The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question

The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question

Here’s a number to keep in mind when considering the 2022 Toyota Tundra: Five. That’s the number of heat exchangers sitting in the nose of the new hybrid version of this beastly pickup. That’s one radiator for the engine, two intercoolers (one for each turbocharger), one to keep the hybrid system chilled, and one for the air conditioning system. The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question

The first Toyota truck I ever drove, a 1979 pickup, had exactly one radiator. With a single clutch fan. The new Tundra has two electric fans tasked with pushing air through those layers of cooling fins.

The new Tundra Hybrid 4x4 in TRD Pro trim, may well be the most technologically dense vehicle that Toyota has ever sold in the United States. The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question

More complex than even the amazing Lexus LF-A supercar or any of the forklifts. More complex, it seems likely, than any other pickup. And that includes the Rivian R1T or any other all-electric truck. This thing is packing. The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question

This new third-generation Tundra carries over practically nothing from either the first-generation (2000-2006) or second-generation (2007-2021) trucks except the name. Even the lug nuts have been revised, though there are still six on every wheel. Banished to the great CoPart yard in the sky are the renowned V8 engines that have been part of the Tundra mix since the beginning.

These are the V8 engines – 4.6-, 4.7- and 5.7-liters in displacement – that have racked up literally a million miles in some single trucks. Engines that slurped fuel but barely feel at all diminished in power or smoothness when there’s 200,000 miles on their clocks. V8s that have set a brilliant standard for truck powerplants. Tough acts to follow.

In the new Tundra, the only internal combustion engine offered is a 3.5-liter, twin-turbocharged, all-aluminum, variable timed, 24-valve V6 that is closely related to the one used in the Lexus LS 500 luxury sedan. While the Lexus engine is assembled in Japan, the Tundra’s version will come out of Toyota’s engine plant in Huntsville, Alabama.

It’s the same facility that built the 5.7-liter 3UR-FE used in second-generation Tundras and Sequoias, the 200-series Land Cruiser and the Lexus LX 570. The major difference between the Lexus and the truck version of the new twin-turbo V6 is slightly smaller turbos for better low-end responsiveness and the tuning to match them.

So The 2022 Toyota Tundra Is a Complex Answer to a Simple Question