Toyota Prius (2012) - a refresh for Toyota's hybrid

Toyota has revealed a mainly aesthetic revamp of its bestselling Prius for 2012 - designed to improve ride and handling and usher in new gadgets for a more connected lifestyle.

Toyota hopes the 2012 refresh will cement the Prius's popularity; the current generation has notched up sales of more than 20,000 since its UK launch back in 2009.Click here to read CAR's long-term test of the Prius hybrid.

To align the Prius with Toyota’s new design approach, the company says there's a wider and lower look to the 2012 model. The front valance is wider and the newly enlarged air intake apes the look of modern Fords.

Still, you won't mistake this for anything other than a Prius. This is a modest facelift.

The headline feature inside the Prius is Toyota’s new Touch & Go Plus and Touch Pro navigation systems. Featuring new real-time traffic updates and the ability to use Google’s Local Search feature, it will be interesting to see how they manage to bring what has been a successful smartphone technology to work in a car. 

For the greener among you, there are new planet-saving features including a monthly fuel consumption record storing the previous five months of economy data. The ability to calculate how much is being saved on fuel costs might help justify why you bought a hybrid in the first place. 

Improved rigidity in the Prius’s chassis is claimed to allow for a softer suspension - which is supposed to improve the ride, whilst not sacrificing the handling.

The 2012 Prius goes on sale in March 2012, and will be priced from £21,350 in the UK.

By Marcus Roberts