What does a car need to allow it to tow?

you can tow with any prius. toyota just won't give it a rating in the u.s. due to lawyer fear

 

The new Prius appears to have a nice motive power upgrade.

Now for real towing it needs:

Brake & tire upgrade: tires that handle higher loads, more massive brakes. This overlaps into the transmission: a stronger B mode

Wheelbase: Generally the longer the distance between front and rear axle, the more stable the combination vehicle will handle at high speed. Not much to be done there since it isn't adjustable, but it is a thing to be aware of. This is the reason why long dual-cab trucks are "easy" to tow with, and also why trailer rental companies don't like to rent to Wrangler owners: not enough length to be properly stable at American highway speeds. Lotsa lawsuits. Note: Prius is closer to Wrangler than F250.

Improved cooling: particularly in the transmission. It's going to handle a lot more stress, so for "normal" life expectancy you should beef up the cooling capability.

Mind you this is very generalized. You wouldn't need to do any of that for certain lightweight/occasional tows, but you'd need all of that & more if you wanted to do it every day for a living.

 

The gen4 has a 725kg tow rating in Europe. The trailer regulations are different though. Weight is loaded on the trailer to have a lower tongue weight than US regulations. Keeping the tongue weight carried by the car the same would mean 367.5kg on the trailer in the US.

Europe also requires trailer breaks at a lower weight; 500kg. Just one or two US states have that limit set at 1000lbs. The rest are higher; thousands of pounds higher even.

Europe isn't getting the new Prius, and the old PHV had a rating of zero there. If the gen5 has an official tow rating, going to have to look to the specs for Japan.

Having more power doesn't help with stopping, nor reduce the strain carried on the rear frame. Chances are brakes and chassis strength aren't as big as an improvement over the gen4 in the new Prius as power. Going by the EU specs for the gen4, you are looking at a trailer weight of a little over 800lbs. Good news, that won't require extra equipment on the car. An additional transmission cooler would be good idea if towing is more often than a sometimes thing.

The manual says no to a hitch even for a bike rack.

 

That’s what I said

 

Many car manuals say zero for towing.
Saying no to a hitch for none towing purposes in the gen4 manual was new to me.

 

more lawyer speak. toyota is the worst. how many manufacturers don't let you use gps with the vehicle moving?
lots of people here tow/bike hitch, etc. haven't read of any major problems.
of course, it can be overdone, and one must be careful.

 

I wonder if it is less a “lawyer fear” or “lawyer speak” as it is avoiding stupid owners who know so little about engineering design and decisions that they create extremely unsafe situations out of ignorance.

The earlier post to this point have tried to address those issues (such as trailer brake requirements, tow vehicle brake capacity, cooling capacity, trailer weights etc). European trailer designs are significantly different than the states resulting in lower weights, and their regulations are better enforced than in the states (coming from the idea the government has the obligation to really protect the citizens instead of the businesses) so the average EU driver isn’t pushing the limits as the average US driver does.

 

In the UK there's a strictly enforced 60mph limit on anything towing a trailer, and even then that's only for the biggest highways- even lower limits on the rest.

Meanwhile most Americans need google to find out what a speeding ticket looks like.

 

EU Gen 5 PHEV also, unfortunately, rated zero for towing...

 

In Europe there is almost no Toyota, especially a hybrid one, that has anything but an optional bike rack.
TBH, when you need to tow there is hardly something better than a diesel car.

 

Technically, all vehicles can tow.

However, not all vehicles are designed for it.

For serious towing, your need a frame for the towing hitch (pickup trucks, suvs, vans, etc.). With unibody construction, you need to design reinforced contact parts to withstand the stress of towing. If you tow with a vehicle not designed to tow, you risk stressing and doing irreversible damage to the unibody design. If a vehicle isn’t designed to tow, it’s engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, etc. will be stressed in ways not tested during the design phase.

That said, my dad towed sailboats with a Datsun 510 wagon. At worst, the bakes and clutch wore out sooner. Still, we did push its towing capacity…but that car DID have a frame and not unibody construction.

 

The considerations Leadfoot mentioned in #4 are also worth thinking about. While pretty much any tow vehicle will get pretty much any trailer up to road speed eventually—the only differences being how long 'eventually' is, and how often you want to replace wearing parts—the ability to keep the nose pointed forward and the shiny side up while steering and stopping can also be important. Sometimes especially so, to personal injury lawyers hired by other users of the road.

 

I towed for years on my under powered G2. Curt offered a hitch for it pretty easy to install with the exception that the mounting holes just wouldn't line up so so reaming out had to be done. Common complaint. See if Curt offers a hitch for your car on etrailer.com.

The one take away on a G2 was the regen braking went away with any weight pushing the car. It only had its manual brakes and they don't work very well with no regen assist on that car..

But that's on a G2 your car may be fine.

Also it may require an additional power supply to supply power to the trailer brake lights. The G2 did. Luckily having a 12 volt battery in the trunk was awesome so easy to get power for the little 12 volt power supply. if etrailer offers a power supply for your car buy it.

 

OMG the Datsun B series car was awesome. My girlfriend back in the day her dad bought her a brand new 1972 B610 fastback. What a fun great running car. Wish I had one today. Tough little car. That car should have scared the shit out of GM.