Featured 2020 Highlander Hybrid To Ditch V6 In Favour of 4 Cylinder Hybrid

Interesting. I am out of SUV market for now, but I wonder if there are enough interest in fuel efficient mid-size SUV with wimpier engine. Will see.

 

We got the sister vehicle, the Lexus awd version because of its rated towing ability. Even so - it had a recall for high inverter temps/reprogramming. But a 4 banger? Kiss off its towing.
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What is current V6 hybrid engine Highlander towing cap? Is it the same as V6 ICE version Highlander?

Edit: I looked it up. 3,500 lbs for 3.5-liter V6 hybrid engine for 2019 HyHi and 5,000 pounds with the 3.5-liter V6 engine on 2019 regular 2019 Highlander. That means even larger engine has substantial towing capacity loss in hybrid model. I wonder what 4 cylinder hybrid is going to be?

 

likely zero. That's what i was getting at.
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Yeah, 4 cylinder engine on regular Highlander (2019) has only 1,500 lbs towing capacity. But 4 cylinder itself may not be a total killer on towing. 2014 Pathfinder Hybrid I recently purchased has supercharged 2.5L four-cylinder engine, but has 3,500 lbs towing capacity. It is less than 5,000 lbs capacity of the same year conventional gas version model of Pathfinder with 3.5L V6 engine, but still very respectable number.

 

Who really knows. The 2019 rav4 hybrid has 219 hp and towing capacity of 1750 lbs. The highlander hybrid uses a more powerful lithium battery than the rav4's nimh to produce 240 hp. That should be plenty of low end torque and power to tow if toyota wants. The 2019 v6 hybrid highlander was 19% heavier than the rav4 hybrid, my guess is some weight will be dropped here and the 10% higher power will make up some of it. Standard 2020 highlander is 295 hp. Tesla is using silicon carbide inverters and my guess is toyota should have them by now (they said they were going to switch), there is no reason to specify an inverter that can't handle the power of towing. Inverter prices have dropped considerably since your hihy and SiC is more efficient which is cooler. My guess is if they offer it will only be on the awd version, and may include a different inverter. The towing package on the gasoline version is rated at 5000 lbs and provides a better radiator (not likely needed in the hybrid).

My guess is 0-60 time will be 8.1 seconds compared to 2019 highlander hybrid's 7 seconds and regular 2019 highlander's 7.2 seconds. I think the trade off in acceleration versus fuel economy and cost makes a lot of sense to kill the v6 in the hihy. Really the toyota hybrid system does not scale well for higher horsepower applications as both (or all 3 in awd configuration) motors must grow with engine hp. This is a smarter choice. It gets to share psd/mg1/engine with the high volume rav4 hybrid and camry hybrid. To get to 300 hp or above I'd add a bigger battery and a plug or perhaps use a physically smaller turbo (or super) charged miller cycle engine and have to torque really just flow more straight to the axle (modified psd) when more power is used.

 

My bet is zero for the FWD model, which what the quoted MPG is for, but the AWD should have a rating comparable to the current 4 cylinder non-hybrid or Rav4h.

The weak link is in the transaxle, or more accurately, the fluid used. The gen4 Prius finally got a transmission cooler, and a tow rating in some markets, which is still lower than comparable cars. Among the hybrid SUVs, only AWD models had a tow rating. There, the strain of towing was transferred to rear axle and motor.