2022 Toyota Tundra Hybrid vs Turbo MPG Challenge - Is the Hybrid Really Worth It?

Hey folks, and welcome to the Truck King YouTube channel. As prices at gas stations keep breaking records, automakers are looking for ways to help us save fuel, including Toyota. So for 2022, they released the new Tundra, also with a hybrid powertrain, the I-Force Max. Now Toyota says that this powertrain isn't all about fuel efficiency, it's more about power, and I wanna put that claim to the test. So in this video, we're gonna do the identical fuel economy loop that I did with the non-hybrid Tundra to find out what the absolute best fuel economy is that I can get out of this truck. Let's hit the road. Okay folks, and here we are. This video begins at the gas station. So this is actually the exact same gas station we used last time. If you didn't catch that video, it's here on the channel. I took a Tundra TRD Sport, and I ran 100 kilometers, and I tried to get the best fuel economy possible, and that's the same thing I'm doing today. This is not about sort of real world, this is about me being very gentle with the throttle, watching my speeds to see what the best number is I can get out of this hybrid. So let's go fill it up, and we'll get started. Now to make sure we fill consistently, I go until the handle clicks, and then I wait 30 seconds for the fuel to settle, and then we glow till the next click, and I'll do that when I fill it up at the end, once again, to make sure we are consistent. All right, we're just getting ready to take off, so I will go ahead, and we'll reset trip A, down there in the corner, come over here to our fuel economy, which was running at 12 liters per hundred, zero it out, and we will hit the road. Here we go. So the other thing I've done, is I've put the truck down into eco mode, so it will run at its most economical, because that is the point of today. Now once again, just in case you're saying, well, why aren't you doing real world? We have already done that. We took a pair of Toyota Tundras, we drove them all the way from Vancouver up to Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean, and we had one hybrid, one non-hybrid, and we tracked our fuel economy the entire way. Once again, that video's here on the channel. If you want what I would consider to be real world, or even worst case scenario fuel economy, go watch those videos, because we were driving in the mountains, we were driving in the cold, we also had a long ways to go, so we were driving quickly, we were not going slow. And on that trip, the overall number that we kind of landed on, and of course every leg was different based on the conditions, but the overall average we landed on was around 13 liters per hundred, well 12 or 13 liters per hundred, when this truck is running empty. And we also found on our trip, that between the hybrid and the non-hybrid, there really wasn't a big difference. Now Toyota did say that. When they released this hybrid, they were straight up about saying, this is not about being super economical, it is about giving you all of that hybrid power, and that's one thing I can tell you is absolutely here. Now I'm not gonna floor it now, because I don't want to ruin my fuel economy, but with 583 pound feet of torque, and the electric motor, which really gets you off the line, and this truck has just loads of power. As we roll along here, there's something I've noticed, and that is the engine in this hybrid loves to shut off, that is the gas engine. Now I figured it would probably be in the city where you'd see the biggest benefit, but actually out here on the country roads, it's helping me as well. Right now I have the cruise control set at 80 kilometers per hour, and when the ground is dead flat, or there's a bit of a downhill, the engine will shut off. The other thing is once you bring the speeds down, for instance, I've been going through small towns where the speed limit drops from 80 down to 40. When I'm doing 40 kilometers per hour on dead flat ground through a town, the engine is off, and I'm running in all electric. So when you are, again, not pushing the truck, and you're not running in the mountains with big grades, the engine is constantly shutting off, and every time that happens, I just watch the liters per hundred fall, fall, fall, which is excellent. So by the end of this thing, I do believe I'm gonna get a pretty impressive number out of this hybrid, definitely better than the gas. And I have to say, it's just because that gas engine shuts off as often as it can, and really takes advantage of that battery pack. Now, if you don't go back and watch the other video, and here's a spoiler alert, I manage 9.8 liters per hundred in the non-hybrid TRD Sport. So that's the number I'm really looking to beat here with the hybrid truck, and we'll see if I can do it. There's a little eco gauge here in the Tundra, and actually shows up in my head-up display. It's one more thing, just reminding you, hey, don't accelerate too hard. If you do, the gauge goes all the way full. If you accelerate gently, it stays right down at the bottom, which is where you want it to be. And most brands have these now, just a visual reminder of how much fuel you're actually burning. And then outside of that, I think the other big takeaways on the new generation Tundra is that it really is a quiet, comfortable cruising truck. You know, we've driven these trucks for many thousands of kilometers, and even just putting on another hundred today, getting rid of the leaf springs in the back, going with the coilovers, the five-link rear suspension. It made a big difference from last-gen Tundra to this-gen Tundra. And as far as I can tell, it's only a positive difference. So that's about it for driving impressions. Now let's get back to the gas station so I can tell you how this hybrid did. And I'm pulling back into the station right now, and I'm even gonna pull around and try to use the exact same pump that I did before, once again, to keep this as solid as possible. Oh, a car just pulled in. I'll use the pump across from it. Close enough. At least it's the same gas station. So here we go. I'll show you right as we pull in. We just averaged 9.5 liters per hundred over 100.3 kilometers. So big takeaways on that. 9.5, great number for a half-ton pickup truck, and slightly better than the regular gas engine, 0.3 liters per hundred, to be exact. And now I'm gonna jump out, fill the truck up, and then we'll do the math ourselves. And we're back in now, folks, and I can show you that we just put 9.41 liters into this truck. And look, when you do 100 kilometers, the math is easy. We did 100.3, so we basically did 9.4 liters per 100K, according to the math. So just like in the other Tundra, when we did the math ourselves, it was actually slightly more efficient. But I think the big takeaway can be that if you go for the hybrid over the gas, you're gonna get a ton more power and a little bit more fuel efficiency. And folks, that does it for this video. So you can definitely see, first of all, that changing your driving style, slowing down and accelerating nice and smoothly, running the vehicle in eco mode, doing these things can have a significant impact on your fuel economy. And the big takeaway on the Tundra, once again, has to be that if you're springing for this hybrid, expect to get loads more power and a little bit better fuel efficiency out of it. And again, it's good to know that if you baby it, you can get some pretty nice numbers. So that is it for this video. Now, please go below. Let me know what you think of this Tundra and the hybrid fuel efficiency. As always, while you're down there, don't forget to hit like, hit subscribe, hit join to become a member, and then come right back here to Truck King to see what we're testing next because you never know what it might be. See ya.