2023 Toyota Sequoia TRD PRO Review and Off-Road Test #Toyotausa #heavymachines #TRDPROSEQUOIA
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This is the all new 2023 toyota sequoia and this one is the new trd pro trim we're going to check out all the features and then take it for a drive that's coming up right now on Something Unique long an underdog in the large suv segment for 2023 toyota's pulling no punches with this new sequoia today we are going to look at this loaded trd pro and see how it drives how the features come together and what are some of the problems because sorry it's not perfect now let's dive in to all the details under the hood is the new iforce max 3.5 liter v6 engine it has twin turbos direct injection port injection and a hybrid assist system this is a stout setup that also yields good mpgs you're looking at 437 horsepower and 583 pound-feet of torque as of time of filming we don't actually know economy yet but you can expect it to be better than the outgoing model now it is connected to a 10-speed automatic transmission and unfortunately.
The trailer trying to pull into a boat ramp or something like that in the back you can use a button or a foot wave to open it up and we get three rows now the problem here with the three row setup is the fact that you can't take the third row out it's permanently installed and that means you don't get a large cargo capacity say you want to take a family of four on a camping trip i'd love to put all my stuff in here but you lose a lot of space because of that third row now you can use this shelf system to create level surfaces but it does not help with your total capacity from the rear seat and understanding that you can't remove the rear seats we really focused on how the customer can best utilize the rear seat room so we used to have a slide on past generations on the second row we've moved that to the third row we heard from the customers that luggage space was a concern they couldn't move the rear seats they could put them down but if you have somebody in the back seat you can put them down and put suitcases back there so we took that adjuster off that second row put it on the third row so now you can move the third row six inches that allows you to put four large suitcases back there still get 50 percentile males my size people back in that third row seat plus you've got the the two captains chairs or the bench seat up front the other thing it allowed us to do is on the second row is we went from having a full down and slide to get ingress egress or access to that third row seat.
We went to a tumble seat and that gives you a huge opening so it's now really easy to get in and out of that third row seat which we didn't have that luxury before behind the third row you have a maximum of 22.3 cubic feet of cargo capacity fold that third row down and you get 49 cubic feet with all rows folded flat you're looking at 86.9 cubic feet overall but i just cannot get over the fact that there's no way to remove that third row i mean short of a sawzall it's really difficult to remove the seats from the fact that they are heavy you know it takes more than one person to remove them and then we have electrical connections so you have a seat belt reminder which is now coming in as regulation and we also have a power seat in there so not only do they have to remove the seat but they also have to be able to connect the electrical connections in there further our battery pack is underneath it and we're using the seat as supplemental protection for that battery pack so we have a battery pack and a metal case we have the metal case in a metal case and then we put the seat on top of it just to make sure it's kind of like the icing on the cake to make sure nothing can damage that battery pack in there okay getting into the third row now clearly third rows are not really designed for adults but i think it's kind of important just to see because sometimes you know you got friends you're going out you pack everybody in it can happen so what do we got here my knees are really high first off my head it rubs a little but it's not too bad for a third row oh look at that privacy screen in the third row that's trick like that two cup holders i can put my seat i don't know what's going on here that switch isn't doing anything oh it's supposed to go front back but it's broken on this prototype car so there is a way to adjust your seat back um and this car is a prototype so there are some things that aren't quite working but we know what they're supposed to do uh and then there's also a usb c socket on the right side so not too bad oh i even get a vent that's nice now how do i get out there's a button right there oh wait that's my seat back i'm a little confused it's the same thing okay the button's in two places okay but now how do i get this out oh i got a little pull thing there flip it up and away we go finally in the second row and um my my head hits the roof now keep in mind i'm six foot one leg's torso proportionate i do not have a long torso somebody who does you won't be able to sit back here without absolutely reclining your seat as much as possible this is how you'll have to sit so the panoramic summer ruff of course takes up some roof space because it's it's large in the actuation of the motor and the glass coming back you do have a little bit less headroom in the second row seat but we also have a standard a moon roof that's over the driver's seat and that gives you a little bit more headroom than the pan and roof does i do however get a lot of good stuff here i have a usb-a and usb-c socket i also have a 120 volt ac as well as my own air con i also get a privacy screen okay now let's move to the front row where hopefully there's more headroom here we go it's powered up it is a hybrid of course so when you power it up you get all the power of you know the screens all turn on and whatnot but you don't always hear engine noise it only makes a sound if it feels it needs that extra electricity so obviously this looks very much like the tundra that it's based on we have very similar wheel color design we have the glorious 14 inch touchscreen display which was developed out of their plano headquarters in fact this entire vehicle was planned and designed and also it'll be built here in texas because we are in texas of course we are just north of dallas and it is hot today so uh pardon me if i'm a little um moist.
So let's look at the seat positions we got leather with this kind of technical camo design it's cool i have power adjustments the passenger also gets power adjustments which is a bonus and i even get a lumbar control if i want to adjust lumber on my back great and further they are both three stages of heat and ventilated and yes i have the ventilator on right now because like i said it's hot i think the red interior is a bit much but there are other interiors available even in the trd pro here although this red is exclusive to the trd pro now the steering wheel is really nice it's covered in this leather with a little uh center point indicator on the left i can control this digital gauge cluster i've got you know the traditional toyota layout of the little submenu on the left which shows me a number of features about the vehicle including tire pressure current economy it says i'm averaging 16.6 mpgs right now unfortunately at the time of filming we don't know what the official epa rating is yet so that we'll wait and see this is also where you can configure all of the advanced safety stuff now we have lane trace assist pre-collision system blind spot monitoring parking rear cross traffic alerts and it'll even see street signs this is using the toyota safety system 2.5 it's not the latest system but it is a very good comprehensive system at least panorama sunroof lets in a lot of light as i noted in the second row not so great for headroom but if you're more about the people up front this is a nice addition but you don't have to get it the standard trd pro comes with a normal sunroof panorama is an option up here we have qi charging for mobile devices and this does support wireless carplay which is pretty cool yeah so let's dive into this system we don't actually have to touch anything we can simply say hey toyota find me a starbucks results the first is starbucks at us 81 would you like to go to that one yes calculating route to starbucks see it's a very modern system you can use voice commands and of course speed to the highlighted route the display looks great it's very clean easy to use my biggest complaint and i voiced this when i did the tundra review is that there's no like home screen proper it's just navigation and i really would like a compartmentalized view where i can see music uh maybe a car setting or two like some of the off-road stuff as well as an inset of maps i think that would be nice in future editions and this is over-the-air updatable so they can always add that later hey toyota tell me a joke.
I love telling dad jokes sometimes he will laugh i i think that was supposed to be a joke moving on we have obviously entertainment we can do fm am plus sirius xm we can also use of course mobile devices with wireless connectivity and you can mate multiple devices let's go ahead and hook up uh add another device this should be pretty straightforward all i have to do is go to bluetooth settings here click on that pair it okay allow says primary device yes okay yes connected okay good boom there we go and now you can see that you know carplay is big and bold and uh yeah really nice in fact let's see what on x offroad looks like i'm not sponsored by them but i wouldn't mind it call me take a look here you can see just glorious mappage other things that you can do here uh let's see how do i get back to toyota i click on toyota now we're back to the main system i can go into the vehicle we have trip alert and vehicle alert uh but one of my favorite things about this vehicle is if i switch into uh drive and then i go oh you can change camera views right so you have a nice surround view camera view as well as a front view but if i go into for low let's go into neutral switch that transfer case i now go into a dedicated off-road mode that shows me my front wheel tracks i can also change the view to see my wheels and this will paint the picture underneath it so i can see where my wheels are in context to other things in the environment.
I can also dedicate to rear view or side and rear as necessary very cool setup looking forward to using that off-road in fact i'm going to turn it on to auto so it automatically engages in certain modes now speaking of off-road we do have even more features because now finally you can get the sequoia with all the great off-road goodies that they've offered the trd pro and trd off-road trims in the past this set of features are actually available not just in the trd pro but also in the trd off-road which is now a package available for sr5 unlimited so you don't have to spend 76,900 for a trd pro you can spend a little less because these start at about 58,000 and then you can add some packages on you can probably get out the door for mid 60s or lower still a lot of money i'm not just glossing that by that is a lot of money but if you want it this is what you got so talking about this off-road stuff yes we do have a part-time four-wheel drive system and i think that's another miss in this vehicle the previous generation sequoia actually offered a center diff where full-time four-wheel drive this one does not you can buy this in no trim of any shape or form that has a full-time four-wheel drive you only get it either in two-wheel drive or part-time four-wheel drive that means that around town you're gonna be rolling in rear wheel drive if you need to have some additional grip you can go into four high but you don't want to drive that around town because it's going to bind the transfer case it's going to bind the powertrain as you're turning because it's locking power 50 50 front back you don't always want that when you're driving around town so if you do encounter mixed conditions or you you know want the security of four-wheel drive all the time this isn't the vehicle for you you instead would have to go to like a lexus lx 600 which is based on the same platform and offers that feature now we do have drive modes of course but the ones i'm mostly interested in are the mts the multi-terrain select mts improvement for the sequoia is basically using not only just the braking systems to change you know the slip control for the different modes but now we also incorporate the powertrain into that both systems are working at the same time to be able to have a better experience so for example in mud uh in mud mode uh.
We're controlling the slip um but we're also we change the throttle to be very responsive so and when you're driving in mud you want to clear the mud out of the treads as quick as you can so if you get in the gas pedal a little bit it spins the tire quicker and throws the mud out and then if your wheels really start slipping the traction control and the brakes can start to to control it a little bit so that cooperation really helped and same similar for for sand or snow we did different things with the powertrain to make it so you don't slip so quickly you want to be nice and controlled and but still manage the different wheel slips so lots of different applications there and the hybrid system as well similar to tow mode we keep the engine on which allows it for great response so when you're crowing doing rock crawl for example that initial instantaneous electric motor torque is really controllable for getting over that when your wheel is stuck up against a rock and you're trying to just kind of gently get over it the iforce max system really helps to get you over that rock situation unlike the previous version of mts this is a new version where you can actually use the features in four high you don't necessarily need to be in four low that's a new thing they work at higher speeds which is awesome and further we also have crawl control which is like an autopilot that combines mts functionality in kind of a cruise control for off-road.
That also works both uphill and downhill so it's a hill descent system as well and finally on the sequoia you can get a rear locking differential mts and rear locker combined really allow the driver the confidence to be able to get out of any situation they want right so a rear locker really helps when you have one one wheel that's you know really up in the air you have really big articulation and you want just all the torque to just go through the system and not sit there and spin the wheel that's up in the air so um if you have mts and rear locker you're pretty much invincible you can go uh any way you can
In the sequoia so whereas mts shifts power left and right by preventing wheels from spinning a rear locker will actually connect the two wheels kind of like the transfer case does front to back it'll bind the two wheels in the back side to side so that they both turn at the same rate regardless of traction that is very useful in very tricky conditions plus there's a lot of towing features uh as equipped this one will tow nine thousand twenty pounds uh if you get a rear wheel drive one of the other trims you can get as high as nine thousand five hundred and twenty pounds of towing if you need that extra 500 bump okay so we've looked at all the features i think it's finally time to take it for a drive let's get a good place to floor it you know for north of 400 horsepower it sounds good but it just doesn't have a lot of kick on the bottom end i think they've really tuned this so that you don't get your maximum torque in the lowest gears from zero because they really need to have a little bit of a roll in so you don't end up you know getting too crazy in this thing but once we're rolling here the sound is great and yeah some of that is fake noise but it does have a specially tuned trd exhaust you get that with the trd models.
I'm sure toyota will be happy to sell other trims the same exhaust system though oh that does sound good so in terms of wind noise there's a little bit of buffeting on these big side mirrors i can definitely hear that if you move up to the capstone trim which is the tippity top trim that one does have acoustic glass both on the front and on the sides this is of course the same exact power train that you would find in a new tundra so it's already you know been in production for a little bit now not too long but you know they're hitting the street and you know they're they're pretty nice you know you get a lot of torque they're more economical than the outgoing v8s and then of course you also have the the nicety of a hybrid powertrain electric let's see into your cabin don't love the big toyota on the dashboard i do love this huge 14-inch display the view lines are pretty good although the hood does take up a whole sizeable chunk of my visible area especially those trd pro little vents fake vents that they put on the hood they definitely are very bold gauge cluster i do like it you don't really get to configure it at all it what you see is what you get but it's nicely configured with a easy to read typeface you have that big tack and it also tells you what's going on in the other systems and we do have different drive modes here which will affect that we have normal eco and sport sport obviously tightens up the steering rack a little bit and it also creates peak output of the engine all the time normal day-to-day stuff and then of course eco will use more of that electric assist to help improve economy it'll also uh yeah muddies up that throttle uh pedal as well yeah i gotta really dig in with the throttle there to get in the action let's try 0-60 i'm lined up i'm in sport mode i'm just going to mash the throttle and go three two one go oh and 60. in terms of safety of course this is fully loaded with toyota safety sense 2.5 with the collision mitigation blind spot warnings rear cross traffic alerts and it also has lane detection lane centering and adaptive cruise control let's try that out i'm going to go ahead and set my radar cruise control set my speed make sure we have lane centering on we do it says it's active and now it will keep me centered now.
This isn't a fully autonomous system of course it's just to ease the burden of very long journeys so you don't have to be making micro adjustments all along the way it's especially good you know if you're doing interstate travel because all that little adjustment can get a little tedious it's telling me to put my hands back on the wheel no surprise there but that seems to work let's see if we can try it on a little bit of a corner to see how much of a corner it can hang on to its speed so we'll watch it turn yeah it's doing a pretty good job and boom yeah keeping me centered i'm not bumping off lanes or anything proper lane tracing system now one thing that all americans are thinking right now is is this a replacement for the land cruiser in the u.s and yeah it is however it's kind of i mean i hate to say it but it's kind of a dumb land cruiser because it doesn't have the option for a center differential it only has the transfer case and part-time four-wheel drive which if you're going through varied conditions or you just want to be able to get in and drive and always have the confidence of four-wheel drive all the time with a transfer case system you can't really do that because when you turn it's going to bind the transmission you cannot drive this every day on pavement in a four-wheel drive mode you have to be in two-wheel drive four-wheel drive is only for when you're on a slippery surface and that's not all the time sometimes it's varied conditions and in that case.
The land cruiser is superior on the flip side the land cruiser in the u.s is being sold as the lexus lx600 and the lx600 is really great off-road but it doesn't have the big spacious cabin that you have here in the sequoia so i like some things about the lx600 but i like some things about this i like the size i like the looks i like all of this except not in red but no cool center diff and the funny thing is that the prior sequoia had the fancy center diff it did so they've actually made the four-wheel drive system even though it's more capable because of it now has mts and all the advanced off-road stuff it's not as capable day to day and i think a lot of people who drive these big suvs they don't really care about all the off-road stuff they want to be able to get in a car and drive anywhere with the confidence of four-wheel drive this vehicle does not provide that yet the competition uh that you know the chevy tahoe for example does offer that and so i think that's going to really limit the audience for this particular vehicle and now we have one final test it's a little off-road course that they put together now there was a proper off-road course which we filmed some other vehicles on yesterday unfortunately torrential rain overnight has destroyed the course is just mud and we're not running mud terrains so it would just cake up and be useless so for this first feature what they've done is they've compacted some moguls and they're pretty big so we should get wheel lift now granted you don't want wheel lift in the real world but this will show you kind of what the limits of the new sequoia are for this i'm going to go into four high and let's do four low so i have all the features available put it into neutral wait for that transfer case to shift boom now we're in for low i have the off-road system turned on i'm going to go into drive and away we go.
So i'm going to do this twice the first time i'm just going to use mts so we can see how power shifts around and i'm going to use let's do rock which is the most extreme that way we're not going to damage the course very much so what this will do is it'll use individual wheel braking to stop a wheel from spinning where torque would bleed out and instead that was then pushed back into the system now in some ways this is a little bit better than a rear locker however in other ways it's not and you can see the difference as i do this so i'm going over power shifting around mts is doing its great job of shifting that power oh scraping a little bit and then down we go now let's see what that looks like with the locked rear differential instead because i think you'll see quite a difference in how that vehicle then climbs over the hill so i'm going to turn off mts this time and i'm going to engage the rear locker so what the rear locker will now do is it will make sure that power is locked side to side so we don't have to wait for wheel spin before it shifts that power i'm gonna go ahead and get this all set up great now as i move forward those two rear wheels move together in tandem which pushes me forward so you can see that there's definitely an advantage to having a rear locker but it doesn't work in all situations as the ideal solution but it does in many so the next feature we're going to show is crawl control it's kind of like an off-road cruise control that integrates the mts functionality so let's go ahead and turn off that rear locker i'm going to turn on crawl and we're just going to start with the lowest speed possible i'm just going to let the system do the driving essentially i mean i still have to steer.
But i'm going to aim using the Camera in the front here there we go and now i'm going to line up for that wheel trench just use the camera right here and let the system do the magic and i can of course put the brake on at any time that i need to you can see i can just actually aim right there for that hole with the wheel and in fact we can also see the graphic of what's under the wheel itself too so now it's going to try to sort it out this is where it really uses that brake traction system to move me forward and get me through it now that's also a really good system for if you're in deep sand it can actually dig a vehicle out of sand i've used that in the past and one thing about this new hybrid system is that the mts system is very very quiet uh likewise crawl control in the past it has been very loud uh almost like you know you're feeling like you're breaking something but now it's very sophisticated yet highly highly capable okay and then i can just dial up the speed and we'll just roll out or put the throttle on if i need more gas so that's my first look at the 2023 toyota sequoia trd pro i do like it but i might have trouble recommending it to a broad audience i think it really targets a very specific buyer and given the cost of this thing at north of 70 grand that's really gonna limit the audience thanks for Reading My Blogs be sure to like and Follow us on our Blogspot we'll see you again right here. #TOYOTAUSA #HEAVYMACHINE #TRDPROSEQUOIA
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