Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid Perfect for Young Families Who Need Room

• Toyota’s Corolla Cross Hybrid boosts efficiency, with 10 more miles per gallon EPA combined than the non-hybrid Corolla Cross.

• The hybrid model gets unique front and rear treatments, too.

• If you keep it long enough you will pay off the roughly $5000 price hike.

Toyota changed the world when it introduced the Prius in 1997, the first mass-production commercially available hybrid passenger car. Since then, Toyota has gone on to introduce more hybrids than any other manufacturer ever, even as the world switches to battery electric vehicles. So is Toyota behind the globe in the adoption of all-electric vehicles, or just playing it smart by waiting until those BEVs become profitable? Perhaps the latter, but here’s another hybrid for the Toyota Pantheon of Hybrids: the 2023 Corolla Cross Hybrid.

With or without the hybrid drivetrain, the Corolla Cross puts a premium on practicality, with plenty of room inside and a reasonable sticker price. It is not an exciting car to look at or drive, but it addresses the needs of many young urban and suburban families who have given up on being sexy and just want a reliable family vehicle. In the Corolla Cross Hybrid, they get it.

The regular Corolla Cross came into being less than two years ago, riding on the same TNGA-C platform as the Corolla, Prius, and Prius Prime. TNGA-C also underpinned the stylish-but-slow C-HR, which has been discontinued but which you could say was replaced by the Corolla Cross. Is that too much platform nomenclature?

The Corolla Cross Hybrid shares the same wheelbase, width, and height as the conventional Corolla Cross, but adds length. The Corolla Cross is a little smaller than crossovers like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V, and its own big brother, the Toyota RAV4. Total EPA passenger volume in the Corolla Cross Hybrid is 88.4 cubic feet without the moonroof (or 87.3 cubic feet with it), which is plenty to pack in a family of four and all their accompanying accoutrement.

The Corolla Cross Hybrid offers a relatively uncluttered interior headlined by a single, upright infotainment screen in the middle of the dash and the requisite 4 million cupholders, door pockets, and various cubbyholes for stashing contraband—or stray Cheerios. Of course, it has Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and the Toyota Audio Multimedia System, an infotainment extravaganza offering “a wide range of enhanced connectivity and convenience features.”