I drove 4050 km in a hybrid in two weeks, i.e. to Norway and back in a Toyota Camry

I drove a hybrid Toyota Camry to the north of Norway and back, visiting Denmark and Sweden along the way. I covered over 4050 km. Here is part one of my report.

It was supposed to be an ordinary family vacation and a visit to a family living in the land of moose and fjords. However, I thought that by the way I would check if the hybrid is already suitable for a long route, or if it is still a typical city car.

As a well-known blogger, youtuber, influencer and many other mental illnesses, I could of course choose the cars that I will drive on such a long route. After much deliberation, I wished for a Camry… joke. There was supposed to be another car, we managed to arrange a Camry, which I'm glad about anyway. I didn't really see myself traveling such a huge distance with a manual gearbox and without cruise control in a 21-year-old Mercedes W210.

Camry has already been tested on the autoblog, but then I mainly used it around the city, and now the distance of these 4050 km was a Polish motorway, a German motorway, a drive through the mountains in Norway, and many other unusual road situations. In the first part, I will only tell you about the car and what impression it left on me after such an intensive test. In the second one, which we will broadcast tomorrow, there will be a mix from Norway and my automotive impressions from this country. So let's get started.

One: fuel economy

The Camry has 2.5 liters of displacement, a combined power output of 218 hp and, of course, the continuously variable e-CVT transmission. Like all other Toyota hybrids, at low speeds it moves only with the help of the electric motor. However, it is not possible to recharge the batteries from the socket. Fortunately, the battery pack has been cleverly hidden under the rear seat, so there is a sufficiently large trunk at your disposal.

The manufacturer in the factory folder gives fuel consumption at the level of 5.3-5.6 l/100 km. This is quite close to the truth, but for obvious reasons it is also a huge simplification. First of all, the Camry, like other hybrids (and even more so, because the engine is larger) is sensitive to driving over short distances. Before the engine warms up, fuel consumption will be very high. At some point it starts to fall sharply. This is clearly visible on the graph, which can be turned on on the central screen (press Menu, then Info).

Toyota Camry - burning on the highway

The journey began with driving on the highway. I drove through Poznań to the S3 road, stopping at the gates a few times and paying a total of PLN 70 for the journey from Warsaw to the S3 junction. I assumed that I would stick to the speed limits for the entire route to Norway and back, and on the German motorway, where there are no limits, I would drive a maximum of 140 km/h. A few times I happened to exceed 150 km/h for a few seconds, but only when I wanted to overtake trucks, and a madman in Skoda/Audi/BMW was already pushing behind.

During motorway driving, the Camry's fuel consumption reached 7 l/100 km. The highest recorded result from 100 km is 7.4 l and it was on the road from the Polish border to Rostock. Since then, consumption has only started to decrease. First to 6.5-6.3 while passing through Denmark. In Denmark, anyway, you do not drive slowly on the highway, on the contrary - they push there 140 km / h without any embarrassment.

Toyota Camry - off-highway fuel economy

Then I boarded the ferry from Hirtshals to Langesund - very elegant and comfortable, but not cheap - and disembarked in Norway, where I took the motorway from Langesund to Oslo . In Norway, the speed limit on the motorway is 110 km/h and everyone rather sticks to the limit. Speed ​​limits are rare, although the closer to Oslo, the more often only 90 km/h was allowed. Burning continued to drop. Then I wandered around the suburbs of Oslo a bit, I even managed to use the Park & Ride to take the funicular to the city (extremely beautiful funicular, but everything is so expensive that the eyes fall out). Then the two-lane roads ended and I headed north to Alesund.

Norway is driven at a maximum speed of 80 km/h. My cruise control was set at 85 km/h, which was equal to 80 km/h with GPS. I wonder if speed cameras in Norway think the same. I ran over the speedometer several times (then it says DIN FART .... KM/T and the value is shown on the display) and it showed 79 or 80 km/h with cruise control at 85 km/h. From the end of the two-lane road in Norway to Alesund itself, I never exceeded the clock speed of 85 km / h, not even for a second, because there was nowhere. And the fuel consumption was falling and falling to reach its historic record just before Alesund: 4.3 l / 100 km. This result has not been repeated. The descent from the mountains, which are about 100 km before Alesund, helped in obtaining it. The two-and-a-half-liter, five-meter sedan consumed 4.3 l/100 km. This is some.

Toyota Camry - range

By the way, it's worth mentioning the range. At the beginning, after refueling, it showed 570 km. I thought it was embarrassingly low. Then, however, with each refueling, the range increased and with a smooth ride it was easy to cover 700 km on one tank. The final fuel consumption for the whole trip was 5.2 l/100 km. Honestly.

Two. Performance.

Is the Camry fast? Well, no exaggeration, but it does not stay behind. It doesn't have that torque hit like a turbocharged car, but overtaking trucks is no problem and stress free. You press, the engine growls for a moment (I wouldn't even say it howls - the favorite word of hybrid opponents) and the set speed appears. Apparently, Vmax is 192 km / h according to the counter, although in reality you probably have to subtract from 10 km / h. This big car is great from a standing start, because it is intensively assisted by the electric motor.

By the way, you can feel that it has 2.5 liters of capacity, not some dead 1.8. As the Americans say, there is no repliesment for displejsment. The only thing I missed was switching driving modes from the steering wheel. You have to reach for the tiny buttons on the unnecessarily huge gear selector to switch to Sport before overtaking the truck. After all, it could be attached to the cruise control buttons in the form of a three-position switch.

Three. Comfort.

We had the version with the VIP package, i.e. 3-zone air conditioning and a rear armrest with volume control. It also includes blinds on the rear windows and, surprisingly, a head-up projection display. I don't have to convince anyone about its advantages, I'll just say that when I switched to a regular car after handing over the Camry, my eyes hurt from constantly changing the point of view from the road to the speedometer. Head-up should be mandatory. Unfortunately, the VIP package excludes the possibility of folding the rear seat, which instead gains the possibility of electric adjustment of the backrest inclination. Something for something. In any case, the passengers in the second row did not complain, and even if they did, I would ignore them, according to the rule "children and fish have no voice".

We appreciated the presence of the CD player. I still haven't thrown away my record collection, so I took a few on the road and they were a lot of fun to listen to. The car is very quiet up to 100 km/h. Unfortunately, at 110-120 km/h, there is a clear noise on the left side, as if a window was open. I haven't been able to find out its cause.

Toyota Camry - how the active cruise control works

I also loved the active cruise control. Thanks to it, I could not press the gas for tens of kilometers. It was great on a single-lane road in Norway. Although I did not find out why it turns off, because sometimes it showed "active speed control unavailable" at 40 km / h, and once I even managed to drive 19 km / h on cruise control, but in calm traffic it is a fantastic device. All you have to do is lower its sensitivity with the button on the steering wheel, i.e. the distance at which it starts to brake, from 3 lines to 2. Then there are no very large gaps between the cars and there is little chance that someone will drive into it.

Unfortunately, on the highway, the adaptive cruise control is not so good, because it does not stop braking as long as there is anything in the eye of the camera. This means that if we want to overtake a truck and for this purpose we change the lane to the left, then until we are completely in the left lane, the artificial intelligence will rapidly brake the vehicle to prevent a collision. Only when the truck completely disappears from the "field of vision" will the car start to accelerate again. This is not very safe, because we are dealing with a situation where the Camry continues to brake after changing lanes to the left - the reaction of those driving behind is easy to imagine. On the other hand, I can't imagine how it could be improved. The only solution is simply to press the accelerator traditionally.

Toyota Camry - reversing camera

Reversing camera ... well, it's there. It came in very handy a couple of times. I blessed her when I had to withdraw from the Cracovia ferry at the exit to the port of Świnoujście. This does not change the fact that the image from it is poor, incomparable to what can be found in cars of this class from European manufacturers. It's mainly about the sharpness and the difficulty of telling if something is close to the corner of the car or if we still have a lot of room. But it's really good that it is.

The central locking is also well solved. You press D, the door locks. You switch to P - they unlock. Simple and brilliant. I like such details. I also like the automatic setting of the steering column to the programmed position after pressing the start button. The armchairs, contrary to what colleagues from the editorial office claimed, turned out to be extremely comfortable. I drove 4050 km on them in the end, so I can say something about it. I appreciate the lumbar adjustment - a very pleasant thing for old people.

Summary of part one

No hybrid has ever done as well on the road as the Camry. It is an obscenely comfortable car, which allows you to forgive its strange interior styling, too American for our tastes, and it is even survivable that it is a sedan. Though, of course, I believe God left them to make a sedan, whereas the proper original Camry was a liftback.

But overall it's hard for me to find a single weak point. Although when refueling in Norway I sobbed (PLN 7.40 / liter). More on that in the next episode…