THE ELECTRIFIED X FACTOR (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

Toyota's little Aygo X matures in this Hybrid guise. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 30

Toyota's little Aygo X citycar goes Hybrid. Proving that your next tiny hatch doesn't have to be a full-EV. Maybe there's life in the segment for combustion power after all.

Backgroundword count: 172

It's rare these days to come across a citycar, the smallest breed of compact hatch, that isn't an EV. But the Toyota Aygo X has been an exception since its launch back in 2022. Back then, most other major brands were declaring the citycar segment unprofitable, but Toyota has proved them wrong with this model, shifting over 300,000 units since the original launch, 14,000 of those in the UK in 2024. The Aygo X's achilles heel has always been its ancient and rather feeble 1.0-litre petrol engine, the origins of which date back to the turn of the century. And because of the relative inefficiency of that unit, Toyota hasn't been getting the ZEV EV mandate benefit from all those Aygo X sales that it might have had. Hence the decision with this rejuvenated model to switch to the 1.5-litre full-Hybrid powerplant from the Yaris supermini. That's clearly a better engine, but it also makes this Aygo X a more expensive car. Do the sums add up? Let's take a closer look.

Driving Experienceword count: 466

The car nearly always starts off on its battery, which makes the experience feel very EV-like, so your friends won't perhaps realise that you've chosen a combustion-powered compact hatch. But combustion-powered it is. In fact, Toyota has never made a citycar with an engine anything like this big. Yet at the same time, this is the smallest Hybrid model the brand has ever made and the smallest full-Hybrid car on sale in the UK. The engine is the same 114bhp 1.5-litre four cylinder petrol electric unit familiar from larger Yaris and Yaris Cross models, though has had to be slightly adapted to suit the Aygo X's tighter packaging. That total output figure is a huge 36bhp more than the old 1.0-litre three cylinder engine could muster. And, even more significantly, pulling power (though still quite feeble) has risen substantially to 141Nm with the Hybrid. Not surprisingly, that makes this electrified Aygo X a lot quicker off the mark, able to reach 62mph in 9.2s - a huge improvement of 5.7s on the old car. That's if you engage the most urgent of the three provided drive modes - 'Power' (the others are 'standard' and 'Eco'). What some might find more difficult to get used to is that the old model's five-speed manual gearbox has been replaced by the company's e-CVT automatic transmission; you now have to have an auto. This one is of the CVT sort that holds its revs when it's generating peak power and you have to get used to the way it wants you to drive if it's not to feel unnatural and droney. Not having the old three cylinder engine straining away all the time will obviously reduce your travelling din (substantial in the old car); and Toyota says it has re-worked the exhaust and added extra sound deadening around the dashboard and under the bonnet to improve refinement. High-spec models get even more soundproofing and thicker window glass. The result isn't quite the quietness you'd get in a Yaris but it all creates refinement that's in a different world to anything Aygo owners will ever have experienced before. Especially if for low speed work you engage the provided EV mode, though that only works if the tiny 0.76kWh battery's sufficiently charged and won't propel the car for very long at all. It's better to leave the powertrain to do its own thing and on urban trips if you do so, it'll run on the little battery for up to half of the time. At the top of the range, there's the 'GR Sport' variant we tried. With this, though the powertrain is unchanged, there's been tuning of the shock absorbers and coil springs to enhance handling by reducing body roll, while the electric power steering has been adjusted for sharper responses.

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