When it comes to 4×4 touring in Australia, diesel has long been the fuel of choice. 

There are plenty of reasons for this preference: Old carburetted petrol engines in Series Land Rovers, Land Cruiser FJs and G60 Datsuns were prone to vapour lock whenever the mercury climbed towards 40°C, leaving you stranded in the heat; carrying petrol in jerry cans was always riskier than carrying diesel; and diesel delivers greater torque, efficiency and touring range for the same volume of fuel.

In more recent times, the arrival of factory-built turbo-diesel engines delivered even more grunt and improved fuel economy, making them especially appealing to long-distance travellers.

Toyota has long offered LandCruisers with a choice of petrol or diesel powertrains, but as modern diesels improved in both performance and efficiency, the petrol options steadily fell out of favour. The LC200 was the last model sold here with both fuel types, but Toyota Australia eventually dropped the petrol variant due to a lack of demand.

At the time, Toyota was selling eight to 10 times more LandCruisers than Nissan managed with its Y62 Patrols, month after month. The Y62 is a great wagon – I’ve always loved driving it – but being petrol-only, it never came close to matching the Cruiser’s sales.

So it caught my attention when Toyota’s sales and marketing boss, Sean Hanley, said at the reveal of the LC300 Hybrid that he doesn’t see much of a future for diesel in Australia beyond the next decade.

Toyota is hedging its bets on future fuels every which way, with BEV, EV, ICE, hydrogen and hybrids all represented in its showrooms. Hanley says there’s no single perfect fuel for every application, adding: “At Toyota, we are committed to a multi-pathway approach to decarbonisation, providing appropriate powertrains for different applications.”

While the Performance Hybrid petrol LandCruiser is just one of those pathways, there will be many more. Hanley sees hydrogen taking over from diesel as the fuel of choice for heavy vehicles and other applications where diesel has long been king. This would require significant infrastructure to store, transport and deliver the fuel across the country, not to mention changes to the vehicles themselves. Toyota Australia is already investing heavily in this space, but there’s still a long way to go.

I find it hard to believe we’ll see this change within the next 10 years, but there will no doubt be shifts along the way. What I am sure of is that I’ll still be filling my LandCruiser with diesel at remote outposts in outback Australia for the rest of my days.

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