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Good luck with your decision. Hope you buy a Highlander. Let us all know!
The things I do not like about it is the wind noise I hear on the driver side window at around 40-50 mph. It sounds like wind coming in from window that is slightly open. I read in the toyota autonation forum from other folks having the same complaint that it is an A pillar noise. I also don't like the breaks, it breaks too strong even with little pressure and also you can feel sometimes the ABS engaging.
Previous vehicles I have owned are 2004 Limited Honda CRV (traded), 2001 Nissan Xterra (traded), and 1993 camry (which I still have and in great condition for a 15-yr old car and getting 23 mpg).
Has anyone been able to come up with a different answer on this?
Bob
I do realize that no car is perfect, and any can have problems. IMO, I will keep driving Toyotas due to resale and quality and few problems.
Regards, BGood
I also pulled the original window sticker out of my maintanence file; it was rated (under the old DOE EPA rules) at 18 and 24. I regularly get 17 to 17.5 in town. So it's not so hard to believe, or actually do.
Regards, BGood
My two weeks old 08 highlander (limited, awd) gets 14 - 17 on the local road ( I am in boston, so the traffic and many traffic lights are killing the mpg) and about 24.4 on the highway. I would say it is pretty close to what the window sticker says.
I am driving pretty carefully now that I see the instantanous mpg reading. So try not to accelerate too fast and brake easily. Is there a best strategy to drive for a better mpg, for example, if I am going down hill, should I just take my foot off the gas and let it glide and sometimes slow down and step on the gas again once I reach the bottom or should I always give gas and keep at a constant speed.
Also, I find that when the car is moving at 35 - 40 mph, it is pretty hard to brake (had the same thing with my old ford taurus). If you gently brake, the speed does not decrease that much. It is a little annoying during local driving.
Check out these articles for gas saving tip while waiting for specific responses to your coasting questions in a Highlander:
What Really Saves Gas? And How Much?
We Test the Tips Part II
Thanks for the great tips. I will update if the mpg improves.
On my spreadsheet, my mpg has gone up a tiny amount continuously over the years and finally seems to have stalled out at 21.49 as I hit 105,000 miles. If you trust my numbers out to two decimal places.
I haven't updated my spreadsheet for a few months, and had new plugs and wiring and other tune-up stuff done a few weeks back. All those new parts are probably hammering my mpg....
I find that I never wait at red lights, and only lose 5 min on my 110mile trips.
The Lucas fuel treatment just gave me better throttle response, no more throttle lag at low speed driving.
Maybe some of y'all can keep score for a few tanks and report back?
I track the fuel ecconomy religiously and find that the error is less than 1%. I have just done a 642km trip today, sitting on speed limits (100km and 110km) all the way and indicated fuel economy showed as exactly 10.0 l/100km. Fuel usage (filled at 5 C at six this morning and refueled at 6 C at ten this evening at some fuel pump) with similar cut out behaviour was 64.5 litres.Trip meter is also very accurate. I have checked against 100km measured distance several times and found error at less than 0.5%. Speedometer indication is also very close. Radar check stations on freeway today suggest indicated speed is 1km too high at 110km/h (Indicated 110 to actual 109)
Cheers
Graham
My MPG is consistently off by 1.5 MPG (computer says 22.5, pencil/paper says 21)
I check MPG with pencil/paper for almost every fill-up, w/ over 10k miles driven now, of which about 3k were true highway trips. The rest were using the same driving habits (I am the sole driver) & mostly use the same gas station, although not the same pump. I fill at full speed until it clicks off, then fill again at full speed until it clicks off a 2nd time. Same way every time, no matter where I fill.
Just changed oil with Mobil 1 (vs. toyota dealer OEM oil). Will be interesting to see if there is a MPG difference.
The speedo should get better as the tires wear.
Trip mileage first, pen and paper second:
1) 18.4 / 18.1
2) 22.1 / 22.0
3) 21.4 / 21.1
4) 24.1 / 23.7
5) 21.3 / 20.9
Trip #1 was exclusively non-highway, #2 and #4 were highway w/no A/C, and #3 and #5 were highway w/A/C. All highway trips were w/me (about 190 lbs) and about 200 pounds of cargo w/cruise @ 73 mph.
3100 total miles on the vehicle. Love it!
So am I also adding miles 6.6% too fast ? Is my 10,050 miles driven really 9,400 ? Is it worth having fixed ?
Any other Hybrid owners doing this bad?
Ok total mileage was 422.5 and gallaons used was 16.7 equals 25.3 MPG. travel was mostly country side and mixed highway, never more than 75 mph. Highlander gauge reported 25.4mpg . IMHO difference is close enough for rounding error.
I will be leavinfg this weekend traveling from Md to Orlando and North Myrtle Beach before returning. I will post information on mileage along the way.
Check the forums, there is a separate MPG forum for the Hybrid Highlander. You will find tips and other owners there.
BTW, that is pretty bad MPG! Either you need to adjust your driving style (and maybe tire inflation), or there is something wrong. Or you may just have the wrong driving trips for an HH, if you are driving short trips.
HH MPG Forum
And do the math on the gas. Right now you can get a comparably equippped Highlander Limited AWD fully-loaded for $12-13K less than the Hybrid version, since the Hybrids are in short supply and the non-hybrids are collecting dust on the lots. People are paying near MSRP for one and dealer dead cost for the other.
You're right - the $12K - $13K price difference for let's say, a 9 MPG difference @ $4.00 per gallon with 15,000 miles per year (average) would take about 12 YEARS just to break even financially. (I used Toyota's data of 18 MPG City and 27 MPG City for the gas/hybrid models respectively.)
I know that some do, but I don't hold onto a vehicle that long. If a Hybrid makes sense for some folks - fine; but I wish more people would wake up and stop giving into the hype.
That said, and I have has this debate on a few other Highlander Hybrid forums, the Hybrid owners also seem somewhat in denial about the price difference. Most insisted it wasn't even close to that much and insisted they would break-even in about 5 years (the highest I saw anyone quote was 7 years). Some of these people bought their hybrids before there was a run on them and before Toyota started taking losses on the non-hybrids so the delta was a little smaller. But I think a lot of them didn't do a detailed study of the real cost difference that has always existed between these vehicles.
I started as a perfect example. I first test drove the Highlander because I was specifically looking at the Hybrid. The dealer told me the Hybrid cost "about $4K" more than the comparable non-Hybrid Highlander. And if you just look at the MSRP for the Limited HH versus the Limited H that appears true. But Toyota was completely slimy in dropping a bunch of standard equipment out of the HH Limited and making them expensive options. Some of the things they dropped would never be missing from any Limited class vehicle from any manufacture and Toyota dealers will tell you it is pretty much impossible to even order the car without them so it was a purely cynical move on Toyota's part and not good faith packaging. How many people would buy 3-row car with NO AC beyond the first row, let alone on a Limited? But you have to first upgrade to have AC at all in the rear, then upgrade to have auto control in the rear then upgrade to have auto climate control in the front to get to the non-HH standard package. The net result of all this options gamesmanship is another $3-4K in price delta on top of the MSRP difference before you even start negotiating.
The bottom line is unless this is a fleet vehicle or the person is some kind of regional sales person, no one is seeing their up-front price delta in less than a decade. It would take me at least 15 years at $5 fuel.
The other interesting point for those who buy Hybrids for their 'green' image. Most don't realize just how much green-house-gas was released into the atmosphere when manufacturing the batteries. I've seen reports of up to 100k miles at EPA estimates required to 'environmentally' break even with the all-petro version of the same car. Only then do you start 'saving the world'.
Bottom line, we need a better (for the environment) mobile energy storage technology.
It's as bad as the mercury issue with florescent lights....
Another issue I have with Hybrids is the shock potential in a bad accident... Rescue people have to get special training, because you can get crispy instantly...
If you don't believe me ask a fire fighter.....
tidester, host
SUVs and Smart Shopper
Hmmm, not sure how much lead is in a Nickel Metal Hydroxide (NiMh) battery, but probably not much.
Hybrids are an environmental farse.
If I put it into a Hybrid, I'm quite sure I can get half of that back when I sell or trade in, say, 5 years. So it really only ends up costing me $5,000 for the Hybrid upgrade. For which I get not a 12 year payback, but 6 year payback. And that translates to a 13-14% rate of return.
I'm sure that my assumptions are arguable. But two things are often left out of the equation: the higher resale value of Hybrids; and the fact that even a 12 year payback is a lot better than money in the bank these days. At simple interest, that's 8.5%!
Can anyone tell me where I can put my money and get 8.5%?
I scoffed at a co-worker's similar conclusion when he decided not to add a grid-connected solar upgrade to his home last year, because it got him a (only) a 7 year payback. Non of his other investments are giving him anywhere close to that. That's about an 11% annual return he could have made!