All I know is a Tundra Hybrid is coming to the Texas plant with the 4.7, a sh*t load of batteries in it, rated at 8500 lbs. towing and 40 mpg.
Also small displacement Tundra diesel is coming with 4.5 litre in a V8.
Right. And is this information from the same source that told you that a production Tundra with a Hino inline-six diesel was going to absolutely revolutionize the truck market?
They do have most of the work done for the hybrid in a pickup truck. At one point they were mulling putting the A-BAT concept into production. Barring that, maybe they'll just take the guts out of it and put it into the Tundra??
We've already done new/reworked headlight lenses for the Tundra. Not sure if it was just for a refresh look, or if the front end was altered to accomodate a new powerplant. All I know is the Tundra will have a tweaked front end look...
I'm familiar with the A-Bat. It's significantly smaller than a Tacoma; more the scale of a Chevy Colorado or the older Toyota compact pickups. It's also a unibody design with a hybrid four-cylinder powerplant. Probably meant to be for a RAV4 what a Ridgeline is to a Pilot. Actually, the Subaru Baja is probably a better analogy.
If you could take the guts from a RAV4 Hybrid Pickup, attach it to a 4.7L V8 inside a half-ton chassis, and manage 40 mpg, you're using some secret alien technology.
The other possibility is that this alleged 40mpg Tundra is a plug-in hybrid, in which case (with enough batteries) it could get as high a MPG rating as you want, because gasoline is not the only source of its locomotion. You have to take mpg ratings for plug-in hybrids with a grain of salt (and that's regardless of manufacturer). Sure, it went 80 miles and only used two gallons of gasoline, but how many kWh did it use from the wall socket during that 80-mile trip? You can't ignore half of the equation and get a realistic representation of its energy efficiency.
It's interesting that Toyota is already redesigning the headlights on the Tundra, but to me that doesn't suggest a dramatic new drivetrain, especially with Artic's improbable numbers. I mean, Ford tweaked the aesthetics of the new Focus after just one year of production, and the tweaked version didn't have rocket boosters or laser guns. It just looked a little better, nothing more.
