Toyota Camry Hybrid coming

Neck-snapping acceleration it ain't, but the steady surge just doesn't let up. The 2.4-litre engine's sound doesn't rise or fall. It's holding steady revs. How many? Can't tell, because the Camry Hybrid has an mpg meter instead of a tachometer. But the speedometer needle sweeps steadily around the dial. It passes the 100mph mark (160km/h) still building speed.

There's plenty of the proving ground's long straight left ahead, but not enough to find V-max. So I release the accelerator pedal. Instantly, the Toyota sets about converting the kinetic energy of almost 1700kg travelling at 160km/h-plus into electricity. The four-cylinder engine shuts down, and the hybrid transaxle's No. 2 motor-generator unit - or MG2 as it's labelled by Toyota - spins up. Its drag slows the Camry, just like normal engine braking would, at the same time generating a torrent of current to recharge the nickel-metal hydride battery just behind the car's rear seat.

Some of this I tap on the opposite straight. Having brought the Camry Hybrid to a halt, I gently accelerate. The engine remains silent while MG2, now in its alter-ego drive-motor role, does the work. The Toyota's speedometer is north of 30mph (50km/h) when the petrol engine is kicked into life by MG1, motor-generator No. 1.

Both feats - the highly illegal speed and the uncannily silent propulsion using recycled energy - are eloquent answers to those critics who label hybrids slow and stupid. This exclusive taste of what to expect when the first Australian-built hybrid goes on sale here early in 2010 is impressive.

Toyota's Australian factory, in the Melbourne suburb of Altona, is a long way from its Hybrid start-of-production date in December 2009. The car we're driving today, at the Australian Automotive Research Centre's proving ground outside Anglesea, Victoria, isn't a prototype. It's a current Camry Hybrid originally earmarked for sale in the US territory of Guam (a North Pacific island). Toyota Oz managed to hijack two, for evaluation purposes, left-hand-drive, mph speedo, North America 'Comfort 1' suspension calibration, and all.

These aren't the only things that will be changed for the Australian-made Camry Hybrid. It will look different, too, because there's a mid-life facelift scheduled for the entire Camry range in the meantime, and one of the objectives is to make the Hybrid look a little bit more different from a regular Camry than it does now. (And, in case you were wondering, there's no plan to apply those awful and huge 'Hybrid' decals to the production cars.)

So, disregard the looks, the soggy suspension, and the wrong-side steering wheel. The drivetrain, on the other hand, is representative of what will be manufactured in Australia.

The decision to make the Camry Hybrid here attracted wide media attention when it was announced back in July. That'll happen when you've got a Prime Minister talking about forward product plans. On a visit to Japan, Kevin Rudd told the accompanying Aussie media pack that Toyota had been persuaded by a $35 million dose of Federal Government money, the first to flow from the new Green Car Innovation Fund, to produce the Camry Hybrid at Altona.

Despite reports in The Australian newspaper that the car eventually would have been built here without any government assistance, Toyota Australia corporate affairs manager Peter Griffin insists this isn't the case. "No, it would not have happened without the support of the government," he says. "It [the $35 million] was critical to the business case."

"There was every chance we would have been importing them [Camry Hybrids] from Thailand instead," Griffin adds. This is an oblique reference to persistent and credible rumours that Toyota believed it needed only one factory in this region of the world to build Camry Hybrid, and that Thailand was favoured. With the money on the table, 'Thailand or Australia' was turned into 'Thailand and Australia'.

The $35m, according to Griffin, will cover some of the costs involved with setting up Altona for hybrid production. And the changes are more wide-ranging than you might think. The Hybrid has a different front subframe from a conventional Camry, and its centre and rear floor pressings are modified, for example. And new factory equipment has to be bought or existing machinery altered. All this will not be inexpensive.

Planned production is 10,000 a year, but Toyota Australia product planning manager Peter Evans says the Altona factory has the flexibility to tailor hybrid output to meet demand, no matter which way it heads.

The executive knows there's a lot of groundwork to be done before taking the Hybrid to the mainstream. Camry-land may not quite be ready, he fears. Toyota's own research shows that misconceptions about hybrid tech are common among car buyers. Many believe they need to be plugged in to a powerpoint for recharging, for instance. Other concerns are poor performance, and battery cost and life.

Evans knows it will take time to win hybrid converts. He says that Toyota characterises current hybrid customers as 'innovators' and 'very early adopters'. Next in line are 'early adopters', followed by 'early majority'. "We dream one day of actually selling hybrids to the 'late majority'," he continues.

The mild-mannered Camry Hybrid, argues Evans, is a less confronting choice than a Prius. "[We've] tried to make the drive experience as simple and familiar as possible," he says. "You don't need to understand how it works, or why; all you've got to understand is what the benefit is, whether it be environmental or cost."

And there's very little Prius-weird about driving the Camry Hybrid. Except that the engine doesn't run the instant you press the 'Start' button (unless the battery needs charging, of course), it's all very, well, Camry-esque. Except better in some ways. The car's planetary-gear EVT (electrically variable transmission) is like a CVT in that it doesn't shift gears. It's smooth, and much better than the regular Camry's conventional automatic.

But qualities like transmission refinement aren't going to be what sways this car's potential customers. They're going to be much more interested in its money- and planet-saving potential.

Obviously, the Hybrid will cost more. How much? With the car's launch well over a year away, Toyota can't say. Basic decisions, such as the number of trim levels to be built, and the equipment content of each, are yet to be made.

It's easier to estimate how much the Camry Hybrid will save. In the official US Environmental Protection Agency consumption test the Hybrid delivers big fuel savings. While the combined City and Highway result indicates a 27 percent overall consumption cut, comparing City consumption figures probably provides a more realistic guide. Here, according to the EPA, the Hybrid has consumption only a fraction higher than on the Highway, and delivers a fuel saving of more than 35 percent. Global warming carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by exactly the same amount.

Best of all, the Hybrid is quicker than a Camry. Although the hybrid hardware adds around 135kg (the battery alone accounts for nearly 70kg), the 105kW max output of the electric drive motor more than makes up for it. Toyota estimates a 15 percent improvement in acceleration. Pedal to the metal down the proving ground straight, I couldn't feel any reason to doubt this claim...

Images: Cristian Brunelli