So I traded in my 2024 Prime with 17K Why because I picked up a 2026 Plug In I absolutely love these cars. I was getting 98km’s on a full charge of pure electric power that’s a good jump from the 72km’s it’s rated for. A couple of things that have changed and I don’t know if it’s new for 2026 or if it happened on the 2025 The Energy Flow graphics on the head unit changed and don’t look so cartoonish The EV/HV/Hold button is only EV/HV button now (meaning you used to be able to charge the EV battery) when you pushed and held the button would just use the ICE When you plug the cord into the car you used to hear the locking mechanism right away now “if the doors are already locked you’ll hear it” if they are open you will not but it still locks in the charger if you have it set on the setting to do so
If I'm still driving my car in 10 years, I'll be fascinated to know what kind of battery upgrades will be available.
Ha, the car is being downgraded every year ever since Gen 4. It sucks that they have even got rid of the charge mode now.
Care to elaborate on this and convince me it's not user error/misunderstanding? It seems someone is spreading this uncritically, but I've seen no evidence of a change in any source (other than this quoted sentence). There are newly updated specs and manuals including the 0W8 oil change (which you didn't mention but probably applies to you), but they still describe charge mode.
Okay, it appears that they may have removed charge mode only for American models. There are new manuals from 2025/07 for all regions, all of which newly specify 0W-8 oil. The US/Canada version is the only one that has had the charge mode sections removed. (I'd previously failed to find this on the US site, but it finally occurred to me to get it from Canada). Wonder what prompted that?
Toyota upgraded Gen 4 NiMH batteries to Li-ion batteries mid-generation for newer model years. If you wanted to do it yourself, you would probably have to upgrade at least the hybrid computer as well.
