2025 Toyota Camry First Drive Review: The Best 'Boring' Car Keeps Getting Better | Hacker News Reader

2025 Toyota Camry First Drive Review: The Best 'Boring' Car Keeps Getting Better

thedrive.com

29 pointsPaulHoule27 comments

I miss the times when Sedans were a more competitive market.

That being said: Toyota's Camry (and Honda's Accord) are excellent vehicles. Just boring. There used to be so much more competition in this space.

The main competitors I'm seeing to this 2025 Camry are... the Honda Accord and... the Toyota Crown (for those who can spend a bit more $$$, I bet a low-end Crown will be preferable to a high-end Camry)

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I'm excited to see Toyota's excellent Hybrid technology spread across their lineup, beyond just the original Prius but also into RAV4, Corolla, the new Crown, and now the 2025 Camry. Good. Hybridization works to reduce emissions in the most simple and direct way.

Indeed: look at this article to see how good the Camry is:

> A base model Camry LE will get a whopping 53 mpg on the highway and 50 in the city.

>Just boring.

there is Hyundai Elantra N if you dont like boring.

In Australia Toyota sell pretty much all models with a Hybrid option. I see Hybrid Corollas, Camrys, RAV4s, and Klugers pretty much every single day.

Hybrids are so perfectly suited here that they've really taken off. You get "EV" around town, but can still do weekend trips without range anxiety.

Most hybrids sold in Australia are not plugins. In fact, I don’t think Toyota sells any PHEVs in Australia yet.

They’re more fuel efficient (and in my opinion nicer to drive) than regular ICE vehicles but the energy they use comes entirely from the combustion engine.

I found out recently that the Chevy Malibu is still made. Couldn’t tell you the last time I saw or noticed one.

Toyota just posted 11 million plus cars sold in a year- highest ever by an auto maker. Peak modern engineering, producing complex machines that just work, at massive scale.

Might be their peak sales ever if they don't get into the EV market in China. EVs are on track to be ~30% of sales there by the end of this year, and Toyota is on track to be 0% of that chunk.

That's really funny.

Toyota likely believes it won't be able to compete with cheap electric vehicles anyway. It's very likely that someone else is the one losing the bulk of the sales, not Toyota. It has done a pretty good job at steering clear from the bottom of the market to maintain its reputation of quality and technology.

> One of the most welcome changes is the addition of a teal paint finish, which Toyota calls Ocean Gem.

Great takeaway. How ever did we manage without teal colored Toyota Camry's I will never know.

I have money to buy a new car, but I won't. Back in my day this was called spyware.

"Toyota says they can collect a whole heap of personal information on you through your car, the Toyota app, and their connected services. This includes everything from personally identifying information such as name, address, phone number, email, online identifier, social media ID, and demographic information such as your age, to driving behavior such as acceleration and speed, steering, and breaking functionality, and travel direction, to lots of information about your car including VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), interior and exterior image data from cameras and sensors in your car, facial geometric features. They even can collect sensitive personal information such as precise geolocation data, biometric information. On top of all this, they say they can collect lots of information about you from other sources such as social media, public sources, data brokers, data providers, your friends, and more. Toyota is collecting a whole lot of information on you. Oh, and if you use any of those mobile services like SiriusXM radio, wi-fi connectivity, navigation, or even let your insurance track your usage, well, those places can all collect your personal information too."

...

"In May, 2023 Toyota admitted that it had left the location data of over 2 million Toyota and Lexus users exposed and unsecured for ten years. A couple weeks later, Toyota again admitted it left the data of another 260,000 car owners exposed in a different security incident. "

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/toyota/

How hard would it be to pop the hood and disconnect the antennas?

There's a single fuse which disables the entire tracking capability. It's labelled "DCS" in the internal fuse block.

I absolutely LOVE my Camry hybrid — it is quick (not fast).

I did some casual searching on disabling Toyota Dealer Communications System (DCS). The results of that search was not informative.

I highly doubt that just pulling that fuse will disable Toyota's tracking. I'd suspect their tracking is tied into either the infotainment system, OBD, or the PCM. So when you go to the dealer they notice it not working, they put in a fuse, pull your stored data, and remove the fuse again.

With every company being anti-consumer, presume the worst until otherwise proven.

Also pulling that fuse would likely void a warranty.

Post script: It's fun driving a 20+ year old car with a V8. Modern naturally aspirated I4 don't stand a chance. And I'm typically neck to neck with turboed I4 and naturally aspirated V6. People in their shiny new cars losing to a 20 plus year old rust bucket is amusing to me.

You are correct that even if you pull the fuse a modern Toyota does still have a "black box" which could be physically accessed (e.g.) after an accident occurs.

I'll bet an AWD Camry hybrid would be quicker than your 20 year old V8 =D

Things would start malfunctioning. The hardware is being used for various required safety stuff.

Automakers have decided that since it’s already there, they might as well use it for other things too. This is a problem that has to be fixed by regulation, not by yanking on stuff. Also, the antenna is never under the hood.

Battery capacity? Chemistry?

A plug-in EV mode would be nice. What's the curb weight?

Pretty impressive ~50mpg combined. I hope we see more EV+range extenders in the future, that can't even sustain highway speed forever, but have considerably smaller generator sets.

I guess I'm the only one who doesn't want a hybrid. I love my Camry, and I like it V6 engine. I guess it will be my last

Now make a hybrid version with a truck bed big enough for major appliances a la an El Camino to compete with the Maverick.

RAV4 Cruiser is hybrid and fits most appliances

I think that would be quite a bit bigger than a Camry?

something like a hybrid Subaru Baja might be interesting, or maybe a little too interesting for the US market.

I know that Toyota is looking at low-end Hilux and trying to determine if those low-end trucks can enter the US market.

I dunno, Toyota's got a great car / SUV reputation. But Toyota's truck reputation cannot keep up with Ford or GM. It'd be nice for Toyota fans I guess, but its hard to beat the Ford Maverick + Ford's reputation in trucks.

The Tacoma has an excellent reputation with truck guys. The Tundra does as well, but the long refresh cycle and momentum has made it tough to compete with Domestics in the full-size class.

I just bought a Tacoma in November of last year. Coming from a Jeep that had nothing but problems, I was looking for something I could make Home Depot runs in and that I wouldn't need to dump money into, so reliability was #1. I wanted to compare with a Ranger but there were literally 0 Rangers or Mavericks in my city to look at, and Tacomas were going and going from the lots every day. They were cheaper too, though the new 24s seem outrageously priced against the Ford.

I was always amazed that back in the 2000s when the PT Cruiser (and to a far lesser extent the HHR, SSR, and Prowler) showed there was a market for retro-cool cars, they didn't resuscitate the El Camino nameplate. It's iconic and distinctive.

I just want a PHEV Corolla station wagon.

It would be nice if Toyota would ditch the "frog mouth" engine grill they use on most if not all their cars, in my opinion it looks excessively stupid.

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