What We Learned After Testing a Toyota Tundra for 40,000 miles

Hello and welcome to Car and Driver. We just wrapped up a 40,000 mile long-term test of this 2023 Toyota Tundra Hybrid. With this test, we put that many miles on in a year to find out what a new vehicle is like to live with every day, as well as to highlight any issues that might come up. In the case of this Tundra, its versatility made it a very popular member of our long-term fleet. Being a full-size truck and all, it was also our first choice for tackling dirty jobs and towing duties. Perhaps surprisingly, it was also a fantastic family shuttle, with its comfortable ride and impressive driving range, making it a long-term hero on road trips to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the coast of South Carolina, and even out west to Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Now in this video, we're going to cover what worked, what didn't, and what you should expect if you were to own one. Our Tundra is the mid-level limited trim. It pairs with the CrewMax crew cab and the shorter five and a half foot cargo bed. We also opted for the I-Force Max hybrid powertrain and four-wheel drive. Now this configuration, plus a few thousand dollars worth of options, pushed its as-tested price to just over $63,000. Now if you're thinking to yourself, that sounds pretty expensive, that's because it is. For a comparison, the more luxurious Ram 1500 Longhorn and GMC Sierra Denali cost about the same. Our Tundra's other notable options include the Premium Package. This adds a useful 360-degree camera system, enhanced LED headlights, as well as some other towing upgrades. This truck specifically is also outfitted with the optional load leveling rear air springs. What these do is they allow you to manually lower the rear end. This should make loading heavy items a lot easier, and for that, your back will thank you. Other extras include a $150 heated leather steering wheel, a $565 JBL audio system, a $399 retractable bed step, and $710 running boards. Toss in the $385 power package with LED bed lights, dual 120-volt outlets, and a wireless charging pad, and our limited trim costs as much as a luxury truck, but doesn't exactly feel like one. When it comes to half-ton trucks, the Tundra has a much smaller following than its domestic rivals. Despite all that, Toyota still gave its full-sizer a full redesign for 2022. Sure, it was long overdue, making this new truck feel extra, well, new, but it brought notable improvements in design, tech, and how it drives. Now every Tundra features a new frame with a more sophisticated rear suspension. The old truck's rear leaf springs have been swapped for a coil spring setup like on the Ram 1500. This helps the Tundra avoid the jittery ride quality that's otherwise common with a live rear axle. That, combined with the truck's solid body control, makes it feel more like driving a big SUV than a body-on-frame pickup. The Tundra also no longer offers a V8. Instead, there's only a twin-turbo 3.4-liter V6 that comes with or without hybrid assist. Our truck has the hybrid setup, which adds an electric motor between the engine and the 10-speed automatic transmission. Unlike the non-hybrid, there's a small battery that hogs space under the rear seat, but this i-Force Max provides a lot more power, making 437 horses and 583 pound-feet of torque. At the test track, our long-term hybrid Tundra hit 60 miles per hour in 5.5 seconds, which is about a half-second quicker than an equivalent non-hybrid model. That's also despite carrying an extra 216 pounds. Wearing its standard Yokohama all-season tires, our Tundra also provided a modest 0.7g of cornering grip, and the stop from 70 miles per hour took 191 feet. Both of those test results are in the same ballpark as similar full-size trucks we've tested. The Tundra's new hybrid powertrain was a big reason we wanted one for a long-term test. As it turns out, it's one of our favorite things about the truck, thanks to its forceful acceleration and seamless gas-electric handoff. The truck's logbook was also filled with compliments about how nicely it goes down the road, even drawing a comparison to the much-lauded Ram 1500, which has become the gold standard for pickup ride quality. As we mentioned, the Tundra is also great for road tripping. With an enormous 32.2-gallon fuel tank, it can easily go 500-plus highway miles between fill-ups. Its status as a road-trip all-star was further solidified by the Retrax One MX Tonneau cover that we installed around 20,000 miles. Essentially, it turns the truck's cargo box into a massive trunk and preserves people space in this already generously-sized cabin. Speaking of the interior, we also appreciate this huge 14-inch infotainment touchscreen, which was easy to operate and worked flawlessly with wireless Apple CarPlay. And lastly, we can't forget an underrated feature, the Tundra's rolled-down rear window. It's not available on any other truck, and with all the windows rolled down, it gives the cabin a convertible-like vibe. As far as what we didn't like, by far one of the biggest criticisms was about the Tundra's blatantly phony V8 soundtrack. You hear that? Now unfortunately, there's no way to turn this off. Another notable logbook comment was that the Tundra's interior feels not bad, but they also acknowledge that this is more of an indictment than an endorsement when we're talking about a $63,000 truck. Now if you look around the Tundra's cabin, you'll see their point. For example, Toyota doesn't do as good of a job hiding the hard plastics. If you look here, you'll see on the side of the center console, the lower dash, upper dash, even on the doors, there's just more visible hard plastics. Now you'll look at the center console, and there's great room for storage, there's a wireless charging pad, big cup holders, but then you open this flimsy cover, and it just, it feels lower rent. And another issue is in the backseat. Now if you lift the Tundra's backseat, what do you notice? There's no storage space under here. That's because this is the hybrid's battery pack. On the non-hybrid model, this is all open storage space. Just something to consider. We're also bummed out that Toyota didn't design any clever storage for the truck's cargo bed. Other opinions about what we didn't like about the Tundra were all over the map. While technical editor Dan Edmonds found the Tundra's seats to be less comfortable than the flimsy cushions on his five-hour Delta flight, one staffer's spouse thought the front passenger seat was really comfy throughout an eight-hour road trip. Other passengers felt carsick from a distortion in the windshield above the center stack that's viewable only from certain angles in the front row, but we've since replaced the When it comes to fuel economy, this truck is a hybrid, but it ain't no Prius. The EPA estimates that our 2023 Tundra Hybrid is good for 20 miles per gallon, yet after 40,000 miles, its average fuel economy is just 17 miles per gallon. Now that's not great when compared with something like Toyota's Sienna minivan, but this is a nearly three-ton truck after all. It's worth mentioning that hybrid powertrains like the Tundra's are more fuel efficient than gas-only alternatives in stop-and-go traffic, but that advantage typically disappears at higher sustained speeds. Our Tundra accumulated a lot of highway miles, many while towing, which is likely one reason for its unimpressive observed fuel economy figure after 40,000 miles. Still, prospective Tundra owners who frequently drive on the interstate may want to check out the standard non-hybrid version of the twin-turbo V6, which on four-wheel drive models grows its EPA highway fuel economy to 23 mpg and saves $3,800 right out of the gate. Plus, its final result was still three miles per gallon better than our 2019 Ram 1500 Limited, which had a Hemi V8 and a 48-volt hybrid system, yet it still only averaged 14 miles per gallon over the course of its long-term test. Almost immediately after the Tundra joined our long-term fleet, we gave it a chance to live up to its name. On an 800-mile round trip to Michigan's wintry Upper Peninsula, it battled a snowstorm that covered its grille-mounted radar and disabled its adaptive cruise control. For that trip, the Tundra wore its stock 20-inch all-season tires, which struggled in the silty lake-effect snow. But around 30,000 miles, we swapped these out for a set of knobbier General Grabber all-terrains, which cost us about $1,300. Not only did those give the truck a tougher look, but they also provided better traction on uneven terrain without compromising the truck's daily drivability. When it comes to standard maintenance, Toyota covers the cost for the first two years, or 25,000 miles. However, in the case of our Tundra, we did a lot of towing and driving in the dirt, so we followed the owner's manual and requested an oil change every 5,000 miles. Besides the two freebies, we spent roughly $1,400 on the other six services, which also included replacing fluids in the transfer case and rear diff. Thankfully, there were no other major costs or warranty work. Toyota replaced a faulty motor for the active front air dam and provided a second key fob that was initially unavailable due to the semiconductor shortage, but both were free. And remember that weird windshield defect? Well, we had that fixed, but at about $1,850, it was far and away the most expensive part about our Tundra ownership experience. When we adopted the Tundra for a 40,000 mile stay, we hoped to learn whether Toyota could shrink the gap between its reinvented full-size truck and America's favorites. Now, while the Tundra will never enjoy the same type of brand loyalty as Ford, Chevy, GMC, or Ram pickups, we think this truck's refined road manners, dynamic hybrid powertrain, and thoroughly modern tech make it a much more compelling option than it has been in the last decade.