Toyota C-HR+ Long Term Review

Report 1

July 2026

Mileage: 1,073

Real-world range: 360 miles

Efficiency: 5.0m/kWh

Er, this is Timmy. I’ve never in my life named a car, especially not a Toyota C-HR+, but when I downloaded the Toyota app it insisted I had to put in a name for the car, so here we are. 

The C-HR+ is very similar to the bZ4X (same platform underneath), but think of Timmy as the slinky coupe version. There’s also the Lexus RZ, which is Timmy in a business suit. The only other EVs from the Toyota/Lexus outfit are the Lexus ES saloon (huge looking thing) and the Urban Cruiser, plus Toyota’s versions of the Citroen Berlingo and Spacetourer. 

Toyota has been very slow to pick up on the electric thing, doesn’t really believe in it when there are hybrids to be sold, but out of this burgeoning range of cars the C-HR+ is the one that I would gravitate towards.

We’ve got the car in mid-range Design trim on 18in wheels (there are optional 20in badgers that sound like they’d be awful) and with a 72kWh usable battery and some fancy paint which brings the car to a reasonable £36,445 including the £1,500 electric car grant the Toyota is eligible for. 

Before it arrived, I was thinking it would be very much along the usual lines of Toyota’s paint-by-numbers approach, reducing the car down its functional essentials. A Toyota can be trusty, but you don’t love it, right? 

I do love Timmy’s burnt orange paint job, that’s quite nice. You won’t lose it in a car park – also because the app tells you where the car is, absolute lifesaver, I’m always losing cars. I was paying for parking on a little trip to Devon recently and when I put in the GX26 XCB the car came up as brown. I was absolutely fuming, I had to double check on gov.uk. Brown! This Metal Oxide premium paint is a £950 option and you’re telling me I’m driving round in a brown car?

The app has been mostly useful so far – finding the car, texting me when I’ve left it unlocked, that sort of thing. I can tell you where we’re going to fall out with each other, and that’s the EV coaching score. Keeps slagging me off for not driving smoothly enough, I’m scoring great for acceleration and braking, but apparently I could be maintaining my pace a bit better. 

If it’s constant speed you want, I’ll straight-line roundabouts, but I have found so far that the Toyota’s a bit peaky even in Eco mode. I want all the power sapped out of the car so I’m not using any unnecessary electricity, but even at its most parsimonious I feel like the C-HR+ is a bit too eager to be somewhere else. 

The biggest surprise has been the economy – I’m very much enjoying my 5.0m/kWh average so far and that has included some decent chunks of motorway driving. I’ve resisted the allure of aircon, but it’ll be interesting to see how the car fares as the weather cools. The official WLTP figure is 5.3m/kWh if you’re going to match the 377 miles of quoted range, for me it’s looking like 360 miles to a tank of electricity at the moment. 

The worst thing so far is the ADAS safety tech and all the fuss when you’re trying to get going, but I shall save that for a future update.

Report 2

August 2026

Mileage: 1,991 miles (3,064 total)

Real-world range: 360 miles

Efficiency: 5.0m/kWh

The efficiency of the C-HR+ still continues to impress me. I was running at 5.2m/kWh for the whole month until the return leg of my trip to Scotland for the last weekend of the Fringe festival in Edinburgh and a brief stop in Arbroath to try an all-you-can-eat chips buffet I've been wanting to visit for ages. At which point the efficiency crept down, though in retrospect it could have been the extra weight I was carrying. We’ve actually got an even sterner test coming up, driving to France to visit my wife’s family. 

Actually the stern test was trying to find out whether I need headlight stickers. There’s nothing in the settings about it, I found the manual in the boot under the floor (there’s no glovebox) and there’s nothing in there either. Nothing online, because the car’s only five minutes old. 

I got in touch with Toyota GB and their helpful advice was to get in touch with a dealer or find an MOT station with headlight testing equipment. Thanks, I mean you only make and sell the car. My local dealer was more helpful, the head service technician told me I don’t need to do anything because the LED headlights are set up with a flat beam. Would it have killed anyone to add a line to the manual?

I mentioned the ADAS tech in my first report – there are two things that I like to turn off, and those are the traffic sign recognition that monitors the speed limits, and the driver attention monitor that has a hissy fit whenever you dare look at the 14.0in infotainment screen. The former can be turned off with just a swipe, but the latter involves a swipe, another swipe, a press, a scroll and a prod. It’s a bit infuriating, especially when you have to do it again every time you start the car. 

I did try a few weeks where I didn’t turn anything off, and you mostly tune it out after a while, but it’s still annoying. Perversely, the best way to deal with the speed limit warnings is to not go below the speed limit, because the bongs only sound three times in a row and then stop. If I could issue a plea to Toyota it would be to add a shortcut to turn the wretched distraction thing off. 

The efficiency, though, it’s still impressing me. That and the charging – my trusty Hyundai Kona (best car in the world [TM] and 4.8m/kWh averaged over 40,000 miles) only tops out at 70kW while the C-HR+ is rated up to 150kW and has 11kW AC too. I think 120kW to 150kW is probably as much as anyone really needs, no?