The 2020 Toyota Highlander—the fourth generation of the three-row, a midsize situation—will debut April 17 at the New York International Auto Show. Today, the company gave us a peek at what it might look like. It seems fine?
The current third-generation Highlander has been around since 2013; it debuted nearly 20 years ago, also at the New York Auto Show. We don’t know what will power it, or what it’ll look like on the inside, but the outside looks slightly sleeker. He’s the current version for context.
The Highlander sits solidly in the middle of Toyota’s SUV lineup, with the RAV4 being the smallest, followed by the slightly bigger 4Runner, the bigger-than-that Highlander, the even-bigger-than-that Sequoia. And then the fuckin’ Land Cruiser, which is bigger than the Highlander but much smaller than the Sequoia, and occupies its own place in the world.
Anyway, Car and Driver says that the new Highlander will likely be built on the company’s Toyota New Global Architecture platform, which you don’t really care about, I’m aware, stop yelling at me. The 3.5-liter V6 probably won’t change, though maybe it will. It will have some kind of automatic.
There will also be hybrid options, like there are on the current version, but if Toyota wanted to do something truly interesting it’d make a fully-electric version. I’m guessing Toyota doesn’t have the guts to, though, mainly because the Highlander is the kind of boring SUV that sells a ton and keeps the lights on.