South Africa is Finally Ready For Hybrid!

You know, living down south in relation to the rest of the world does have its advantages. We are spared the turmoil that tends to take place in the rest of the world, and have probably THE best climate conditions in the world. But it does come with disadvantages as well. We take just a wee bit longer to catch on to world trends, which is not SUCH a bad thing… but anyway. Take the ‘ol Blackberry fad. When the rest of the known civilized world was chucking their Blackberry’s away, in favour of the more flashy touchscreen iPhones, and Android devices – up to even a year ago, South Africa was probably one of RIM’s largest markets for Blackberry’s. And if you weren’t on BBM back then, you were ‘just not with it dude’. But now finally, we seemed to have caught onto the iPhone-Galaxy trend, and a Blackberry is just a regular grape sized fruit once more.

Hybrid Revolution

Then there is the Hybrid car trend. Two years after the launch of the Yaris Hybrid in South Africa, we as a dealer are finally seeing a real demand for these nippy Eco-warriors. Toyota is the world leader in Hybrid technology, a fact that has been the cause of much criticism by the traditional petrol-heads. Give us V6’s, they said! Give us Turbo Diesels, they said! But while other manufacturers were busy designing bigger and faster fossil fuel engines, Toyota, guided by their eco-first philosophy of being in harmony with the environment around us, were looking for ways of making a cleaner, more efficient motor-vehicle. By December 2013, Toyota had sold 6 Million Hybrid vehicles, saving an estimated 11.356 billion litres of fuel and 34 million tons of CO2 emissions that would have been given off by similar sized vehicles. But all this was still not enough to convince us South African’s to jump on the Hybrid ship. But it seems with the petrol price recently breaking the R14/L mark, people are now ‘gatvol’ and are looking for alternatives to the gas guzzlers.

Over the last few months, we have seen an average of at least 3-4 Yaris Hybrid’s leave our showroom floor, making their way onto our highways and byways. And these millennial eco-warriors are not so easy to find, so we are getting customers calling us from as far wide as Limpopo and further. There is a real buzz on our floor when any of these Hybrid models arrive, and the traditional best-sellers are taking a bit of a backseat, as more and more attention is being directed to the Hybrids. I say – Bring It On Baby! Let’s make this world a better place for all.