UPDATED: Is Taking the Hybrid Plunge Worth It? Comparing the Ownership Cost of the Corolla Altis

UPDATE: Due to popular demand, we traced back our previous test drives and compared the Corolla Altis Hybrid using more realistic figures (i.e. our very own test drive fuel mileages). 9/11.

Targeting women and married couples, Toyota is clearly tugging more on the sensibilities of compact car buyers than the senses. Though improved in every conceivable aspect, buyers would likely flock to the Corolla Altis mainly thanks to Toyota’s reputation for making bullet-proof cars and of course, lower ownership costs.

Given that there’s a P 395,000 price difference between the 1.8 V Hybrid and the 1.6 V, and not much differences in specs, is taking the hybrid plunge actually worth it? Or will you end up being part of the 93 percent of Corolla Altis buyers who’d go for the conventionally-engined 1.6? To make things even more interesting, its two most direct price competitors, the Honda Civic 1.8 E and Mazda3 1.5 Elite have been added to this comparo as well.

Here’s some math to help you out.

For starters, let’s lay down the assumptions.

• The cost of Preventive Maintenance Service or PMS is based off a service menu for the previous-generation Corolla Altis (circa 2017); the same goes for the Honda Civic. Meanwhile, the Mazda3 is covered by an all-inclusive Yojin-3 program.
• Since Toyota Motor Philippines guarantees that the Corolla Altis Hybrid would have the same servicing requirements as its non-hybrid counterpart (except for a battery filter cleaning/replacement), for the sake of this computation, the rates are made the same.
• The total distance traveled for this computation is 60,000 kilometers for a three-year period; meaning an average of 20,000 kilometers traveled per year. This may seem a lot, but at least it matches the prescribed PMS period by the manufacturer for ease of computation.
• For the Fuel Mileage figure, the 2020 Corolla Altis hasn’t been tested yet by Toyota Motor Philippines. However, since it carries the Prius’s drivetrain, the Toyota product team says it should easily match the figures achieved by the Prius during the Department of Energy Fuel Economy Run. The figures of the Civic and the Mazda3 were also taken from the DOE run, but in the case of the Mazda3, it’s representative of the previous model. As for the Corolla Altis 1.6 V, this figure was achieved through Toyota’s own internal testing.

With the assumptions out of the way, let’s see how the Corolla Altis Hybrid does.

Because of its price premium over the 1.6 V, the Corolla Altis Hybrid will never recoup itself. Even if its fuel economy figure is 63 percent better than its non-hybrid counterpart, the 1.8 V Hybrid is still P 320,856.77 more expensive to own over a three-year period or P 5.35 more per kilometer (P 29.23 vs P 23.88).

Even more surprising is that Toyota’s quarterly PMS equates to higher maintenance cost compared to the Civic and the Mazda3. It’s so high that the Mazda is able to recoup its P 110,000 price difference cover the Altis 1.6 V.

Now, if you’re getting a Corolla Altis as part of a company car plan (in other words, your company is paying the initial cost), going the Hybrid route keeps your running cost to just P 2.90—30 percent cheaper than the 1.6 V’s. It is still slightly more expensive than the Civic’s (P 2.84 per kilometer) and the Mazda3’s (P 1.97 per kilometer).

This begs the question? When is the Corolla Altis Hybrid actually able to recoup itself? Its ownership cost per kilometer equalizes with its non-hybrid counterpart if the owner travels more than 74,627 kilometers in a three-year span—that’s about 24,875 kilometers more (4,875 kilometers more than the 1.6 V per year). Another scenario where the Hybrid breaks even over the 1.6 V is when fuel cost is more than P 136.56 per liter, assuming that the total distance traveled for 3 years stands at 60,000 kilometers.

With these figures in mind, it’s no surprise that Toyota Motor Philippines’s not expecting a lot of buyers to go the hybrid route. If everything is taken purely in pesos-and-cents, the hybrid only makes sense for someone who travels a lot or banks that fuel prices will skyrocket real soon.

Because several readers pointed out that a highway-biased fuel economy run like the one conducted by the Department of Energy will go against the strength of a gasoline-electric hybrid setup (which is stop-and-go traffic), we decided to re-visit these computations using our very own test drive fuel mileage figures.

Again, no one has tested the fuel economy of the all-new Corolla Altis Hybrid yet (no, around the block test drives don’t count), so we’ve decided to use data from the third-generation Prius which uses the same drivetrain more or less. The same goes for the non-hybrid Corolla 1.6—we simply used the data from the previous-generation model which uses the same 1.6-liter Dual VVT-i engine and CVT.

The scenario’s the same with the 2020 Mazda3. While we’ve already driven it on a mixed city/highway set-up, the figures won’t be an apples-to-apples comparison. Thus, here we used data on previous-generation 1.5-liter and 2.0-liter models.

Finally, we have the Civic. Since the 1.8 E and RS Turbo feature merely cosmetic enhancements this year, the fuel economy figures we’ve gathered are still up to snuff.

If we’ve driven the vehicles multiple times already, the fuel economy figures have been averaged.

Moving on to the results.

Despite these new assumptions, the Hybrid’s better fuel mileage (93 percent better than the non-hybrid Corolla) still won’t be enough to recoup the investment (P 29.76 versus P 25.47 per kilometer in ownership costs).

That being said, the Corolla Altis Hybrid’s running costs are ridiculously low—just P 3.42 per kilometer using today’s gas prices. The next closest vehicle would be the Mazda3 1.5 with P 4.95 per kilometer, and that’s because you don’t pay a cent in Preventive Maintenance Service for the first three years. On the other end of the spectrum, the Civic RS Turbo is the costliest to run at P 7.15 per kilometer—more than twice the Hybrid!

For those who want to know the breakeven point, the Corolla Hybrid only begins to make sense if you happen to travel more than 71,178 kilometers in a 3-year period or 11,178 more kilometers per year than the non-hybrid. Either that, or if gas prices go up to P 96.71 per liter.