My other vehicle being a Sienna, I was already well familiar with Toyota's driver's steering wheel and door buttons. I have to say the layout is not as good as the Sienna.

The door controls (power windows) on the Sienna lay at your finger tips when resting your arm on the door rest. On the TCH these buttons hide behind the inside door handle and are not as comfomtable to use (on the Sienna, the door handle IS the arm rest).

On the steering wheel controls, the buttons on top kind of wrap around the top and are a bit harder to use with a natural hold on the steering wheel. The Sienna has perfect placement for thumb use on it's steering wheel controls.

 

Wow, I can see with the severity of your complaints that you must be real happy with this car.

 

I've very happy with my TCH. The fit and finish, quiet and smooth operation of the HSD and ICE, and the very nice JBL sound system.

One thing that bugs me is on occasion when restarting (should I say powering up?) the car, the AC will switch to recirculate. I prefer to have it on fresh air, it seems to change on it's own accord. Anyone else notice this or know why it happens?

 

Well, I've never had a new car where at least something wasn't wrong with it when I got it (this is #7). After finding absolutely nothing wrong with fit, finish, or function I finally had to resort to trivial comparisons in power window buttons.

 

The A/C auto-switch is common. Cars that perform this function generally do it based on cabin temperature and requested temperature. It recirculates to make it cooler quicker, then will revert to externaly sourced air.

 

This behavior can be changed by the "AIR INLET MODE" function. I do not know if you can set it yourself, but your dealer should be able to change it from AUTO (default) to MANUAL. This and other settings are listed in BE-13 (BODY ELECTICAL - MULTIPLEX COMMUNICATION). I downloaded this and a lot of other good .pdf stuff from www.tundrasolutions.com. You have to get a year's membership ($25), but I think it was worth it.

 

If anyone knows how to change this, please pass it on. It's not so bad with the AC on, but the vent changes automatically to recirc even with the AC off!