Reflections after completing x-country RT in my 2019 Tacoma TRD Sport!

On October 4 2019, I left the San Francisco Bay area for the outer banks of NC, driving my new 2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport. I have to say that there is no better way to get to know your truck, than to take a cross country trip like that! Anyway, here are some observations, some good and some bad or disappointing.

1: Quite comfortable to drive on such a long trip. Looked good in parking lots of the various travel centers along the interstate!

2: gas mileage wasn't as good as I had hoped. BUT, the SPEED made a WORLD of difference! When cruising at 75mph [some states have 75 speed limit], the gas mileage went down dramatically to 20-21 average. When cruising at 60-65mph, the gas mileage went UP dramatically, averaging 25-26, which to me, considering it is a 6cylinder 4-door truck, I thought that was pretty good!

3: Transmission pretty much SUCKED! Toyota obviously did not do any real life testing before they decided to put this transmission in their trucks. It DOWNSHIFTS for almost no reason, even though I have it NOT in ECT Power mode, but in normal mode. Example; cruise control set at 65mph. You come upon a vehicle in front of you, going about 60, but cannot ease around to pass because of traffic in left lane. When that clears, you ease out, and hit the "resume" on your cruise control switch. You are going 60mph and the cruise was set at 65. It SHOULD just ease on up back to the 65 cruise setting, but what does it do? It DOWNSHIFTS two gears, as though someone STOMPED on the gas pedal, and immediately the RPMs ZOOM from a really cool 1900rpms to over 3500rpms, just to get it the little 5mph back up to the 65mph cruise control setting! There is NO need for this, but that is how it works. Then, the opposite happens when going downhill and the cruise is set. That cruise is really good because it WANTS to maintain whatever cruise control speed you set it at. So if you are going downhill, it will DOWNSHIFT in order to use the transmission to help keep the speed down to the set amount, so once again, all of a sudden, the rpms ZOOM up to over 3500rpms while the transmission has downshifted in order to help maintain the cruise control setting. Again, no need for this at all!

4: PCS system SUCKED all the way from the west coast to the east coast, then worked completely FINE! Yes, about an hour after getting on the interstate heading east, the PCS OFF light came on the dash, as well as a warning saying "PCS System Unavailable, please clean sensor". So when I stopped at my first gas station about 3 hours later, I cleaned the sensor. It worked for about 15 minutes after getting back on the interstate, until the next time I stopped to get gas, when I repeated the procedure. Again, same result, with the PCS light coming on. This happened all the way across the country until I got to the outer banks of NC. So when I would probably need the PCS system the most, on a cross country trip, it did not work at all, about 80% of the trip going east. Then, all of a sudden while on the outer banks of NC, the light quit coming on, and all the way BACK to the west coast, the PCS system worked perfectly fine! I even had more bug spatters coming back, and still, it worked fine! So it is either a completely flaky system, or it did in fact, "Learn" and compensate for the future. Go figure on that one...

5: Since I never hook up my phone to bluetooth when driving my short distances around town, I did not know about the Entune systems feature of it READING TEXTS ALOUD while driving! I had never even heard of such a feature! I had told the wife that I would have my phone on while driving since I would be driving for hours at a time, and the first day out, she sent me a text while I was driving. I heard a notification sound, looked at the entune screen, and it read "Incoming Text Message from Crazy Woman" ["Crazy Woman" is how I have her save in my contacts!]. It then gave me the option to either "read' or "ignore". I tapped on "read", and it came up with a message "Sorry, text message cannot be read while vehicle is in motion", and it then proceeded to verbally read aloud the text message for me! Totally cool! So that was even better than me having to look at the readout to read the message. I had no idea that feature was there, so that was a good revelation!

6: Built-in Navigation system needs updating with additional features. First of all, I tried to enter destinations of two streets, and it would not let me as they supposedly didn't exist! These were NOT new streets at all. One was a street right outside of Richmond VA airport, with several hotels on it. It has been there for years and yet, the Navigation system did not know about it. Also, when I would put in a destination around there, it took me to 2 toll roads, which by the time I realized it, it was too late. My Garmin has a setting where I can choose to "Avoid toll roads", which is actually a default setting. The Entune system does not even offer such an option. So that sucks. I had brought my Garmin along, and ended up using it about half the time. Not happy with Entune Navigation system!

7: Good thing was that most of the time when cruising along at 75mph, the rpms were around 1900 rpms, which is insanely great. My 2009 Sienna at the same speed, is running almost 3000rpms, as was my old 1996 tacoma, so this is a major savings in engine use, as it is not turning over as many rpms.

Anyway, these were the biggest observations while I drove the round trip which was 6700 miles. I think that was a pretty darn good test of my new truck! I just wanted to share this with they good people here on Tacomaworld. thanks guys, for the help in the past with my previous 1996 Tacoma Xtended cab!

 

Transmission does what it's supposed to do. Two overdrive gears which contribute to what you point out in number 7 means it has no passing power. Engine doesn't make much power in low RPM so it needs to downshift to get up to speed via cruise control. Downshifts down hill to engine brake which is another thing that keeps your cruise control set on the # you want... I would be blaming cruise control programming over the transmission.

I haven't got my text messages to read while driving, did you have to do anything special to get that working?

 

Good write-up OP!

Disagree on the transmission complaints though. I find that it works pretty well, considering its shifting logic is designed around maximize fuel economy. You can also very easily bypass this logic by pushing ECT or going into sport mode.

As for Entune, I think it's a pretty decent system overall, but it will never touch Google Maps' for overall mapping accuracy, and ability to factor real time traffic into navigation.

 

I agree that the transmission sucks. After driving my Tacoma for year and a half and 23,000 miles, I gave up on "Drive". When I start my truck, I hit the "ECT" button and then drive in "S4" or "S5"...maybe "S6" with a tailwind headed down hill. That's just the way it is. The folks at my dealership tend to agree with me.

 

No. If you have set up your phone via bluetooth to work in the truck, it just works. I had seen nothing at all about this feature, nor was I told about it. This is my first "high tech" vehicle, and I didn't even know such a feature existed! To try it yourself, get someone to send you a test text message WHILE you are DRIVING the truck, and make sure your phone is connected via bluetooth. It is pretty dang cool, I must say!

 

Thanks for the compliment! As for ECT, I didn't want to use that, because I was wanting maximum gas mileage and what it was doing, was pretty much mimicking someone STOMPING on the gas pedal! I cannot even imagine what it would have done in ECT mode!