Green Highlander blazes the hybrid trail

Dan Carney • E-mail

In her best-selling book “Longitude” Dava Sobel outlines how two different approaches were employed to address an 18th century transportation problem — the need for ships at sea to be able to determine their location.

Leading solutions included a complex, time-consuming method that involved (no kidding) observing the positions of the moons of Jupiter. A simpler method employed clocks to compare local time with that in the ship’s home port. The problem was while this method was easier, the construction of clocks that would run accurately at sea made the option much more daunting.

Today, the automotive industry faces a similar problem of improving the efficiency of our cars, and again we see two primary solutions vying to address our problem — diesel engines and hybrid gas-electric drivetrains.

The 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid falls into the latter camp. It pursues the immediately useful — if costly and complex — solution of using electric motors and batteries to supplement a gasoline-powered, V-6 powerplant to save on fuel. Sea clocks — chronometers — were eventually the preferred solution for maritime navigation, but neither hybrids nor diesels are likely to beat the other in the automotive marketplace of the future. Instead, they will coexist and eventually even combine forces.

For those customers who need a roomy, seven-seat family vehicle that uses as little gas as possible, the Highlander Hybrid is the sole available option. But as good as it is, thrifty-minded drivers may be disappointed to discover that they can only expect to see 23 or 24 mpg in real-world, around-town driving (the EPA ratings are 27 mpg city and 25 mpg highway).

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Sierra Clubbers who thought they were buying moral superiority with their hybrid may also be shocked to discover that the Highlander is no Prius. (Perhaps Toyota will soon offer a four-cylinder hybrid in the seven-seat RAV4 as a thriftier option.)

While the Highlander’s efficiency is only OK in absolute terms, it’s pretty good for a three-row, all-wheel-drive vehicle that hauls around a family of five in comfort during cold winter weather. By way of comparison, a GMC Acadia I tested last winter managed only half the Highlander’s around-town fuel economy in the same driving conditions.

In its recent models Toyota has raised the condition of “Toyota-ness” to a new high.

Toyota For those who need a roomy, fuel-sipping seven-seat family vehicle the Highlander Hybrid SUV is the sole available option.

The bland, blocky exterior styling of the Highlander suits the hard antiseptic interior plastics and numb, uncommunicative electric power steering to yield what could be the perfectly soulless transportation appliance, ready for sale at your nearest big box discount store and designed to dissolve into invisibility in your suburban neighborhood.

Still, credit is due for Toyota’s ability to give the hard plastic cabin materials a matte finish, suggesting maybe the Highlander is ready for Target’s shelves rather than Wal-Mart’s, although that sea of Rubbermaid looks ready for a disinfecting blast of Lysol next time the plague is going around the kiddies’ school.

Drivers shopping for fuel-saving family haulers probably have little expectation of driving excitement, and the hybrid version of the Highlander manages to dash even those modest hopes.

Its steering wheel feels like it might be connected to the Grand Tourismo game the kids are playing on their Playstation rather than to actual, functional front wheels.

But the steering is not the Highlander’s worst attribute. That (dis)honor goes to the brakes, which possess the ability to make every driver exhibit the finesse of a drunken driver’s ed student. Yes, you too can inadvertently race up behind a stopped car and have to slam on the brakes at the last second to avoid a collision. Snapping passengers’ heads forward in commuting traffic is child’s play, as once again you misjudge the amount of pedal pressure needed.

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