2027 Toyota Highlander | First Look

Behold an electric Toyota with a normal name. This is your first look at the fifth generation Toyota Highlander. From powering your house to having the biggest battery and range a Toyota has ever seen, plus 18 cupholders, we have a lot to unpack. And I don't have much time. Let's get into it. Competition is heating up in the electric family SUV space. Of course, we've had Rivian, Kia and Hyundai, Lucid, Cadillac, and now Toyota has entered with its three-row variant. And competition means there's a lot of choice. Regardless of what you choose, you can check out KBB for a variety of info on all of these family haulers. But for now, let's dive right into the Highlander. So take a step back and take it all in. They're trying to capture sophisticated adventure, coining the term best experience vehicle. That's what they put in the press release. And it's a clever way to reuse the acronym BEV, or battery electric vehicle, as most of us know that acronym. So compared to the previous Highlander, this is a few inches longer, a couple inches wider, and actually about an inch lower with a much longer wheelbase. The wheelbase brings some notable improvements when we get inside, but it actually should also help its on-road performance. Plus pushing the wheels out towards the edges just makes it look a bit more confident. And keeping these dimensions in mind, including the wheelbase, makes it almost exactly in line with the Kia EV9 and the Hyundai IONIQ 9. So I'll be probably referencing those a few times throughout the video for context. There's a host of various paint colors, all with silly names as all automakers seem to be doing nowadays. But hey, I kind of love it. It's kind of fun. And what's also fun is having two tones. Certain paint colors can be equipped with a black roof and 22-inch wheels. While I thought was going to be too much, looking at it now in person, I think it's awesome. Your ride comfort might be a bit compromised, so I'd personally opt for the 19s. But 22s look the business. Zooming in and starting up front, let's talk lighting. This is Toyota's Hammerhead Lighting Design Signature, which is kind of classic at this point. The light bar extends all the way across because we now live in a light bar society. And this huge front fascia, while it will attract rock chips, you might want to get this with some paint protection film, I think looks really good and retains the body color, whatever you choose, all the way across the front. You also have some newly integrated geometric design right here for the actual headlights. The headlights aren't up here, by the way, they're down here. And I think this really, really works. The whole vehicle just feels a bit more geometric and no longer has the kind of droopy super look that we've seen on some of the previous Toyotas. Good riddance. Around the side, love to see no cladding here, actually. And like I said, 19 or 22-inch wheels. Now, personally, I'd probably love a size in between, maybe even an 18 if I wanted true maximum comfort. But I think either wheel design looks really good. And that's not that common in the car world. Usually, they have one size that works and everything else kind of just doesn't. Behind the wheel, you'll have your charging port, which is actually the smallest door I've seen on an electric Toyota. Inside that is your NAX plug or Tesla plug, as some people will call it. And the geometry extends along here. Love that little feature. It is plastic. It looks a little cheap, actually, but it does work with the car. It points right up to your door handle. This is new. This is a semi-flush door handle comparable to like a BMW iX. Love to see this and love the actuation. And nice, solid door thunk. Props to that. Black two-tone exterior is an option. And I think the move, I think it looks really good. I think getting any large three-row SUV in one color is just a lot of that one color. No wonder everyone chooses black, white, and gray. But I would probably opt for a color if I could and then pair it with the black roof. It does swoop down just a little bit. And the whole vehicle being just about an inch shorter than the previous Highlander, plus the extended wheelbase, all that together makes it look a bit more like a wagon, which I appreciate as a wagon enthusiast myself. Starting all the way up here, we have the lighting signature begin and continue all the way around, making this one of the biggest light bars I've ever seen. It's not all illuminated. Some reflector stuff in there. But once again, light bar society, someone's got to make a bumper sticker for that. Up top here, you have a bit of a roof spoiler situation. Actually, it's pretty huge when you look at it. And inside it, integrated beautifully, is the rear wiper. You also have the camera way down here. This does, of course, have a surround view camera option. Standard on the Limited. And it even has built in dash cam capability, which is great. Drive recorder, as they call it. We saw that on the RAV4 recently. Love to see that coming over to the side. Your badging will include Highlander BEV for battery electric or best experience, depending on which acronym you choose. All wheel drive, if you get the all wheel drive. And Limited or XLE, because those are the two trim options. Below the light bar, you also have this, once again, geometric design where you have some more lighting elements. I just love like every angle in this car, which I don't actually say that often for that many Toyotas. But I think this really looks and feels modern. Back around the side, I'm intrigued once again by these door handles. I say we use the door handle and get inside and check out the interior of another one because they're kicking us out of the space. Now we're inside and this thing is nice. It's a huge step up from Toyota's other battery electric vehicles. First thing you probably notice, big 14 inch touch screen. That's kind of like the other vehicles, but this actually has some physical climate controls for you button enthusiasts, unlike the other ones that have everything built into the screen. That being said, there's still a lot of climate built into the screen, but the screen is reasonably snappy. And I think a lot of people will probably connect to Android Auto and Apple CarPlay because that comes standard. And it works quite well. It seems to have slightly better navigation than the other 14 inch screen on the other models, but still no EV route planning as of right now. It says no charging stations found. That's a problem. I hope they fix that before this thing comes to market. In front of the driver, you have a 12.3 inch driver display, which actually looks great. It looks to be in the same decade as this one, unlike Toyota's other EVs where you had to kind of peer over the steering wheel. You even have a head up display if you choose the limited trim. In the center console, you have some Qi chargers, two, one for each side, and they look way better than the other vehicles, but they still are a little slippy. They have a suede material to help hold your phone. There's so much room that your phone will still inevitably slide around. Hopefully that's not too distracting. And if you're driving along calmly, it might stay in place. You also have a nice gear shifter here. It's just kind of a little toggle for forward and backwards with a park button. I also like this better. Below the wireless chargers, you actually have a really cool center console storage area for perhaps somewhere to throw a purse or a murse. It, of course, has your USB-C chargers there as well. I love having that little storage area. I just wish it was maybe carpeted or something. The center console storage area also opens from both sides like previous Toyota EVs. You have a digital rear view mirror, which is nice, but not that many people like those because you have to shift your focus off the road to a much closer distance. I still like having the option because what if you're full of cargo and you can't see out the back window? And this one is not equipped with the panoramic glass roof, but that is an option and it's the biggest one they've had yet. It'll really help the rear passengers feel like they're not in a cave. The seating is comfortable and you have standard heated seats and heated steering wheel regardless of trim. But if you opt for the limited, you get ventilated seats and heated rear seats. There's no ventilated rear seat option, which I find a bit disappointing given that some of the competition has that. As standard, there's a six speaker audio system. That's probably not great for a car this size. I would probably opt for the 11 speaker JBL if you care about the music. They haven't told us the pricing, but historically their JBL upgrade hasn't been that expensive. Totally worth it. And then to continue the elevated feel, you have 64 color ambient lighting. Standard. Love that. Surrounding the screens, you have kind of this multi-tiered dashboard, which I really like. It's very elevated feeling. It has different types of materials, all kind of soft touch and textured. And you even have a glove box, which the other EVs also don't have in Toyota's lineup. The door card is very interesting, very geometric, which pulls in some of the geometry we saw on the outside. And I like how they feel. Definitely different having the electronic door release, but I think people will get used to it. And that seems to be another sign of the times, just like light bars. The door release itself is a press to exit. But if that fails for some reason, pulling it twice is the manual override. Very important safety feature. Love to see that so easily, simply implemented. However, I wonder how many passengers will just pull it instead of pushing it to begin with. There's an appreciable lack of piano black, but there is a good amount on the door, which I don't appreciate. It surrounds the buttons, and I think that's inevitably going to show a lot of fingerprints. It is funny to find carpeting behind the door handle there. Why is there no carpeting in the middle? And why is there carpeting on the door? I don't know. I would have chosen differently. The steering wheel looks really good. Looks a lot better than the other EV steering wheels in Toyota's lineup. So front passengers happy. That's good because they're probably the ones who bought the car. But let's check out the rear. Climbing into the back, sitting behind myself, plenty of space. They are manually adjustable sliding seats and manually adjustable on the recline. But it's great to have that option. There is a bench seat configuration, but the captain's chairs are pretty nice. I'm fairly comfortable here and have loads of headroom. Some cars in the center of captain's chairs would have a high rise center console similar to the front seat, but this one is actually low down. You'll find cup holder space and tablet storage, but it's also low and out of the way so that you can easily climb over it when getting into the back. That's pretty cool. You have three zone climate control in this car, so the back is all lumped into one zone. No four or five zone, unfortunately, but I'll still take that. You have your heated seat controls and your basic controls for your automatic rear climate. The USB-C ports continue. They are actually located on the back of the front seats, which is pretty cool and convenient, but I would have liked to see some down in the center console if that's where you're parking your tablet anyways. I am going to now try to get into the back. That's the real test of a three row SUV. So technically, I can sit behind myself, although I'm a little bit cramped. I don't know if I'd be thrilled on a long road trip, but I could handle some in-town driving. The seat design back here is very interesting. This is a pre-production prototype, so perhaps this could change, but it's kind of a sculpted U-shape. If anything, it'll force your kids to be closer together than they would like, and that might result in some fighting. At least if you were me and my brothers when I was this age. The vast amount of cupholders continues. Like I said, 18 total cupholders. Yikes, but I'll take it. And funny enough, Toyota actually mentions in the press release, the cupholders are useful for phone storage. They're useful for other things beyond drinks. If you have ever had a use for 18 drinks in a car, let me know in the comments. That's wild. That's impressive. Fortunately, even the people reduced to the rear row still have USB-C ports. I appreciate that. And some actually decent view out the side windows. I just wish this had the panoramic glass roof being a passenger back here. Once again, that's probably an option I would opt for. You do have a one click button to open this up, and that's how you can have another form of ingress and egress into the back seats. It's always a test to see how long it takes you to find the button because every car puts it in a slightly different place. But we have your storage capacity. Just a hair under 16 cubic feet behind the rear row. That's really not too bad, at least in this class of vehicle. Once again, on par with the EV9 and Ioniq 9 that I keep comparing it to. Some underfloor storage as well. Kind of like the second row, the third row is also manually folding. And you just lay that down and boom, folds flat. This will now give you 45 roughly cubic feet of storage space. That's also very usable. While the rear storage may be pretty comparable to the Kia and Hyundai as I mentioned, the similarities end there. There is unfortunately still no frunk. You have a lot of the mechanics under here for the front motor, inverter, charger, 12 volt battery, your fluids. At least it's easily accessible for anyone who needs to work on their Highlander EV. But no storage to be found up here. Let's talk powertrain. You have a few options here. Front wheel drive or all wheel drive. And big battery or small battery. And this is the first Toyota EV to crest 300 miles of range. If you opt for the new big battery, 95.8 kilowatt hours, you'll get about 320 miles depending on your wheel and tire package. You'll probably need the small wheel and tire package to hit that. Like I said, the charging port is NAX. And that means you can pull right to a Tesla supercharger, plug right in. It does support plug and charge. They quoted 10 to 80% in around 30 minutes. And I find the around part to be a bit vague. I'd love to know the exact timing and the exact peak speeds. Hopefully it's not just 150 kilowatts like the other Toyota BEVs because well, 2016 called and they want their charging speed back. So it seems to be the same motor setup as the Toyota CHR and the BZ. Not the BZ Woodland, notably, which is interesting because that one is a bit smaller than this, but for some reason has more power. I was hoping they'd bring that power train to this, but 338 horsepower, 323 pound feet of torque. Still going to be plenty fine, I'd say for this car. The front wheel drive option will be interesting. Having just around 200 horsepower and torque. That's not amazing, especially for a vehicle of this size. But what about powering your house? Well, later in the year, Toyota will bring more details on that, but at a minimum, it'll have vehicle to load capability. You could possibly power some appliances or even power your campsite out in the woods. So it may not be your whole house, but in an emergency, you can at least save what's in the fridge. As for pricing, well, we don't know. And that's what will be the real make or break, in my opinion. Like I said, the playing field for the family SUV electric hauler thing is really heating up. And the price will, I guess, really determine whether this is a competitive bargain or if you should be looking elsewhere. Either way, stay tuned for more coverage, because we have a lot to learn on the Toyota Highlander, and I can't wait to drive the thing. Behold! Yeah, good test. We'll call that a mic check. And all these dimensions, even wheelbase, make it almost perfectly on par with the Kia EV9 and the Hyundai Ioniq 6... 7... 9.