All New 2024 Toyota Prado Video Walkthrough and Review

Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Jon from Downtown Toyota, and finally, after waiting well over a year since we first started hearing about it, the new 250 Series Prado—and what a change! After this car has been waited around with the previous model, we’ve had about, I’d say, an 8- to 10-year model run with the last model, and now this one is the all-new and changed car. We’ve done a lot of work to make this the new and improved Prado.

The car’s built on the Land Cruiser 300 underpinnings, so therefore we have that great architecture: the stability, the reliability, and, more importantly, the rigidity for the things that you’re going to need to do with this car on-road and off-road.

We’re going to do a little tour today of the VX model. This is the one I have for you today. We will be showing you other models as we get them through, and when we have time, I’ll have some more comprehensive videos based on these cars. But today, it’s the VX we’re going to show you, which is third in the series. We have our GX, our GXL, then the VX, of course our Kakadu, and a new model that’s a permanent fixture instead of a limited edition as it was previously—the Prado Altitude. We’ll go through all those models as we get to them.

So, the new VX Prado: we’re running our 2.8L turbo diesel 4-cylinder engine with a new system, which is a 48-volt active drive system. Now, what that’s going to do for you is improve efficiency, reduce emissions, and make it a much quieter car, especially when you’re at a standstill in traffic or at lights in situations where you stop for a bit. In traffic that’s moving slowly, what’ll happen is our diesel engine will turn itself down, and the 48V system will run everything. As soon as your foot comes off the brake or you accelerate, everything comes back in, and it’s not a jerky situation—it’s very seamless in the way that it gives you that momentum back.

So, with the VX, you’re going to see one thing we’ve done: the VX and the Kakadu both share 20-inch wheels, and these look great. We’ve done a nice little design. Obviously, with this car being in Eclipse Black and the black wheels, it blends really nicely and looks pretty good.

Around the front, we’ve got headlight washers, parking sensors all the way through, and, of course, with this new system of the Prado, we’ve given it separate crash boxes. So, instead of having to replace the whole bar in case of an accident, it might just be one piece of the unit that you need to change.

When we come around, you’ll see we have much bigger mirrors. They’re a lot squarer and, of course, have our usual breakaway function, which is good if someone bumps them or brushes past anything. They’ll retract. They’re also autofold, and you can adjust them inside if you get into a tight spot. So, these are all good things that we’ve thought about to make sure that the new Prado makes your life easier—wherever you’re going, wherever you’re taking it.

With all the Prados, we have our normal smart entry and exit system, and unlock system

which you can just use by having your hand over the handle when the key is in your pocket or in your hand—as long as you’re within 15 cm, and it’ll open up.

And here’s a quick look: how good does the inside of the new Prado look? It’s a lot more comfortable, and we’ll show you through that shortly. With our system, we have a 110L fuel tank now on the Prados and also a 17.2L AdBlue tank. That’ll be really easy to utilize. You’ll have an 8000km range, which will count down on your dash to tell you when you’re getting low, so you’ll know when it’s time to refill that up.

We expect, with the addition of our 48V active drive system and the emissions controls we have on the car, we should be getting somewhere around 7.6L per 100km overall as an average, you know, combined.

When we come to the back of the car, we have a two-stage. The Prado used to have a big swing door; we don’t have that anymore. We’ve got a raising tailgate, which is going to be better if you’re standing in wet weather and things like that. But also, for ease of access, you also have an opening glass hatch so you can launch things in there if needed, rather than having to open the whole door if unnecessary. But, should you need to, it’s this easy: on the models GXL, VX, Kakadu, and Altitude, one push like that, and up comes the door.

This being the VX, we are a seven-seater. I’ve got the seats folded down at the moment, but to show you how easy they are: it’s one grab there, and your seat is up. Simple as that. One of the things the Prado has is this section here, which actually acts as a storage box. So you can put things in there—umbrellas, that sort of thing might be what you want to fit in there to hide out of sight so you still have access to all that storage above. That's also removable, should you need to take it out to give yourself more of a platform underneath.

Easy touch for here to open and close the door. It's as simple as that.

So here we are inside the new Prado VX, and look at the space you’ve got in here. Everything’s a lot more centered, it’s a lot easier to use, and, of course, as we’d expect with our systems that we have for Toyota, foot on the brake, one push, and it starts.

Now, with the VX, you’ll have the advantage of a telescopic steering wheel, which will, when getting out of the car, it will go up and away, and your seat will retract a bit to give you more room to get in and out. You also have a two-position memory function on the car, which will give you the ability to have settings for two drivers. This will utilize your seat, steering wheel, and mirrors, and they’ll all be on memory. You’ll hit your button, and the seat will move to where you want. For example, if I hit this button, nothing happens, of course, because no one set it. But if I move this back and then press number two, you’ll see the seat is retracting back to the position I had it set for driving.

We’ve gone away from a park brake system, very much like the 300 and most of our cars. We now have an electric park brake system, which is really easy to use. You can do it yourself if you want, but take the car out of gear, and the handbrake is released—it disappears from the dash. You can hear that whirring in the background. Back into park, and the whir happens again—that’s the electric brake engaging. The light comes up on the dash, and you’re safe to take your foot off the brake.

We have a driver inattention system, which is another added safety feature that we've put into this line of car.  So, if you happen to look out the window for more than five or six seconds, the car will beep and put an alert on the dash to say “Driver inattention, please look forward,” reminding you to keep your eyes focused up front. It also has some extra features—that if you are looking away for too long, or if something happens and you’re not to be able to get yourself back upright, the car will have its own systems, which I’ll talk about in another video and go into greater depth on them.

We have our normal array of satellite navigation in the VX. You have a three-split dash, so you can put different functions on each of the screens to keep an eye on—be that tire pressure, vertical roll, pitch of the car, that sort of thing.

You have Multi-Terrain Select for both normal systems. We can have a Comfort mode, an Eco mode, Normal, Sport S, Sport Plus S. Then, in the Multi-Terrain Select, we now—like in the 300 Series—have the ability to have an Auto setting for what we’re traveling on, whether it’s dirt, sand, mud, or deep snow. So you can tell the car what surface you’re on, and it will do most of the work for you. If you go into low range for when you need those really serious lock-in four-wheel drive systems, we'll lose the deep snow setting but still have the other functions, as well, and still the Auto function.

So, if you just want to set it and forget it, to do the things that you're doing, and focus more on the driving side, you’re able to do that as well.

Wireless phone charger—nice to have. And finally, for this car, we have the ability to have wireless Apple CarPlay and wireless Android Auto. So your phone functions can be projected onto the stereo screen to give you a lot of familiarity with the things you’re used to with your phone: your own maps, your own messages. All of those sorts of things can be done easily through those two, depending on which format you have, be it an Apple or Android phone. 

Wireless charger is easy to connect—we just drop the phone on top, and it starts doing.

In the essence of other things, we have some extra USBs, which are the new C-drive, one for charge, and there’s also an HDMI port. Volume control for your stereo is down here, which is nice because easy to get to. But you’ve also got access here on the steering wheel as well.

We’ve given you a lot of functionality here. Adaptive cruise control in the new Prado, unlike the previous Prado, where it would only would only work down to around 30 km/h, this is a fully active system. So once engaged, with a distance set and speed set, the car following in front, if it starts to slow down, so will your Prado, to the point that it will actually come to a complete stop if necessary, if the car in front does the same thing.  Then at that point, of course, as we mentioned earlier, then

the 48V system kicking in, which will silence the diesel, leaving you there to concentrate around things, efficiency happening, accelerate away once the object has moved and you're away again.

A lot of functionality is on the steering wheel. We can answer the phone, hang up the phone, you can voice-activate, and with our "Hey Toyota" system, you can utilise that to get the car to put in a navigation address in, call one of your friends, check a message. Do the things you mighe need to do while on the move. In addition to that, all of our cruise control functions are on the right-hand side of the wheel, and everything is really easy to get at. You can do a lot just with your thumb-basis, rather than searching for it.

You’ll find that, as always with Toyota, we’ve set it up ergonomically so that it’s easy to get at without having to look away too much or reach too far for things. Power mirrors and adjustments are on this side. We have automatic high beams, and the headlight washer switch is over here if you need it.

Now, with your radio system in the VX, we get a 14-speaker JBL sound system. Never a bad thing to have good music and hear it clearly through the whole car. You can use your own music functions and still utilize the system. AM, FM, and digital radio are all standard features in the new Prado range.

So, with the new Prado, we’ve made access to the back even simpler. Watch this: we have an access point here to get into the back of the seat. You’ll grab this lever, pull it up, and the seat tumbles. Then it’s just an easy egress into the back system of the car, and there are our seats.

And here we have it: our 2.8L 4-cylinder turbo diesel Prado engine. Nice and easy. A couple of quick things—500Nm of torque, 150kW of power. With the changes we’ve made to the Prado, with its underpinnings and the way we’ve set the car up, we now have a 3.2-ton towing capacity. This engine can handle that all day long without any problem at all. Everything is neat and compact—exactly what we expect from a Toyota engine.

Feel free to come and see us at Brisbane's Downtown Toyota Car Dealership 753 Wynnum Road, Morningside. We’re more than happy to show you through every feature of the new Prado range and why this car would make an absolutely classic addition to your garage, your fleet, or just something to have a bit of fun with on the beach.