Starting in high gear

Is it normal for the new tundra to feel like it's starting in high gear? It reminds me of when I had a manual transmission and would try to start off in 2nd gear. High RPM's no power. It does this when I don't come to a complete stop, slow right hand turns for example. A good example is when I turn right into my driveway, my driveway is uphill and the truck seems to struggle climbing unless I manually downshift to first. Is this normal?

 

Definitely not.

 

Yes, perfectly normal. Truck starts off in fourth gear. Has to do with the torque. Sport or Tow+ will help.

 

From a stop, mine always starts in first gear. Rolling stops it might start in third. Have Never seen it start off in fourth. Mode doesn't matter.

 

I thought it was third gear....That's what I was seeing on the car scanner app.

Anyway, you don't get a full downshift to 1st until 2 or 3 mph or slower, from my observation.

It's annoying, for sure. Not sure why Toyota did that. The worst is when you hit the gas right as it downshifts and it hesitates for a split second.

 

Unfortunately this is how they have it programmed. It won’t shift into first unless you go 3 mph or less. I wish Toyota would change this. It is a heavy rig and should drop into first sooner to help get the mass moving at slow speeds. Poor engineering from a drivability point of view.

 

Starting in high gear would mean low rpm’s not high rpm’s. But yes at lower speeds it’s normal for it to down shift to lower gears when it needs power and show higher rpm’s. At higher speeds it seems to use turbos more unless you really goose it.

 

What he was referring to is the trans stays in 2 or third gear at very low speeds instead of dropping into 1st. When you try to increase speed again or climb a grade the torque converter has to slip a lot to get truck moving again. So you hear engine reving as torque converter slips to keep engine from stalling.

 

The engine revs up as the TC slips trying to get the truck moving in 3rd. It takes more revs to get it going in 3rd than in 1st.