True to form, Toyota dropped this one like a feather in the wind.

Where rivals would have shouted, Toyota hinted. They said one thing, and in doing so revealed another.

The new Toyota Auris will be powered by a choice of one petrol engine and two hybrid powertrains when it is launched later this year.

See? Your pulse is barely rising. So what haven’t they said?

As scooped by Autocar late last year, the new Auris range will not include a diesel, of course, following the initiative set by the ultra-successful CH-R crossover.

The business logic is simple enough: last year, hybrids accounted for 41% of all Toyota sales in Europe, up 38% on the year before. Diesels accounted for less than 10% of sales.

But that business logic represents another bit of pioneering thinking from Toyota, a company that has made a habit of being ahead of the curve, without always getting the credit for it (10 million hybrid sales and counting, for starters…).

As a result of today’s announcement, the only diesel Toyota in Europe will soon be the Land Cruiser, a car so big and so rugged and so epically not for urban use that it is entirely logical that it should be offered as an oil-burner.

The world is changing, and on this evidence Toyota might be leading that change once again. Blink, though, and you might just miss the start of the revolution.

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