, Toyota has altered the interior for a more luxurious look and feel. The changes include new panels, a new instrumentation console and seat fabric. The styling on the outside is also different  While the pricing of the Camry Hybrid is unknown at this point in time, the car is expected to be priced significantly more (about 40%) than the regular, petrol engined Camry. 

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Team-BHP member with handle GirimajiAnanth has snapped up an image of an on-test Camry Hybrid in Bangalore. The spotting happened at  Bidadi, off Bangalore, a place where the Toyota factory is also situated. The BHPian goes on to add that the Camry Hybrid was noise-less when it passed him. Also, he reports that another Camry Hybrid was spotted at the Toyota factory, which he happened to be visiting on the day of spotting the test mule. These spottings only confirm the fact that Toyota is indeed considering the Camry Hybrid for India, as its second hybrid car model after the Prius.