Toyota Finally Released a New RWD Coupe And It’s Proof We’re Being Trolled
What’s worse than not getting the thing you want? Expecting to get it, and it gets snatched from your hands at the last second. Talk of sports cars might often feel this dramatic, but we know it’s not really that big of a deal. That being said, Toyota has been playing with us for too long. First, it gave us the 86, which is cool, but was literally just a Subaru BRZ with a different name. Then we get amped about the Supra, which is cool, but it is mostly a BMW with a different body. So, When Toyota says, “Hey! We’ve got a RWD coupe coming,” You better be ready for some nonsense. Enter the Toyota C+Pod.
The Toyota C+Pod is just a Smart car
Yep. I’m sorry I mislead you. I am just taking a page out of the Toyota playbook. To be fair, Toyota never said it was releasing a sports car. I saw “Toyota RWD coupe” at The Drive and got excited. Shame on me. I should have known better.
The C+pod is about the least sporty thing I could imagine. It is an all-electric city car in the vain of the Smart car. In fact, it is very, very similar to a Smart car, except it’s somehow smaller and much less powerful. You read that right – much less powerful. The power difference between the two is 49 hp. Now, that may not sound like that big of a deal, but only if you don’t know how much horsepower the Smart car has; It has 61 hp. That means the new Toyota only has 12 hp. Nearly every modern motorcycle has more horsepower than that.
Luckily the C+pod doesn’t weigh much. The little city car trims the lbs from the Smart car by being over a foot narrower and 4-inches shorter. It seems hard to believe any car could be smaller than the Smart car, but Toyota did it. This shrinking means the C+Pod only weighs 1,477 lbs. That is nearly 1,000 lbs lighter than the Smart car. Is this shaping up to be another Supra or 86 thing?
What is the range of the Toyota C+pod?
Even if it looks like a shopping cart, it has some decent features like collision detection and LED headlights and taillights. However, the LED lights are likely less to do with safety and more to do with saving weight. According to The Drive, the C+pod has a teeny little 9.06-kilowatt-hour battery (hence the 12 hp).
For all its weight and power saving, the little city car squeezes out a range of 93 miles on WLTP mode. This makes the C+pod almost twice as efficient as the Long-range Tesla Model S. Again, that isn’t all that impressive for a vehicle that weighs little more than a big Harley Davidson and has the same horsepower as a weed-eater. I can’t get away from the notion that Toyota is messing with us.
How fast is the Toyota city car?
As you may have guessed, the modestness continues with the car’s speed numbers. You may have a hard time finding the C+pod’s 0-60 times. This is not because Toyota doesn’t want you to know for fear of being outperformed. No, this is because the little sneaker can’t hit 60 mph. All 12 horses are used up by the time it reaches 37 mph. This means, even if you were brave enough, you couldn’t legally drive it on the interstate. It likely won’t matter because the C+pod is going to countries where most inner-city travel isn’t done by car anyway. This is strictly a car meant for bopping to and fro someone’s apartment and the supermarket.
