I was curious as to everyone's idea why the manual warns us not to use the car to tow a trailer, etc... That was the one surprise I had after getting the car. I ordered my car in April '06 a month before the release date in the states and 2 months prior to availability in Canada. I had researched the car extensively too.

I wasn't planning on towing with it, but... Does anyone feel it has to do with the transmission? I don't imagine it's solely due to the CVT. A Murano has a CVT (a traditional one) and can tow. Our tranny is a quasi (hy- hybrid CVT), I'm surmising that Toyota has concern about he planetary gears, etc..

I'm thinking that the NO TOWING warning has nothing to due with the HSD power system itself. unless... there's a concern about the increased load, causing much greater cycling of the charging system (frequency, duration, intensity) or possibly an adverse effect on the regenerative breaking?

I still think it's due to a concern over the planetary gears. any ideas..
tx.

 

I doubt if it's anything fundamental about the HSD design. The Highlander hybrid has the same type of system, and is rated for a modest towing capacity.

 

There's two problems.
1. The manual lists the towing capacity as zero. If you were to tow & had a warranty repair they might point to this & try to deny the claim.

2. I'd heard that towing the car was not recommended because of the stability control.

 

There is the towing, but the manual also discourages putting a bike or wheelchair rack on a hitch. That is where I am confused. I have a trunk rack from my previous car but my preference would be to not have a bike rack sitting on the trunk of my car.

 

We put a hitch on. Have towed 2 Harley's in enclosed trailer without any problems. Now no stealer ect can tell if hitch is used for towing or a bike rack, just make sure to unhook trailer before being towed in lol,(common sense). In fact the new General Motors hybrids can tow, why not toyota?? In fact I have towed all over the USA with my VW turbo deisel with no problems, use a little common sense and you can safely tow. AFAIAC the Camry is a fine little tow vehical and sips the fuel doing it.

 

If I had to make wild guess, I would think towing something behind would put extra load on electric motor, which could lead to overloading and overheating the whole system. As far as I remember hybrid Highlander runs electric motor with 2 gear transmission: 1st gear for low speed, high load and 2nd for cruising at higher speed, lower load, therefore better suited for towing, which TCH doesn't have, so they're not exactly the same system. I would imagine towing something heavy with fully loaded car in the mountains is different than towing something light with only driver and no other load in the car on some flat road, so you could probably get away with towing in the good conditions.

 

Towing requires torque. I'm guessing the electric motor in the Camry does not have that much torque, so Toyota didn't want to take a chance that towing would damage the drivetrain, so they put that warning in the manual for warranty purposes. I'm sure that the car is fully capable of towing very light loads (i.e. bike racks or even small trailers) but that doesn't mean that Toyota wants to actually state that officially.

 

Both TCH and THH have fixed ratio reduction gears.
Prius does not have such reduction gears.
Lexus GS450h and LS600h have two speed reduction gears.

Ken@Japan

 

I think the THH has a third motor driving the rear wheels. The GM 2-mode hybrids have two full planetary-gear sets with clutches that can change their mode of operation. Both these systems can pull higher loads. I suspect that the TCH system has a possibility of electrical and/or mechanical overload, and subsequent failure, if the car itself is fully loaded and on top of that a trailer is also being towed. If the car is lightly loaded, I'd guess that a modest trailer would be okay. But you would likely have problems if warranty repairs are needed on the hybrid transaxle or on the inverter/converter/HV-battery system.

Stan