For the TLDR I sold it and bought a gently used 2023 TRD off road premium.
I meant to update this earlier, but a death in the family has occupied my time.
12 months with my Trailhunter:
I’ve been meaning to update my post with my thoughts on the Trailhunter now that I have lived with it for a while. This is my 3rd 4Runner, I have owned a 1992, and still own my 2014. I don’t 100% love the Trailhunter, so in no particular order I will tell you how I feel about it.
Exterior styling – This I love. The design team should get a raise.
Interior design / functionality – A mix of good and bad.
The Good: Layout of the controls. Keeping physical buttons for the climate control. Climate control works well for heating and cooling the vehicle.
Rear seat fold down via lever.
JBL sound system sounds great. The removeable speaker, which I considered as a gimmick, is pretty useful. I spend a lot of time sitting in the vehicle in parking lots waiting for my daughter at her practices. I usually listen to music or a podcast on my phone. Now I pop out the speaker and set it on the dash and don’t need to keep the vehicle in acc mode.
Twelve inch screen is nicer than I thought it would be.
Seats are comfortable and plenty adjustable.
On board air compressor: Already used it twice to inflate tires for friends.
The Bad: Interior storage. Console storage is too small. Door bottle holders are too small/short. Doors have an open storage space near the middle and a flat shelf by the bottom. The shelf is useless and open storage seems like a dumb idea in a vehicle meant bounce around on off road trails. Placement of the cup holders in the center console is not ideal. With the side by side cup holders the drivers drink is always in the way when your hand is on the shifter or drive mode selector. The cup holders won’t hold larger water bottles. The front part of the console area is a slanted area with a wireless phone charging pad and a place next to it for another phone. I don’t have need of this, and if your phone charges from the bottom like mine the area is useless space. Even if my phone charged wirelessly I would not use it. No matter how good Android auto is there are times when I need to use my phone. It is just better to have it mounted so it is in line with the dash so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road any more than you would checking anything else on the instrument panel.
Driveability: Here is where I have the most issues. Even after 12 months I do not like the auto stop start. I still have no answer to my question “there is a space for the auto stop/start disable button, can it be added to the console and will it work?” Gas mileage for the first 10k miles was terrible. No where near the 23/24 mpg advertised. For most trips I never broke 19 mpg, and mileage was in the 16-17 mpg range. During this time I was using premium fuel. I switched to regular sometime after 10k miles because I was spending too much money on gas. My gas mileage improved slightly and there have been a few times where I hit 23 mpg. It is just not consistent. If I drive it to work for 10 days, using the same drive mode, I will get 10 different mpg readings.
Due to the vehicle not getting the advertised gas mileage the range on a full tank is too low IMHO. 330 miles is not enough. I bought this because at the time I was considering getting a travel trailer and it has extra features for trailer towing. I can’t imagine what the range would be towing a travel trailer.
Speaking of drive modes there are 4. Sport/Normal/Eco and Tow/Haul. In all modes it has better off the line acceleration than my 2014.
Sport is the most fun to drive in. The engine sounds the best (I’m not sure if it’s really the engine or something being played through the EV warning speaker) and has the best performance. The owners manual doesn’t really give a good description of what sport mode does. As far as I can tell it lowers the gear ratio the same as if you were in tow mode.
The transmission doesn’t seem to work as efficiently as it could. Plenty of times it has stayed in a lower gear even though I stopped accelerating and was just maintaining speed.
Normal and ECO. Out of the two I like driving in ECO mode more. Engine sounds terrible in normal mode.
Ride: It firm but comfortable.
Handling: The vehicle has a fair amount of understeer which is compounded by the lag you get before the engine starts. Starting from a stop with the engine shut off if you nail the gas to get into traffic there is an annoying lag. If I am at an intersection where I know I will have to move it to get across traffic I go into shift mode which will keep the engine from shutting off. I'm sure the extra weight of the battery contributes to understeer as well.
Snorkel: I wish I could de-snorkel it. It is so loud you can’t drive with passenger window open. I also wonder how useful it really would be. Say I’m fording some water high enough for the snorkel to actually be of use. As soon as I stop to judge the situation (unless I had the presence of mind to switch to tow/haul mode or shift mode before) the engine will shut off. I doubt it will re-start with the tailpipe under water.
Toyota added a ton of complexity with the hybrid system. In the end it produces better acceleration, but doesn’t improve gas mileage and takes up interior space.
