Tundra 2020 Tundra 2022 Chris Coyier

Publish date: 2024-08-17

I had a three-year lease on a Toyota Tundra and had the 2020 model. It came due and I had to make a decision on what to do next.

Interestingly, the 2022 Tundra has been hugely updated, and I was compelled enough to pull the trigger in that direction.

A List of Things That Are Much Nicer on My New 2022 Tundra

The screen. Wow! It’s way bigger! Nearly as big as the screen in our Tesla. It’s big. It’s bright.

The built-in software on it is… good? It’s, incredibly to me, well-designed. Don’t really expect that from rando car manufacturers these days. I’m glad they stepped it up so quickly.

Honestly, if it was the exact same truck as the 2020 but with this screen it might have been enough for me to buy the 2022. I think the screen in a car is a big deal.

Cameras! It has cameras all over the place. The backup camera is obviously the most useful, and the big improvement there is that it has that view where it looks like it sent out a drone over the truck to point downward (but is actually stitched together from various cameras with adjusted angles).

There are all sorts of options for what cameras to be looking at at any given time. I don’t find a ton of utility in most of them just yet, but maybe their day will come. If you did a lot of parallel parking, perhaps the side/front cameras would be more useful to you. Still pleased.

One thing I turned off right away though was the “auto” flopping into camera mode whenever you are coming to a stop. Not a good default, as it’s not terribly useful.

Even the rearview mirror is a screen. It can be just a mirror, but one flip and it’s turned into video mode.

It’s… kinda cool? I dunno I don’t leave it on all the time as I find it a little weird. I’ll have to see if the night mode is useful or what.

The main point I can see is that the camera is mounted up toward the roof of the back of the truck. So if you piled crap in the bed of your truck up to that point but no higher, the mirror would be blocked but the camera wouldn’t be, so you’d still have rearview vision.

The rearview mirror also has garage door buttons on it you can program, which I really like (avoids having the actual garage door opener mounted somewhere awkward). My old truck didn’t have that.

Speaking of software, the mobile app is actually useful now.

For example, it’ll send me a push notification if I forgot to lock it, and allow me to lock it. It’s got remote start (although the annoying thing still exists where when you get to your car and open the door, it shuts off.) It even reminds me where I parked.

It’s not amazing (feels laggy, for one), but it’s actually pretty useful. Well done, Toyota.

The paid-for services seem a bit of a mess though. Is the remote start just a thing I get for free, or is that some trial thing I’ll have to pay for later? The truck is on a free trial of the Wi-Fi, but… I can’t even tell if it’s working. Why would I need that when my phone has internet? Is it better? Why are there like 3 other possible paid plans? I kinda don’t get it.

The charging pad. There is one now! Works mostly just fine with my iPhone 13. You just rest it in a little area below the screen. It’s Qi, whatever that is.

My only gripe right now is that it tends to disconnect and connect a bit sporadically. It’s not rock solid just put your phone here and it will charge scenario.

Carplay worked on my old Tundra, but now it works wirelessly, which is very nice. It doesn’t even have to be on the charging pad. It’s fairly easy to switch back to the Toyota software (it appears as an icon on the home screen), and important notifications show up on top of Carplay. It’s all pretty nicely considered. It’s got Android Auto too, of course, those tend to roll together these days. That would have mattered when Miranda was on a Pixel, but she’s switched back to iPhone.

Even though Carplay works without a USB connection and you don’t need USB to charge either, there are still USB plugs. Five of them all told. That’s probably good — in case I get sick of the finicky charging pad. I also have a hunch that wired charging is faster.

The plug on the dashboard is USB-A, which feels a little old school, but inside the console box thing there is another USB-A and a USB-C connector.

In the back seat, there is also a USB-A and USB-C. Having both options is kinda nice actually, at the moment.

The back seat also has a straight-up power outlet, which can come in awful handy (example: charging my DSLR camera battery on the way to something because I forgot to do it before I left).

That console between the front seats? It’s got some nice touches. There are little coin holder slots, which is such a tiny thing, but obviously, we’re going to end up with change in our car, so it might as well be organized and accessible. You also don’t have to open the console box at the big main hinge, there is a little slider to move back to access the stuff in the front. That’s a nice touch, so if the passenger needs to get in there, they don’t have to do the whole excuse me could you move your arm thing.

There is a HUD now. Eh, nice to have I suppose.

I’ve got (faux) leather seats now, which I was worried would be too chilly in the winter. Winter hasn’t quite arrived, so we’ll see, but so far I like the look and feel of them better than my old cloth seats. I’m hoping they will be easier to keep clean as well.

Speaking of the seats, they have lumbar support now which I’m finding awfully nice right now with an injured back. Especially with the heating. The seats actually have both heating and cooling on both the driver and passenger sides.

The truck also remembers seat position based on “driver profile”. When you get in/out, it moves the seat backward, when you get in, it puts it back to your desired spot. I haven’t tried setting up multiple profiles yet, but I imagine it works either via key fob or app (or either?).

There are running boards and they are automatically opened and closed. It’s kinda neat! My old truck had running boards too that actually looked a little cooler and were permanently out, but they were less functional than these in the sense that these are just a clear nice flat stepping surface, so I’ll say this is an upgrade.

The steering wheel has a billion things on it.

Not heated, though. Miranda’s old Tahoe had that and it was awesome.

Perhaps the biggest change that a lot of people hone in on is that it’s a V6 engine now instead of a V8. I think that worried a lot of meatheads that it’s now underpowered or something. I don’t even care enough to look into it. Apparently it was big enough of a deal that Toyota pipes the sound of a V8 through the audio system at appropriate times, which is bonkers. I think I’ve found a way to turn that off and control internal features like that, which I’ll do another blog post on.

The new engine / drivetrain whatnot also has given birth to “driving modes”. I can flip it from “Comfort” to “Normal” to “Sport” and “Sport+” … and maybe I’m forgetting one or two others. I’m probably going to leave it on “Normal” as I don’t feel a big difference in day-to-day usage.

Curious about the gas mileage? Well, it’s friggin awful as you might suspect. I get about 11 miles to the gallon. I also drive so little I don’t lose sleep over it. I put less than 3,000 miles a year on a car, as proven by the last 5 years or so. They say it’s 18 city / 24 highway but… no.

My old truck had a lift kit and pretty big tires on it. No lift kit this time around, nor oversized tires. I went with upgrade K02 tires that were highly recommended and workable in the winter. So overall the truck feels “smaller” and I’m very fine with that. Perhaps a smidge easier to park.

Storage. This is huge to me. Trucks, despite being generally enormous, generally have way less storage than cars. There is no trunk! You can put a lockbox in the bed, but they aren’t very easy to access and you’re limiting the use of the bed.

In this new model, the back seats lift up to a storage bin. Great idea.

My old truck had bed liner/protector stuff on it, which was nice so you’re not scratching up and making ugly the bed, but it was an upgrade thing I had to buy. Came standard on this truck.

Two more niceties in the bed:

Tiny thing: hold mode. If you’re sitting at a stop light waiting, rather than keeping your foot on the break, you can press the hold mode button and you’ll stay stopped until you press the gas. Clever little feature.

Double moon roof! Goes all the way to the back seat.

The side rearview mirrors tilt downward when you reverse. That is, if you have the mirror controller set to L or R, which is a weird caveat. But it’s still a nice little feature. The point is that when you’re reversing it’s nice to see a little lower than normal, to make sure you’re not backing over your kid’s bike or whatever.

The side rearview mirrors also fold inward when you park and turn off the car, which is nice. Just puts them in less danger. My local carwash requires they fold in before carwashes, and that’s a tap of a button now.

There is this lane assist thing now which bitches at you if you get to close to a marked line on a road. Not my favorite, but it does work pretty well. There is an extra bitchy mode that will literally turn the steering wheel for you if you encroach on a line. I tried to like it but I couldn’t get there.

There is no manual parking brake at all. You park, it puts it on, you unpark, it takes it off. It’s weird to me that there is literally no manual control of it at all.

There are physical window shades in the back seats you can pull up and hook on the top of the window well to help block the sun. Hey, why not, could be the difference between being trapped with the sun blasting on you back there or not. The front seats have the typical visor shade things.

One thing is worse! The window out to the bed of the truck doesn’t go down anymore. Sad trombone, I thought that was a neat little feature in the past.

So far: 👍. Nice truck.

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