Gadgetory

but of course will hybridize almost anything in its line and give enough time and you might think that this Highlander Hybrid is just basically a Highlander with some Trias technology grafted but it's actually quite different let's try this 2014 Highlander Limited platinum all-wheel drive and highly electrified and check the tip if you haven't seen a Highlander lately hybrid or otherwise you haven't seen a Highlander and then quite a bit of plastic surgery on it for this very fresh third edition and as you can see it's gotten a lot less boxy and square shoulder than it used to be that's part of the big trend in its category if it looks bigger that's largely an optical illusion by them drawing the lines lengthwise although it is about two inches longer but that's not really meaningful wheelbase is about the same as it was before seats eight they tell me now I counted seven unless there's a different back seat option or someone's got to sit on that little cup rack and that doesn't sound comfortable and one of the big headlines on this car is no longer that it's a hybrid that's not even exotic anymore but this is a very different hybrid as we're gonna find out with not one not two but three electric motors now the first thing you're gonna notice inside the Highlander Hybrid the new Highlander in general is this package tray it's basically a stuffed tray for your mobiles and such I admire the idea finally giving us a shelf to put things not a lot of cars do this unfortunately you know it's crap your kids are gonna put in there I see this being just like an open sewer this is what they call a cable management system all it seems to do is take the mess of a cable and split it between the Shelf and the console I don't call that management it's just a pass-through let's talk about screens you've got a helper screen here about a 4 inch we've seen this before in between the two what they call Optitron very nicely detailed analog gauges the one on the Left gives you your charge power and eco swing pretty common stuff and your temp on the rights your speedo and your traditional fuel level notice what's missing here most hybrids have this huge battery level indicator at all times showing you how much charge you've got they kind of make that go away it's available it's over here under your home screen but it's not one that screams that you all the time it's an interesting piece of psychology to say look don't worry about your battery level worry about how economically you're driving that does make more sense inside this big screen is a lot of proven Toyota technology it's laid out a little differently you've got a lot of touch buttons alongside here they are they're physical buttons as you can see but they don't move they're just using actual pressure sensitivity nothing new in the navigation system to speak of we've seen that before let's go into your audio sources where you have many AM and FM with HD radio XM radio is standard your CD above here still have optical discs iPod and USB connecter that's where this gnarly mess is down here bluetooth streaming auxilary Jack you can also play DVDs to particular media apps come in via Entune it's I Heart Radio for Clear Channel stations and Pandora for predictive internet radio all of that comes out through what's called a JBL GreenEDGE amplification system the speakers around the car the amps that drive them are all built for efficiency so they don't tap any more power out of the car's electrical system than they have to cohesive and makes sense for a hybrid now let's go to the apps notice how they make everything an app it's a little bit of a cheat I mean navigation is not an app it's a function built into the car same thing with foam the more interesting stuff comes over here on the right where you find your Entune array mostly things we've seen before bing I Heart Radio Pandora OpenTable movietickets.com Yelp and then sports and stocks from satellite radio that you probably don't care about traffic is provided by HD radio broadcast by the way so even if you let your satellite radio subscription lapse you should still have good traffic data on the map voice command for the Bing search tool is a welcome technology now just say what you're looking for and it'll return results that are navigation oriented now speaking of the audio system if you're like me and you still like to grab the volume knob once in a while just to get the sound right where you want it or quickly turn it down you're gonna hate this car look at these knobs get a side angle there it's kind of like a round knife edge there could not be a worse design knob for the human hand it's uncomfortable it's a sharp chrome ring and it's slippery what were they thinking our back-up camera is standard as you can also hear are the rear sonar I like how sharp this one is it's a wide-angle lens but not ridiculously so so the world behind you is not too distorted and you've got prediction of duress in distance but most important you've got really good detail on this screen so you can make things out with some with some real precision you'd be surprised how much that helps the most interesting technology on this car could be that one driver easy speak I've never seen this on a car before it takes a little bit of your voice from the Bluetooth microphone system and pipes it to the rear speakers of the car not real loud it's not like a PA system it's more like just a subtle enhancement so you're not having to yell to the back row and tell them to stop punching each other in the face you can say hey little darlings stop punching each other in the face it also works with the audio system so it's not fighting it all the time it's rather doing now an unusual story about how this vehicle runs starts here in the engine bay first of all you've got a three and a half liter lean-burn v6 not a terribly powerful beast although total system horsepower is 280 but that combines a bunch of electric motors by a bunch I mean three motor number one is primarily a generator and a starter and it's also part of the ratio control with the CVT gearbox motor number two is your front wheel drive traction motor and captures brake energy from the front to go back in the battery motor number three is on the rear wheels and also captures brake regen from them now well this is a complex and novel arrangement for an all wheel drive vehicle it's also rather clean eliminating a slew of almost victorian-era drive shafts and transfer cases that other all-wheel drive cars use now we're looking at our nearly forty nine hundred pounds of Highlander here in this hybrid hello big battery but it still gets up to 60 in 7.2 seconds that's pretty sprightly hello torque mpg all in complete blended system is 27 28 now driver operation in this car is pretty straightforward the all-wheel drive system is basically transparent you're not seeing a bunch of all-wheel drive controls in fact basically none you put this guy in Drive or over here on the sports side for shift ability no paddles on this vehicle and off you go to the races you have a couple of buttons up here underneath our cable management one is called the Eco mode and that'll bias the car toward more green running a particularly less response on acceleration and you've got the easy mode which will buy us in another way which will say run on pure electric as much as you can given your battery state no jumping in this Highlander doesn't have anything terribly all-wheel-drive about it it doesn't have that sort of rugged off-road tiene what happens is the vehicle is largely front-wheel drive bias but can send as much as 50% of total system torque to the rear wheels when needed but it'll figure that out on its own that's why they call it all-wheel drive - high it does the thinking if you do the driving the overall impression is one of very good linear power hybrids tend to do that even when you're in Eco mode it doesn't become a non-responsive slug I like that and the braking is similarly linear a lot of hybrids have kind of multistage braking between the service brakes and the regen but this one's a nice linear smooth application that's a bit of an achievement my concern here is that there are a lot of noises I don't like I get a lot of powertrain noise on acceleration that doesn't become a vehicle like this when you come to a stop there's a whole lot of sort of gear noise as the drive line settles or mashes its teeth or whatever it's doing and when you turn on the seat coolers this is the loudest thing I've ever heard in a car that isn't the audio system if you live in a hot climate you need to check this out if you test drive one of these cars I thought I had a window open in the back for like the first five minutes I drove this car so I realized it was the seat fans not the Lane Departure is calibrated pretty well although it's late by some people's standards it doesn't come into effect until in my experience you're actually on the line not approaching it the blind spot tech is very ordinary it puts a tiny little indicator on the mirror when there's someone in your blind spot and it's passive like the lane departure but in some it's a nice driver it knows its role is what I would say okay this price our Highlander we're nearly top of the stack in fact we are because it's a hybrid and all hybrids are limited and we also have added the Platinum package on top of that we're at just under 51,000 base the Platinum is about $2,500 of that price and adds the safety connect sort of OnStar features adaptive radar cruise control the forward collision warning and lane departure warning automatic high beams and that very spacious panoramic Rufe about the only thing I can find to add to this to make it fully seen that style is remote start which is an odds Factory leave out it's $500 dealer-installed all-in word about 51,000 4 on this car for a vehicle that is rather heavily revised has a great new look a very innovative ambitious hybrid system and does some really interesting things inside the cabin to keep the technology high as well as the creature comforts you