Toyota’s Boxy Hiace Van May Finally Grow a Nose

The next-generation Toyota Hiace is reportedly due in January 2030, and it would trade the van’s flat cab-over front for a short hood.

The new van would also add a hybrid and a fully electric version alongside a diesel, three types of powertrain in all, where the current sixth-generation Hiace offers neither a hybrid nor an electric model. Toyota has not announced the next Hiace or any of these details.

The report comes from the Japanese car magazine Best Car, according to the Japanese site Creative Trend, which presents the details as Best Car’s predictions, and Toyota has not confirmed them. The design is expected to follow the Hiace Concept that Toyota showed at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, which Best Car examined in January for hints of what a production model would keep.

The move from a cab-over layout, where the driver sits on top of the front wheels, to a semi-bonnet design with a short nose ahead of the windshield would put the Hiace in line with Toyota’s Noah and Voxy minivans and the Alphard and Vellfire. Creative Trend calls that change the most likely outcome. The van would again come with a standard roof and a high roof, as the concept did, and the high-roof versions are expected to carry on the range of grades the current 200 series offers.

The hybrid would use either a newly developed 1.5-liter four-cylinder or the 1.8-liter 2ZR four-cylinder, and the report leans toward the 1.8-liter engine for its proven reliability. Creative Trend’s headline ties that hybrid system to the next Corolla.

Size is expected to stay close to today’s van, which measures 4,695 mm long, 1,695 mm wide and 1,980 mm tall, so the Hiace can stay inside Japan’s small commercial vehicle registration class. The report allows that length and width could grow slightly while the height could come down. A next-generation Townace, the Hiace’s smaller sibling, is tipped to follow in August 2030, though Creative Trend marks that date with a question mark.

The Hiace is not sold in the United States, so none of this changes what Toyota offers here, where the Sienna minivan is the closest thing to it in a Toyota showroom.

The Toyota Report Take

A Hiace with a nose sounds like a small thing, but it is the change the van has needed for years, because a short hood makes room for a hybrid system and better crash protection without stretching the van past Japan’s size limits. A 2030 date is a long way off, and a magazine forecast this far out can move, so treat the details as a sketch rather than a plan. It is a pity Americans will only watch from afar, since a hybrid Hiace is exactly the kind of efficient, compact work van that would fill a hole in Toyota’s US lineup.