2025 Toyota Grand Highlander Review

The 2025 Grand Highlander Hybrid offers impressive fuel economy, and you'll gobble up the miles in comfort.

Jim Resnick | 

Aug 11, 2025 | 7 min read

Jim Resnick

For 2025, Toyota adds new LE and Nightshade trim levels to the Grand Highlander Hybrid lineup. The LE is the price leader, while the Nightshade adds blacked-out exterior accents and wheels to the Limited trim level.

The 2025 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid offers a surprising amount of space for people and cargo, even more than the larger Toyota Sequoia. It also provides comfort on long drives, remarkable fuel efficiency considering its size, and a full slate of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). However, the standard hybrid drivetrain produces disappointing power compared with the available turbocharged Hybrid Max upgrade.

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About the 2025 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid Nightshade Review Vehicle

The 2025 Grand Highlander Hybrid is available in LE, XLE, Limited, Nightshade, Max Limited, and Max Platinum trim levels. Pricing ranges from the mid-$40,000s to the low $60,000s, including the destination charge for shipping the SUV to a dealership from the Princeton, Indiana, assembly plant.

For this Grand Highlander Hybrid review, I test-drove the Nightshade in Arizona and Colorado. Optional equipment highlights included a panoramic roof and a surround-view camera. Those upgrades (and a few more) brought the manufacturer's suggested retail price to $56,818, including the $1,450 destination charge. Toyota provided the vehicle for this Grand Highlander Hybrid review.

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The Grand Highlander Rocks a Reserved and Roomy Design

As much as you can make any two-box shape on wheels attractive, Toyota achieves good looks with the Grand Highlander. The front end is less fish-mouthed than some Toyota SUVs, the sides lack superfluous strakes and odd shapes, and the rear end is clean. With large vehicles, simpler is generally better, and while some people might favor the Nightshade's black wheels, I feel that trend is over.

Inside, the clean and simple design theme continues, with contrast stitching and pleasing textures that lend the cabin an upscale flavor. All plastics feel high grade, and the controls and markings are well thought out. I like the hard buttons for selecting the odometer/trip meter and adjusting the instrument lighting, because fiddling around with digital menus to darken or brighten a maladjusted gauge cluster is an annoyance. No such demerit here.

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Long drives in the Grand Highlander Hybrid are pleasant for several reasons. There is plenty of room, but the seats in all three rows are exceptionally comfortable. The fronts benefit from adjustable lumbar bladders that you can change every hundred miles to readjust your sitz bones. There's also an expansive view out from every seat because each roof pillar is quite slim.

Storage space is road-trip ready, too. Up front, a deep center console with a removable shelf and ample storage space divides the driver and passenger. Unfortunately, the bin's bare plastic floor and walls allow things to rattle around. Meanwhile, the door pockets swallow water bottles and more. Additionally, an extra-large space that can accommodate an oversized water bottle complements the two standard cupholders.

There's a maximum of 97.5 cubic-feet of cargo space in the midsize Grand Highlander, versus 86.9 cu-ft in the full-size Sequoia. With the second-row seats in use, the Grand Highlander offers 57.9 cu-ft versus 49 in the Sequoia.

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The Grand Highlander Hybrid Plays With a Full House of Tech

Inside every Grand Highlander Hybrid, you're greeted by a 12.3-inch touchscreen running a Toyota Audio Multimedia infotainment system. It is stocked with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, a navigation system, SiriusXM satellite radio, connected services including access to a Wi-Fi hot spot, and more.

Pairing my iPhone proved easy, both via wired and wireless connections. The large screen features legible tiles, and a traditional volume knob allows for adjustment regardless of which menu is displayed. Although the track/station seek buttons are located on the steering wheel, I believe the screen should also feature a knob for seeking tracks and radio stations.

Press the voice button on the steering wheel or say "Hey, Toyota," and you'll trigger the conversational digital voice assistant. Using voice commands, you can operate the audio and climate controls, search for points of interest, program the navigation system, and perform other functions. I tripped up this system only once; it otherwise ran flawlessly.

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Every 2025 Grand Highlander Hybrid includes Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 (TSS 3.0), a collection of the expected ADAS features. TSS 3.0's adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping, and lane-centering systems fulfilled their duties well, latching onto merging vehicles in front of the Toyota on interstates and quickly adjusting speed smoothly as warranted. In fact, the lane-centering tech only got flummoxed by the sharper curves on local state highways or county roads, typically posted for 50 mph or lower.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gives the Grand Highlander Hybrid a five-star overall crash-test rating, the highest one available. Meanwhile, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety assigns the Grand Highlander "Good" and "Acceptable" ratings in several categories and scored it well in crash avoidance, but did not award it with a "Top Safety Pick" rating.

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The Grand Highlander Hybrid Boasts Impressive Efficiency

The 2025 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid Nightshade uses a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine assisted by two electric motors, generating a combined total of 245 horsepower and 175 pound-feet of torque. A continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT) routes power to the front wheels. When the system senses front wheel slip, it triggers an electric motor at the rear axle that drives the rear wheels to improve traction.

Tugging around 4,620 pounds of a seven-seat SUV with only 175 lb-ft of torque is a tall order. While there's 245 horsepower on tap, torque matters most when saddled with weight.

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Though it's not tractor-trailer slow from a stop, the powertrain can become a buzzy, throat-clearing mix of secondary imbalances inherent in a large four-cylinder engine working too hard. Refrain from ascending long hills or attempting to accelerate quickly, and relative serenity remains.

Were this powertrain in a more cost-conscious vehicle, it would be more palatable. Worse, pairing it with a CVT that parks the engine at a certain speed when climbing hills or accelerating is a recipe for irritating sound and vibration. Simply put, when called to extreme duty, this powertrain is overburdened.

Otherwise, the Grand Highlander gobbles up the interstate in comfort and relative quiet. On secondary roads, it handles well, given the sheer size and bulk. Steering feel and weight are fine for a big SUV, but for keen drivers, the steering is a bit light and could be more communicative. The leather-wrapped wheel itself feels substantial.

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Braking performance is excellent. On clear roads, I performed a few mock panic stops and the big SUV came to a halt with good pedal feel and modulation. Tire and road noise stay muted, too.

Efficiency is the most impressive aspect of the Grand Highlander Hybrid. Here's a heavy SUV that offers impressive cargo space and a comfortable cabin for each of its seven occupants, and it returned 35.8 mpg in combined city and highway driving. That's 1.8 mpg more than the official EPA combined rating of 34 mpg.

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Is the 2025 Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid a Good SUV?

The 2025 Grand Highlander stacks up well against three-row SUV rivals on the larger side of the midsize segment, such as the Chevrolet Traverse, Honda Pilot, Hyundai Palisade, Kia Telluride, and Volkswagen Atlas.

The Grand Highlander is also one of the few hybrid three-rowers available. Plus, you can solve the test vehicle's power shortage by opting for the 362-hp Hybrid Max, which also has a six-speed automatic and full-time AWD. However, you'd give up 7 mpg in combined city and highway fuel economy to gain that power. Unless you're adamant about brisk acceleration, the standard hybrid's efficiency is compelling, as is the Grand Highlander Hybrid overall.

All vehicle pricing includes MSRP plus destination charges (set at the time of publication), and will be rounded to the nearest thousand.

Jim Resnick

From racing exotic sports cars, to ranking new cars, to peeling back layers of cover up in an exhaust emissions scandal, Jim has chronicled the automotive sector for decades. Jim has also worked inside the corporate headquarters of three carmakers, and therefore understands how the automotive sausage is really made. But Jim’s affinity for vehicles takes a back seat to finding the truth and the cultural implications of modern transportation. He has also lectured at universities to engineering and policy students and faculty on the industry’s relationship with legislation in the wake of the diesel exhaust emissions scandal several years ago. Put simply, Jim reports on autos, mobility, tech, car culture, and the traffic jam of topics within.