Our Toyota Grand Highlander Goes Way Past Empty Before It's Out of Gas
Welcome to Car and Driver's , 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 ).
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.
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.
There are two possible explanations: The GH's fuel tank is smaller than the published value, or the trip computer is exceptionally conservative. So, we finally went for broke, pushing through all of our healthy fears of getting stranded and really ran it all the way down. After our GH showed an indicated zero miles of range, we did another 60 miles at near-80-mph highway speeds and then circled our local Shell station for the final three miles until the tank ran dry. During this experiment, we also discovered another interesting feature: Even after the gas tank is empty, the GH lets you drive a little further (0.6 mile in our case) on the remaining energy left in the hybrid system, which allowed us just enough to get to a pump.
We pumped 16.498 gallons using our typical "three-click" method of three automatic shutoffs separated by a five count in between. But continuing to top off until we saw fuel in the filler neck got the tally to 17.402 gallons, slightly more than the stated capacity.
When we asked Toyota about this, the company responded with a fairly boilerplate statement: "We are aware of the field concern and we are investigating the matter on how to best address customer concerns." While we wait for the fix, we now know we can push aside our fears and keep driving well past the point that it indicates empty.
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