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...after the covers were left off the vehicle at the carmaker’s Megaweb facility last night.
The medium-sized sedan is scheduled to go on sale overseas next year, with a price point set higher than the Prius, starting at 3.38m yen ($40,500) for the base model, and topping out at 4.26m yen ($50,990) for the Sai Sportivo.
The car is based on the Lexus HS 250h platform and carries the identical drivetrain, a 110kW/187Nm 2.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine working in tandem with a 105kW/270Nm electric motor charged from a nickel-metal hydride battery, giving a combined power of 140kW.
The bodies of the two cars look very similar, and the main differences between the two are pretty much only in the styling of details, with the Sai’s nose and light clusters looking a little more conservative than the Lexus, even in the Sportivo version we saw dressed with TRD alloy wheels.
However – like its Lexus twin – we’re unlikely to ever see the Sai in local showrooms as there’s already a booking for the mid-sized hybrid sedan slot. “We can’t sell it alongside the locally-built Camry Hybrid,” says Toyota spokesman Patrick Lyons.
At one stage the Lexus was slated for Australia, but the right-hand drive development plan was axed last month because it could not be certified for sales in Europe and there was insufficient demand from other right-hand drive countries.
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