2018 HyCam 6 months in review

I've had my Camry Hybrid LE a little longer than 6 months now. Were we able to edit our posts I'd most likely have just updated my original review with the new information but since we can't I'll post the new findings here. Most all of this could be found in the original thread but I present it here in summary form to save you from needing to read 16 pages of information.

The original review is here: 2018 HyCam amateur review and ongoing blog | PriusChat

Pro's:

Warmer weather did indeed bring better mileage. One can easily beat EPA on a hot day with the AC on by driving conservatively. I'm very happy with the combination of good mileage and good power (208 horsepower).

The range is good, 600 miles at highway speeds even with the smaller fuel tank. I've gone over 700 miles on a tank without really pushing it.

I really like being able to lock or unlock the car from either side without ever needing to take the key FOB out of my pocket. In fact you never really need to take the FOB out of your pocket because you can unlock the doors with just a touch, start the car with the push button and even open the trunk with a hidden button near the licence plate. Awesome feature, never needing to fumble for keys again!

I like the radar cruise. When you approach a slower vehicle the Camry will automatically slow down and when you get in the passing lane the car will speed back up to the set speed.

In the warmer weather one can use a push button to enable EV mode to move the car without starting the engine provided certain conditions are met. This does not work when it is cold or even cool...

The battery under the seat allows for a nice big trunk with a spare tire. We had no trouble getting all our suitcases and stuff in the trunk while we were on vacation.

The electric AC can cool the car without ever turning on the engine.

The Bluetooth feature works well for me. I don't know why but people can understand my speech over the phone much better in the Camry than they could any of the other wireless system I've ever had. The others I've used have been worthless but the Camry's works great (perhaps because the Camry is quieter inside?). I just push a button on the steering wheel and say call "my wife" and then next thing you know I'm speaking to her. The Bluetooth works pretty good for audio books stored on my phone as well. It does not work well for controlling as the folders much be in a certain format I've yet to figure out but if you do the controlling from the phone end it works fine.

The dual zone climate control with "S-Flow" works great. It was convenient for my wife to be able to set her own temperature on our last road trip. She drove about half the time. It was her first time driving my car and she liked it fairly well but she was a bit overwhelmed by the all the fancy stuff. She was not accustomed to the radar cruise and she did not really like it at first. S-Flow works great to save energy by not climate controlling unused spaces.

Cons:

Reflections! The Camry reflects sun from the hood and the dash directly into your eyes. All that nice looking shiny stuff on the dash reflects the sun and makes for a bit of a distraction while driving. I put a strip of window tint on the windshield to cut down on the reflections from the hood. My previous vehicles did not suffer from this issue.

We ended up with a Garmin aftermarket GPS because Toyota's Nav is terrible. They want to charge you money (after a free 3 year trial period) for the using your phone's data to power their crappy Scout Link nav program. The Garmin worked well on our last trip when used in conjunction with a human co-navigator in the passenger seat using Google Maps on a phone. It was great to have both since at any given instant one or the other could be a bit goofy.

I don't care for the way you must repeatedly cycle a push a button while looking at a tiny display to direct the airflow from the climate control. In practice this is not a big deal. There is a direct button for front defrost which is nice. The 2 modes I uses the most often are 2 button pushes away from each other so if I want the other one I just push the button 2 times. It is not my favorite system but it works fine.

I'm not a huge fan of the exterior appearance of the Camry but it is fine. I'll most likely not get fancy wheels after all, partly because of the potential mileage penalty but also because I just don't care anymore. The car looks good enough.

While better than most cars the Camry does not preform quite as well as I expected it would regarding fuel consumption. It does great in the Summer, especially at lower speeds, even with the AC on. High speeds and Winter are another matter. I'd be happier with the car if they had rated it a few MPG lower on the highway. Sure under Ideal conditions you can meet or even beat EPA estimates but during much of the year you will not be able to match the EPA rating. At freeway speeds in the Summer the Camry gets perhaps 49 MPG which is great but it is rated higher. In the Winter the car runs just to make waste heat so mileage suffers.

If mileage is your biggest concern a Prius might be a better choice in spite of the similar MPG ratings. I think a Prius would get noticeably better mileage.

In spite of the Cons I love my car. Mileage is very important to me but not so much so I'd give up the nice things about the Camry in favor of a Prius.

 

I've only been in the back once when 5 of us went out to eat. I let my wife's dad drive while we sat in back. We did not notice the issue you speak of, perhaps because my car is white. I'm not sure what the temps were that day either. It has been hot as blazes this Summer but we were in Wisconsin so it might very well have been cooler.

The only person who regularly rides in back is the 4 year old. He complains of heat when we first get in the car. I open the windows and turn on the AC while getting him buckled in. By the time we are on the road for a minute the car has cooled down to a reasonable level.

By contrast I have a black truck which will take much longer to cool off, perhaps in part because of the color difference.

 

I really like Toyota's shiftless Hybrid Synergy Drive. The smooth shiftless drive system is fantastic.

After driving the Camry almost exclusively for 6 months I got our truck (with a conventional automatic) out to pull the boat. At some point the truck downshifted as we neared 40 MPH and just for a second I thought something was terribly wrong with the truck. Of course I quickly realized that it was just a normal shift but after getting accustom to Toyota's superior shiftless design the shift came as a surprise. Odd that I didn't notice the up-shifts so much but after cruising on the highway the downshift was alarming.

 

I very nearly didn't buy the car over the Entune/Scout thing. I'm not sure which thing they actually try to charge you money for, maybe the Entune part but I don't think that Scoutlink will work without it.

My phone does not have data so the whole thing is worthless for me.

Forgot to list a couple of pros:

The Camry has 4x automatic power windows which is very handy. On my other vehicle only the driver's window is automatic.

The LED headlights are nice as well. They are very bright and I assume being LED that they are efficient and should last a long time. The auto-dim feature works OK. I use the auto-dim but it requires manual intervention fairly often.

 

Exactly so, found a useful link:

What trials and subscriptions come with Toyota Entune 3.0?

 

Keeping in mind that I never really completely understood all this Toyota Nav and Entune business, I think that maybe the Dynamic Nav in the chart only applies to models that have perhaps "Integrated" Nav rather than "Connected" Nav. I didn't get the impression that Integrated Nav was even possible on the LE Hybrid but of course I could be wrong.

Notice that the chart says "Depending on which Entune 3.0 system your Toyota is equipped with..."

 

If I'm correct that the Integrated Dynamic Navigation is only available with cars that have Entune Premium (rather than Entune Plus or just plain Entune), then perhaps after 3 years even the people who have Dynamic Nav will need to start paying extra for it after 3 years?

EDIT: I just went back and reread the posts. I was thinking that some of you thought that the chart meant that you could get Integrated Nav but now it seems that maybe you don't actually want the Integrated Nav in the first place because of the cost.

Yeah, maybe we should just delete these last 2 posts since they are based on my misunderstanding...