So that makes three forum members who have noticed the trunk problem. But I wonder how many more TCH owners have experienced it and blamed themselves.

Perhaps the correct conditions and circumstances have to align for the problem to occur, and for the owner to realize that a malfunction is at fault. If it happens just once over several months, it's harder to recognize the problem. If my experience had been limited to one incident, I would have never raised the issue with the dealer.

But if the problem occurred even for just a few owners, isn't the potential there for it to happen to anyone? I see this as a very real security issue (not to mention the inconvenience of having rain soaking the trunk, as I experienced after the first night of ownership). The only defense is to manually lock the trunk, reducing the value of the SmartKey. My wife, who drives the car to work, is pretty unhappy about the prospect of regularly detaching the tiny key from the fob to lock and unlock the trunk, and she sure doesn't want to do it long term. I see this as a flaw in the SmartKey system. It would be nice to have a regular-sized, easy accessible key as a backup or alternative to the system.

In our previous car, an Accord, a lock by the driver's door could secure the trunk against entry from inside the car. So the key had to be used to unlock the trunk, but never to lock it as with the TCH. I was surprised Toyota didn't use some version of this convenient arrangement, but suspected it was because of incompatibility with SmartKey.

Fortunately, the trunk problem is the only issue I have with this impressive car after a few weeks of ownership. But it's not a minor one, considering the security and inconvenience involved.