Toyota Yaris Cross - Reliability and safety

Buyers should feel reassured about the reliability and safety of the Toyota Yaris Cross because the Toyota brand has built much of its reputation on excelling in these important areas. 

The industry body Euro NCAP awarded the Yairs Cross its maximum five-star crash safety rating, with scores of 86 per cent and 84 per cent for adult and child occupant protection, respectively. It also achieved an 81 per cent result for its onboard Safety Assist technology and 78 per cent for protecting vulnerable road users. For comparison, the Ford Puma only managed to achieve a four-star rating, with a 75 per cent rating for adult occupant protection and just 69 per cent in the Safety Assist category. 

The standard equipment includes a raft of active systems, such as adaptive cruise control to keep you a safe distance from the car in front and a lane-keeping assist system to help keep you within your lane on the motorway. There’s road sign assist that reads the speed limit from road signs, and an autonomous emergency braking (AEB) system that should mitigate, or prevent collisions with other vehicles and vulnerable road users at low speeds around town. 

For 2024, the active safety suite has been enhanced with systems like Acceleration Suppression at low speeds and Emergency Driving Stop. There’s also a camera and radar system that can scan wider and further ahead, improving the detection of potential hazards and, according to Toyota, allows the Pre-Collision System to recognise risks earlier for possible head-on impacts with other vehicles crossing your path, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcycles. 

The Yaris Cross didn’t make it onto our best cars to own list based on the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey results, but the Toyota Yaris hybrid supermini on which it's based managed to finish in 3rd place overall out of 50 cars. Four Toyota vehicles made it onto our best cars to own list, which we reckon the brand will be pretty pleased with.

Warranty

Toyota provides a standard three-year/60,000-mile warranty for the Yaris Cross. After this period expires, you can receive a further 12 months cover every time you have your vehicle serviced at an official dealer – up to a maximum of 10 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. 

Servicing

Just like the Yaris supermini, the Toyota Yaris Cross needs servicing once a year or every 10,000 miles, whichever comes first. Toyota offers its Service Plan Plus for the Yaris Cross, which includes three scheduled services, one MOT and an extra two years of roadside assistance on top of the one year every new Toyota gets. It's a three-year plan, and will cost you £28 per month.