It’s impossible to keep a secret any more. In the age of the cell phone camera and the internet, all information wants to be free. Thanks to folks at the Indian Autos blog, photos of an internal Toyota staff manual have found their way online. They show that there will be a Prius all-wheel-drive option when the fourth-generation car goes into production, but they don’t say when that option will be available or which markets it’s coming to.
The best guess is that a second electric motor will be added at the rear of the car. With electricity, all you need is a cable to put a motor wherever you need one — no clunky driveshafts or differentials needed. Since the Prius is pretty much an electric car anyway, installing an extra motor is probably less of a challenge than programming the control software to manage it.
What the leaked photos do make clear is that the new Prius in standard trim will go 40 kilometers on a liter of fuel (in the Japanese test cycle), while the all-wheel-drive version will “only” go 35 kilometers on the same liter of fuel. That suggests two things — the AWD system is in operation at all times rather than on demand and the Prius with AWD will get about the same gas mileage as the current car. The new Prius without AWD is said to be about 10% more fuel efficient than the previous model.
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