The 2025 Toyota Camry Goes Hybrid-Only and Gets Electric AWD

Maybe the Prius won. The 2025 Toyota Camry will only be available as a hybrid, ditching any conventional gas-burning engines, even as an option. Hybrids are well and fully the mainstream.

Though, it's hard to say that a midsize sedan like the Camry is mainstream anymore. Toyota's best-selling vehicle here in America is the RAV4. It's crossovers that have gone mainstream, and it's this sedan that is now an outlier. The Camry has become something more that you are driven in rather than something you yourself buy. It is the definitive Uber, cab, ride-share whatever these days, and from that perspective, a hybrid makes incredible sense. This is a car that will do primarily short-distance urban and suburban trips. This is where a hybrid shines.

To be honest, this is a character arc that came for the Prius first. As more and more models across Toyota's lineup (and across the industry) got hybrid drive, people didn't need to buy a Prius, and it got more and more specialized for a distinct audience. Now that crossovers deliver a car-like ride, with car-like performance, and car-like fuel economy, cars and sedans grow specialized for their most dedicated buyers. For the Camry, that means it gets to ditch anything that doesn't help you run a successful ride-share operation or crush highway miles.

The hybrid "has represented about 16% of Camry sales for the current generation," according to a Toyota representative when reached for comment. This is no small step for the Camry as a model.

But that is a somewhat high-minded train of thought. Let's drill down on the basics here with the new Camry, as there's some fun stuff.

The first is that the fifth-generation hybrid system that Toyota is using here, imaginatively called THS 5, has an interesting quirk. Standard for this new Camry is front-wheel drive and two electric motors, which gives a combined 225 hp. Optional is all-wheel drive, but this is not a traditional mechanical system, which directs engine power to all four wheels as needed. In this case, Toyota just slapped another electric motor at the rear of the car to drive the back wheels as needed. This is functionally all-wheel drive, and gives the AWD Camry a combined 232 hp. Both the new Prius and the new Camry use that same hybrid system.