When you decide to buy South Africa’s best-selling SUV, the Toyota Corolla Cross HEV (hybrid electric vehicle), it is not only a great financial decision but an ethical one too, reports The Citizen.

You can call Toyota a conservative company if you want – and you would be 100% right. Under their chairman, Akio Toyoda, Toyota has maintained a measured and pragmatic approach to electrifying their vehicles. They have not fallen into the trap that many other car manufacturers have, in trying to turn their companies into battery-electric-only facilities.

Toyota’s boss has long said that going all-in on electric cars (EVs) is wrong. Forcing everyone to buy EVs isn’t the way forward. He is adamant that going all-in on EVs would have massive repercussions across the automotive industry. Not only because of the millions of jobs that could be lost if the combustion engine is phased out too quickly, but because the car companies themselves could be heading down a path to bankruptcy. Just ask Jaguar how things are working out for them.

EVs ‘dirtier’ than hybrids

Toyoda maintains that EVs are still much ‘dirtier’ than hybrids and do more harm to the planet than we are being led to believe. Toyota has sold around 27 million hybrids since launching the first-generation Prius in 1997. According to the company, those hybrids have had the same carbon footprint as nine million EVs, once battery and vehicle production are factored in. If Toyota had produced nine million EVs in Japan, it would have increased carbon emissions, not reduced them.

EVs are responsible for far fewer overall emissions, but the long-term reality is that producing EVs and their batteries creates more carbon emissions than building internal combustion cars over their life cycles.

Toyota CEO Koji Sato was recently quoted as saying: “A car is not a car if it’s not fun.” This means that in the future we can possibly expect the Supra to continue, while the Celica and MR2 nameplates could become household names again.

Toyota Corolla Cross HEV pricing

• 1.8 HEV XS – R494 400
• 1.8 HEV XR – R545 200
• 1.8 HEV GR-S – R561 700

Pricing includes six services/90 000km service plan and three-year/100 000km warranty on the vehicle, plus an eight-year warranty on the hybrid battery.