There is a shiney new HiHy AWD sitting in my garage. This will be my daily driver and Ski car in the winter (After I get snow tires and maybe chains).
It is replacing my well worn Explorer (221,000) miles. I hope I get the same from the Toyota. Any suggestions ? Wish me luck.

Andy

 

Good Luck with your new vehicle and Welcome to the Forums!!!

 

Welcome! I jumped in myself about a month ago. I absolutely love my highlander. I found many threads on this site that are helping me understand the technology and optimize my experience. Plus, there are a lot of friendly, helpful, folks here.

 

We bought our highlander last weekend. I have a question, when I coast it through my neighborhood, it registers at 99.9 mpg. How true is that? Are we completely on electric at that point?

We are still on our first tank of gas, so I haven't seen the true fuel economy yet.

 

Twogreens, that is correct. If the mileage gauge is at "99.9," that means that you are using 0.0 gasoline.

We bought a Prius (for me) back in September 05, and just got home with my wife's new silver 2007 4x2 HiHy. On the ride home from the dealership, she got 34.7 mpg. She drives 8.5 miles to work each day, on all 30-40 mph speed limit side roads... Man, if she can just keep it around 30 mpg we will definitely have made a GREAT deal!

Has anyone here researched or purchased a warranty after purchase? I know there were some Prius forums talking about getting extended warranties for much cheaper than they offer at loan closing...

Thanks.

 

I'm sure it's way off. Just kidding, almost. 99 is the max. The engine probably has turned off and you are either on pure electric or actually generating energy.

Enjoy and congrats.

 

Thanks for the info, now I have to find a downhill road both to and from work.

About the warranties I am not sure, I paid for the dealership extended warranty. I never bought one before, as I have always had good experiences with my vehicles until my last one. I had a 3 year old tahoe, which I just got finished shelling out 2500 for a fuel pump, water pump, and cluster. All went out within 6 months of the standard warranty ending, which is the main reason I got rid of it. Not that I expect this from my toyota, but I am not going to risk it again.

 

One question about MPG, since it was brought up: the MPG calculation done by the car comes out different (higher) than the MPG calculation I get when I divide actual miles by actual gas put in at fill-up. I don't have enough information yet to see how consistently off the two figures are -- but has anyone else noticed this?

As for the extended warranty, from Toyota vs from other people: I checked with my insurance company and they offer a "platinum level" package for $x that could be purchased at any time. Toyota's was slightly higher, but was only available at time of vehicle purchase (or so they said).

From looking at the Toyota documentation and talking with the finance guy (and comparing the info to the other package I was looking at), the major difference is that non-Toyota warranties will not cover specific parts in the vehicle that I was interested in making sure was covered -- like the nav/controller system. In a different vehicle I have, the nav panel had to be replaced (luckily under warranty). Since the nav panel is such an integrated and important part of the Highlander for me, I wanted to make sure that it was covered. The after-market complete warranty did not cover as much as Toyota's package.

Obviously, do your own research -- maybe other companies' after-market extended warranties DO cover everything in the vehicle just like Toyota's does.

It all comes down to how long to you expect to keep the vehicle. Me, I'm planning on keeping it at least 10 years and wanted the longest whole-car warranty I could get. If you're only planning on keeping it for 5 years, then don't bother with the extended warranty (mileage expectations excluded, of course).

 

Every car will have a difference between the two calculations, even between identical cars. Driving styles, tire diameter/inflation pressure etc. influence the calculations. I find that my car display is up to 1mpg higher than my hand calculations, but not always.

BTW Honda is shelling out about $6 mil for overclocking their speedo's some 3 to 4%.

 

Yes, I know -- when I "tested" my Highlander as best I could, I calculated that the odometer was *under* reporting what a mile was. This could be related to why the computed MPG calculation is off.