[Auto] Toyota Grand Highlander Can Go Way Past Empty Before It’s Really Out of Gas

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Welcome to Car and Driver's Testing Hub, where we zoom in on the test numbers. We've been pushing vehicles to their limits since 1956 to provide objective data to bolster our subjective impressions (you can see how we test here).

Our long-term Toyota Grand Highlander with the new 362-hp Hybrid Max powertrain has been the subject of an ongoing mystery amongst our staff. One of the most common complaints leveled at the otherwise great three-row SUV is a relative lack of range on road trips. Part of the issue is that most hybrids—this one included—don’t achieve their EPA highway fuel-economy figures when traveling at real-world interstate speeds of 75-plus miles per hour. In our highway fuel-economy test, which we run at a steady 75 mph, the Grand Highlander averaged 24 mpg versus the EPA's 27-mpg figure. But on the real road trips our staff has undertaken, with speeds sometimes higher, and through frigid winter weather with knobbier all-weather Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady 2 tires installed, we often see mpg averages in the low 20s.

 

Something Strange with the Range

But that doesn’t entirely explain why we are regularly stopping to refuel at increments less than 300 miles, and we’ve never made it more than 400 miles on a tank. Toyota’s published specifications state that it has a 17.2-gallon fuel tank, but our regular fill-ups, even when running dangerously close to zero miles on the indicated trip computer, are in the high 13- to low 14-gallon range. It’s not just us, either, as we've seen plenty of similar discussions on owners' forums.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64207686/toyota-grand-highlander-hybrid-fuel-range-test/