Consumer Reports Reviews 2011 Toyota Highlander Hybrid

nice to see hybrid at top, despite 47k loaded price!

 

CR is garbage and I don't put any faith in their reviews. Good that they finally got one right, but their collective failures at journalism doesn't make up for it.

 

I find they are one of the best when it comes to regular people looking for cars. Take reviewing a prius.

CR goes out and gets their real world mpg, they look at safety, they look at 100 of thousands of real world customers ratings and repairs.

Car and Drive take the prius to a track, and say it's slow and not fun, didn't handle well, and they couldn't feel the road through the steering wheel. Also they earn almost all their money from car makers. I don't freaking care how a prius handles as long as it's safe. I want to save gas and not have repairs bills!!!!

Motor Trend same as car and driver see above.

Why do you got to come in here and start bashing? And say they finally got something right? Did the fox news channel go out and you got bored?

 

CR is a respected source of consumer information. Their frequency of repair records for automobiles is the result of coordinating thousands of reports from vehicle owners. Their reviews of vehicles look at real world issues faced by owners, unlike the publications already mentioned (Car & Driver, Motortrend).

Your post is just so much verbal diarrhea unless you can provide some specific examples of Consumer Reports's failures.

 

HH is built in Japan, and weight of strong yet is probably too high for Toyota to price it lower...I bet it has lesser incentives than rest of the range.

Same goes for RX450h, which had limited supply even before the earthquake...

 

I like CR a lot. It is far from perfect as Darren notes, but I know of no other publication that can even come close. Critics demand "truth," when all we can really hope for is transparency.

Prior to CR, people took GM's word on quality. Hah!

 

There are CR haters but they have very little to go on. The company reviews and has reviewed thousands if not tens of thousands of products over multiple decades. I'm sure they get it wrong sometimes. I still don't know of a better source for objective (or as close as possible) information on reliability of automobiles.

The Highlander Hybrid is a nice vehicle but so outrageously expensive over the non-hybrid version that its savings in gas can never be paid for with the price premium.

How long ago was that again?

There are definitely problems with CR, JD Powers, etc. I'm not aware of any truly objective source of data. All rely on users' reporting failures and depending on demographic and other factors the data is skewed.

 

Don't forget . . . . theye sing Praises about Gen II & III Prius too . . . . so . . . there you go.

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I find many of CR's reviews to be disappointing, so I can't say that I am a fan. To be fair, I think the problem is inherent in reviews: what the reviewer considers important might not matter to me.

That said, we all need information to make informed decisions, and I find myself looking at CR from time to time. I take their reviews with a grain of salt, and understand that it is not gospel, but just another data point.

Tom

 

Consumers reports says if gas averages 3.91 a gallon it would pay for itself in 5 years.

My math say gas averages $3.50. Hybrid highlander 44K non hybrid Highlander 37.5k. So you would need to make up 6.5k.

Hybrid gets 27 vs 18, so ver 100,000 miles you would save $6,482. Also i didn't take into account how much more the vehicle is worth because it is a hybrid thats how they come up with a five year payout.

 

The whole "pay-off" issue has been beat to death. Buy a 19mpg Caddy Escalade hybrid with 30" rims, gold trim moulding ... for an extra $15,000 and let me know when the pay off on THAT is ... then I'll be impressed.


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I am another who is less than thrilled with c.r. I find a lot of the things they find important in a review to not be important to me.However compared to other periodicals. They are definitely the best we have available to us.

 

CR dinged the Prius for "Electrical Problems" due to the little 12v battery. (Mine is still OK after 7 years and 197k miles). They dinged my 42 year old Vacuum saying it let dust through when the dust was due to hard water at their test site (the vacuum uses turbulent water instead of a filter.) So I also read their reviews carefully and apply my judgement.

JeffD

 

Believe me - your 12v aux battery is mortally wounded at 7 years, and changing over to the yellow optima right NOW, will save you a ton of headaches. CR didn't discover the weak battery - they probably read it here. There are scores & scores of posts regarding that very fact, stated months prior to CR's corroboration.

As for the Hi Hy, they've followed suit and switched over to the Atkinson ICE, just like the SUV hybrid Lexus now has . . . . power, and a VERY nice ride, too. With out toio much effort, we can get over 30mpg out of our AWD Lexus suv ... which is basically the same ride as the Hi Hy. What's REALLY nice is the Hi Hy offers up the optional 7 seat arrangement, for those who actually need the extra human capacity.

 

it has atkinson ice, of course... they moved to newer system from RX450h, instead of using old RX400h HSD system... hence the change in numbers.

 

are you planning to sell your HH at discount compared to V6 version?

Obviously HH will command premium as used vehicle as well... if fuel keeps being as expensive as it is, you wont have to pay off anything...

 

The RX400h's V6 was NOT an Atkinson cycle engine. It is not easy to make a V6 engine atkinson cycle "compatible". In point of fact even the RX450h does not operate in the Atkinson cycle mode except well above idle RPM.

The RX450h's V6 operates initially in standard Otto mode, 13:1 compression ratio, and then only transitions to Atkinson mode, effective CR of 10:1, once the cylinder charge begins to rise where the CR MUST be reduced.

Personally I'm awaiting the advent of the new 187HP I4 being converted to DFI and adopting Atkinson mode...>15:1 base/native compression ratio. And then a Venza HSD using the new F/awd system, no rear "assist" electric motors.