Mike Sweers Interview - He wanted a Diesel Tundra (and to keep the 5.7 as an option)

Whenever it may be. Pretty sure my 2020 will last till 2029 if that's when it winds up being.

 

I'm hoping to keep mine until at least 2035.

 

Not that complaining here changes the reality, but what a crap era to be a motor head/car enthusiast. It sucks watching your hobby be slowly destroyed by people with an agenda of questionable legitimacy. And don’t tell me about EVs, nothing excites me about the prospect. I work on electric motors daily, and electricity is boring no matter how fast the car may be. The speed and acceleration of fast cars and bikes always gets old and the fun wears off, but the enjoyment from hearing the sweet sounds of a good V8 cracking out the pipes or rowing through the gears on a crisp 6 speed manual always keeps it entertaining. Now we are to be satisfied with V8 sounds pumped through the speakers and EVs with technology to “simulate” driving a manual transmission. I get the feeling I’m a minority in this thinking, even within the automotive enthusiast crowd. Such is democracy, two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.

 

Might be in the minority, but definitely not alone.

 

I'm sure it'll last that long but jeez, sounds kinda boring to drive the same truck for the next 15 years!

 

Depends on how much you love your truck.

 

I don’t think it’s a matter of them lasting that long as much as it’s a matter of us being allowed to keep driving them.

 

I hate to speculate on the future, because it is the future and unwritten, but I would imagine it would be less of a matter of "being allowed to drive gas vehicles" and more of a situation where fuel prices rise to the point where it isn't economical or feasible to drive a gas powered vehicle anymore.
Battery cars are cool and all, but I don't see them being a full replacement for gasoline engines in the next 20 years without some serious overhaul of battery technology in terms of degradation and charging time. Range degradation isn't that bad, but it exists, and replacement batteries cost entirely too much. And I can't get behind sitting at a charging station for 45 minutes to top my car off, which will only get worse over time as more vehicles start using up the stalls. There also needs to be a proprietary plug (looking at you, Tesla).

And you could also get into the logistics of lithium supply. Can we even mine enough to keep up with a world of electric vehicles? It's honestly a shame that hydrogen never really made it. We have an abundant supply of that laying around.

My guess is that we will be in a state of plug-in hybrid, or electronic assist motors for a good while before the technology gets to a good enough spot to move out of gasoline entirely. But that's just one idiots opinion.

 

Gas will be so scarce it'll be like Mad Max Fury Road up in this beezy soon.

 

It’s not just fuel prices; it’s carbon credits, mileage taxes, monthly or weekly limits that you have to purchase to be allowed to drive, etc.

The freedom that cheap energy has given each of us—even those of us who have been or are at the bottom of the middle class—to drive ourselves across the country and even internationally probably will not be there for most of our grandkids.

 

Boring works for me.

 

The phrase "from my cold, dead hands" comes to mind...

 

If you are going to reference Mad Max, at least use a real Mad Max movie as your example.

 

I take it you haven't actually seen Fury Road...

 

You mean the one where Max played second fiddle?

The amateurish cartoon CGI was good for a laugh.

 

Well I loved it. Maybe it wasn't quite as good as the original but it was way better than the second and third one.

Maybe you need a bigger TV and a better sound system.

 

I thought it was excellent. Very, very well done.

 

An example of how to use CGI well, in my opinion.

 

Me too. The complexity of a TTV6 hybrid doesn't excite me. Yeah, we could have better available acceleration at high altitude crossing Ike, Vail, Kenosha, Wolf Creek, Coal Bank, Red Mountain passes. But I've seen the TFL tests and the TTV6's drink fuel at the same rate as the 5.7l loaded up at high altitude.

 

Oh, there's nothing boring about owning a 15 year old truck. There's something new to maintain or repair every day, even on a Tundra. Stuff you don't even think about until it wears out.

 

I guess you weren’t paying attention to those tests then:

https://youtu.be/I4g4t94wgvM

Near the end the fuel economy of the new truck and the old 5.7L are compared. New truck got 4.7 MPG on the Ike, the old one got 3.4 MPG. That is quite an improvement by percentage, 38% better. Also note the transmission on the new truck stayed cooler.

https://youtu.be/lftJi5gBKok

Here we see the Tundra outperforming a Ram with the HEMI on fuel economy towing the same trailer. The trailer is 7,000lbs and has quite a bit of frontal surface area. New 2022 Tundra got 8.83 MPG. The V8 Ram got 7.49 MPG.

https://youtu.be/_k5FI3dSyLA

The old truck pulling a 5600lb trailer got 7.96 MPG in this test.

So the new truck was able to pull a larger and heavier trailer and still get better fuel economy doing it than the old Tundra. A 25% heavier trailer, with more frontal surface area, and 10.9% better fuel economy.

 

1.5 mpg better climbing Ike loaded up doesn't amount to much, IMO. Sure would be nice to have acceleration to stay ahead of the Audis trying to go 80mph up the pass, though.

 

38% better is not a small improvement.

The 10.9% improvement towing a heavier trailer on a fuel efficiency loop is significant as well.

Either of them demonstrate your earlier claim of getting the same fuel efficiency as the old V8 is demonstrably false.

 

I really don’t think adding more gears to the transmission was a factor. In both tests the truck ended up in a gear that placed the engine as close to peak torque as possible. If you look at the gauges you’ll see the tachometer doesn’t vary much, we’re talking maybe two gears being used up the hill for either the 2022 or the old Tundra.

The old Tundra appeared to be turning around 4,000 RPM’s the entire time, and the 2022 sat at about 2,400-3,000 RPM. The extra torque, at lower RPM and the ability to make full power at altitude makes a ton of difference.

The Ike starts around 9,000 ft above sea level and ends at 11,000 ft. Naturally aspirated engines will lose 3% of their power for every 1000 ft of altitude gain. Turbocharged engines lose virtually nothing as long as the turbos can produce the full manifold pressure they’re supposed to.

You might have also chosen to ignore the 2022 Tundra out performing the 2022 Ram in fuel economy. The Ram uses an 8 speed, and once again more gears didn’t narrow the gap.

Here’s another test for you to ignore:

https://youtu.be/D7E0xA8SFYY

Notice the Tundra V35A-FTS once again gets better fuel efficiency than a V8 while towing. A lot better in fact.

 

I’m curious to see how Toyota will try to eek out better MPG’s with the new Tundra. When I purchase tires, I favor traction and durability over mileage claims. With a truck, I favor capability and reliability over MPG. But that’s not to say that a tire that lasts a while and vehicle with decent MPG’s aren’t important to me.

I was curious about the decision to go with NiMH batteries in the hybrid vs lithium ion. The Li batteries proved less weight, better power density, and faster charging and discharging. I chalked it up to two things: the current state of materials availability and it’s associated price volatility; and the fact that NiMH is more robust in temperature extremes. For example, I can discharge my Milwaukee m18 batteries when it is below freezing, but I can’t charge them until they’ve warmed up to above freezing (or maybe it’s 40 degrees, but either way they have to be warmer than freezing). Tesla and others get around this by pumping heat into or out of the battery pack. This works fine as long as you have enough power to heat themselves, but if the pack is discharged too low, the vehicle would need to be towed to a heated garage before it could be charged. With the tundra being a hybrid, that hurdle is moot because heat could easily be scavenged from the gas motor in cold climates.

Since Me Sweers states that aren’t going to chase more power with updates to the tundra, I am left to suppose that a Lithium battery upgrade would supply more range and, in turn, better efficiency and fuel economy. It could possibly increase the EV Only speed beyond 19 MPH.

The question, then, is by how much? Well, from what I can gather about NiMH vs Li batteries, Li provides between 60 and 100 % greater power density, and about the same or more discharge capacity to stay in the safe zone with standard chemistries. So if you can provide 60-100% more amperage to the electric motor, I could see the EV mode extend to 35MPH. While the power required to maintain speed isn’t linear (it increases dramatically - logarithmically even - at higher speeds) it is well below the point that wind resistance becomes a factor.

MPG increases is more complicated, but if the aforementioned guesstimate of 35 MPH EV only mode is accurate, this could provide a substantial increase in city MPG. Highway would also increase by perhaps an extra 1 or 2 mpg, maybe, due to the greater amount of energy storage available to be dispatched before recharging, as well as the quicker charging for regenerative breaking and such. Combined, I would expect to see 3 or 4 MPG to jump to 25 or 26.

Now how to does this fit in with the competition? Still doesn’t beat the Ford Lightning’s mileage, but that’s not really apples to apples as the lightning is EV. How about compared to the 3.0 Dmax GM twins? Rated at 27 MPG, I know tow guys that own them. One is bone stock with the front end about 3” off the ground, tires practically stuffed in the fenders, and small p rated factory tires. The other is a factory AT4 with 32” factory all terrains. The first guy claims to get 27 mpg but he never hand calculates mileage and just looks at the instant mpg readout. The second guy calculates mileage by hand and says he’s luck to get over 20. He drives like a grandpa and eked 22 mpg out of it at 65 MPH once. Those trucks are also only rated to tow 7k lbs.

So enter the new tundra hybrid. IF it gets 25 mpg combined, with diesel being 10% more than gas, you best the 3.0 diesel on dollar per mile even with a slightly lower mpg. You also have a much higher tow capacity, gobs more torque, and double the horsepower. Sounds like a winner to me.

Compared to a lightning (even though I said I wouldn’t do that), the tundra loses all of a couple horsepowers, a fair amount of torque, and a slower 0-60. But you get more than DOUBLE the range, over 50% more towing capacity, and the ability to fuel up in a couple minutes rather than 10 hours. Yes - 10 HOURS to charge the lightning at home. And the 230 mile range wouldn’t even get me home on some days. Well, what about the extended range pack for the lightning? The tundra hybrid still stomps the lightning on range, tow capacity, and price - by $20,000.00.

Well what about the f150 Powerboost hybrid? Tundra still beats it in HP and torque, has comparable towing capacity to MOST powerboost setups even though it can be equipped with a higher tow capacity with the tundra if you find the right unicorn, and at 25 MPG combined, the tundra would match the 2wd powerboost mpg figures and beat the 4wd figures. As it stands, the tundra is only 1 mpg lower than the 4wd powerboost. And Ford has not been known to artificially inflat MPG figures by offering things like radios, seats, and spare tires as “options” on the build sheet so they can delete them for thr EPA test loop…

So, I’m interested to see what Toyota will do to improve the current release of the truck to plead the paper punchers chasing better numbers.

 

Sounds like you need to do a full gamut of tests in your truck then buy a 3rd Gen, do an engine swap and run the tests again...

 

The last paragraph of the interview .

Sweers tells us that the initial strategy of the single motor hybrid was designed to "provide the best power performance in the industry." The goal now is to see how the brand can squeeze out more miles per gallon rather than chasing power or torque. In terms of achieving that, "it could be more electric than gas, we're looking at it," he says

Sounds like the next version truck will be very interesting, and more Electric biased.
Battery tech is changing quickly. I hope it changes enough to remove the current batteries underneath the back seat of the current truck.
That had to be a stop gap band aid location in order to get the new version out. JMO
Give us back truck utility and shoot for the flat floor that exists in the F150. (wish list)

 

going to the 10 speed has not dramatically changed the mpg's of the Ecoboost engines so lets stop with trying to use the 10 speed as the excuse for all improvements in the new tundra. Its simply not. They could have left the old 6 speed behind the new engine and it would still wipe the floor with the 5.7 performance and mpg wise.

Every other MFG has had to got to DOD, Direct injections, and VVT in their V8s to keep up and the die hard reliability people here would be pissing and moaning about that too. No way was Toyota gunna leave a 5.7L port injected engine in there.

 

Electric motor works well beyond 18mph, max i have been able to run it for a 30s or a few minutes is around 60mph, but loves to run between 30-50. I added a front bumper and winch and have noticed the hybrid is not working nearly as much as it used too... interesting that weight change of 250lbs would make that big of an impact