[YWG_YYZ]

I will first share a bit about my background. It is in italics so, feel free to skip the first section if you are only interested in the driving impressions.

This is my 1st EV. I have had a 2017 BMW 740Le before, so that was the first plug in experience.
Besides the Solterra, we currently have a 2022 Sienna and a 2022 WRX manual.
We have 2 young kids, 3 and 5. Both are in car seats.
We live in the prairies (Canada), so we have very limited DC Fast Chargers around especially outside of the main highway.
I would consider myself an open minded car enthusiast as I have owned 20+ cars since I got my license and I have experienced a wide variety of cars from Japanese to domestics, SUVs and Sports cars.

Overall Vehicle
I'm generally positive with how the car is built and the materials that is used. It is not premium like BMW/Porsche, but it feels more like mainstream Lexus (RX, ES, NX) than Toyota (esp the N American built ones). The fit and finish / panel gaps is very good.
The switches have a nice tactile feedback. It feels Lexus grade (but Toyota has upped their game recently, even the mainstream Sienna/Highlander feels decent)

Driving
Power - Quick and sufficient. It's not a Tesla, but definitely feels close to a GTI/hot hatchback with more low end torque.
Handling - It feels more steady and stable. More like a Lexus NX/X3 than a typical compact SUV like Rav4/CRV
NVH - Very good at low speed, definitely close to the premium SUV. High speed, bit average for premium, but not on the quietest side (not X3 level definitely quieter than Rev 4)

Tech
Buttons - I really like having buttons, and I appreciate Toyota has buttons for almost everything you use often.
Infotainment - The UI is good. The connection is not very good. Apple CarPlay/Wireless is hit and miss.

Size
Similar to a compact SUV, but very good 1st and 2nd row leg room. So if you have a rear facing child seat, you can still sit comfortably in front. Trunk is also a decent size.

Charging/Range
Worst part of the car. But it still works for our situation.
The guess-o-meter is wildly in accurate. There is no SOC. When I picked up the car, -4C, but since the car was parked inside in the delivery bay, it shows 420km.
As soon as the climate control is turned on, it says 360km, and within 5km of driving it changed to 320km.
We drove 140km north, low wind, steady 113km/h, car says 170km (lost another 10km compared to estimate). Had it charged at level 1 for 5 hrs, gained supposedly 30km, and GOM says 202km. I'm 125km from home, thought that should provide enough buffer. Drove it home in a bit of snow storm, with only 25km on GOM (lost 50km range in the process).
Have not had a chance to DC fast charge yet, so can't comment.
However, the lack of EV specific features such as pre conditioning of battery before DC FC, DC charge speed, Nav that calculates route based on chargers; make it hard to recommend if you are doing any long distance driving, or if you are using it as your only vehicle.
As we have other cars, and 90% of the driving are local and within 30km round trip, the Solterra still works for us.

Summary
I like the car.
The quality/fit and finish is more Lexus than mainstream Toyota.
Driving exceeded my expectation for a compact SUV. On par with a turbo charged premium SUV.
Tech is hit and miss. Buttons are great, but connection is spotty.
Size is good for a small family with 1-2 kids
Charging and Range is pretty bad in the winter. Not a good road trip car but good if you do short distance, urban driving.

Happy to answer any questions.
Will update this thread as I get more seat time. Ordered a Veepeak reader for some more info such as SOC and battery temps.

 

[n6nl]

Great summary.

 

[poodlemaster]

The stereo in the car is pretty good. As I have spent far too much money on my own home stereo, I have some opinions.

I feed the stereo both Redbook Audio files, ripped CDs, and Hi Res files, mostly 24/96 that I have on the machine that feeds my stereo. I have them on several thumb drives as the stereos in cars are limited in what they can do. The Solterra will only do FAT32 which surprised me, most modern cars will do NTFS and that allows some big drives. Anyway I have 3 32G drives with music on them. The speakers are breaking in nicely.

You hook your phone up to the stereo with Bluetooth and you are dealing with low res MP3 levels of nastiness. WiFi should be better, but often is not, as connection problems can make it not much better than Bluetooth. Give your Harmon Kardon a chance to shine, feed it some nice files from a USB drive.

My phone and my car are still strangers, I don't need them to talk to each other. That may change but for now I'm happy.

 

[YWG_YYZ]

I’m happy with the Harman sound system. Interesting you mentioned about good sound files. While choosing high quality files can really elevate the listening experience, it takes abit more effort than the standard streaming services that most people use these days. As a result, the DSP is almost as important as the speakers themselves.
I have had B&O in a E63 that is vastly superior than the Harman in a 740Le, but for radio and streaming, the Harman outperforms the B&O every time.
I’m using CarPlay because there is no built in NAV without the subscription :S

 

[poodlemaster]

All the streaming services compress the audio in the files, so it will sound good on any old POS. Files on a thumb drive will be the best you can do for input. Indeed the best head units, the Pioneer really, do an astounding job of realizing the music in a car. DSP where its useful. Otherwise it upsets me.

I have a well realized digital chain but don't listen to it. I was a fool and went the extra mile, and built an analog chain the crushes my digital chain to an amusing extent. I am done now, there is nothing more I can do under ... well the price of the car I just bought, and that would just make the analog better.

 

[Marek Barinka]

I am not sure about the car system, but not so long ago Linux didn't have full NTFS support, but it is little downside. Most of my USB sticks are bigger than FAT32 limits

 

[YWG_YYZ]

Update 1
Re: Level 1 charging in cold weather

Received Veepeak BLE (not the +) and can confirm that it has ability to read SOC and battery temp. It was on sale for less than 30 CAD over the weekend.

I have Grizzl E basic level 2 charger inside the garage and uses the stock level 1 outside the garage.

With current temp at -20C, the level 1 charger is only powerful enough to provide energy to battery heater (confirmed with Veepeak). Battery temp is around 4C.
After plugging in for 3 plus hours, I have not gained any meaningful range at all. (Usually 5-6km per hour near 0C)

 

[poodlemaster]

I am not sure about the car system, but not so long ago Linux didn't have full NTFS support, but it is little downside. Most of my USB sticks are bigger than FAT32 limits

Its native, in the kernel, and really has been native for reading, for a long time. We used fuse to trick NTFS writing, for a long time as well. So its not because you can't have read for NTFS on your car stereo operating system. Its because they did not turn it on. I use a few small thumb drives, if you can call 32G drives small, because the system does not have as large a set of dirs etc, to deal with. Mine are not all that standard quite often, and systems don't like stuff without tags.

 

[Marek Barinka]

Its native, in the kernel, and really has been native for reading, for a long time. We used fuse to trick NTFS writing, for a long time as well. So its not because you can't have read for NTFS on your car stereo operating system. Its because they did not turn it on. I use a few small thumb drives, if you can call 32G drives small, because the system does not have as large a set of dirs etc, to deal with. Mine are not all that standard quite often, and systems don't like stuff without tags.

I found that "full proper" support for Linux is from kernel 5.15 which was released last year. I don't want to count some "half-baked user hacked" solutions in this case. If it is your PC, do what you want (no idea about exact issues, but found mainly speed and some missing features) but from this situation I want proper driver solution and not be afraid I put my USB in and it will be corrupted by bad drivers. I am more on user programming / scripting side so in this low-level stuff I have less experience.
And yes 32 GB is small, especially when you have one 3D model project in lower GBs it will fill up really quickly
Or I have several GB of offline maps in phone I don't use all of them all the time, but sometimes I need it and don't need to waste data, if there is signal...

 

[poodlemaster]

LOL. I tried to explain. Reading NTFS has been in the kernel since 2.x, a long time ago. All we did who used fuse, was use it to write NTFS to other partitions mainly. There is nothing half baked about fuse. I used it for decades with no failures at all.

Again I tried to point out that with limitations of the OS in car stereos, smaller drives are more easily understood and are laid out well.