The problem occurred with the shifting within just a few hundred miles of owning the vehicle. I bought the vehicle brand new. I wasn’t really sure if this was a transmission problem or not. It wasn’t until recently when my vehicle reached 100,000 miles that I noticed my 2019 Toyota Highlander seem to make a whining noise upon acceleration. I then noticed from a Google search that other people experience the same issue and also that their vehicle started making whiny noises when accelerating.

I took my vehicle to a Toyota dealership and they said the whiny nose came from my transmission. They said the transmission would need to be replaced in order to stop the whining. The dealership blamed the issue on me saying that I never change the transmission fluid. However I requested to make an appointment to change the transmission fluid, when I brought my vehicle in, for a recall regarding the fuel pump.

The fuel pump is a whole another issue. The fuel pump caused me to almost get in an accident because my car stalled in the middle of traffic as I was making a left-hand turn. The service manager at the Toyota dealership told me that I didn’t need to change the transmission fluid on my vehicle because it was a Toyota and they run forever. I argued with the guy and said well yeah they’ll run forever if you service them. The service manager would not make an appointment for me to get my transmission Fluid changed.

In December 31st 2019, I bought this Toyota Highlander with 11 mi on it. The transmission shifted oddly as the transmission could not determine what gear to go into, hammered into and out of different gears and slipped into different gears. That present the transmission exploded and locked up the two front wheels. It overheated, leaked out lots of burnt transmission fluid and the internal parts locked up. I brought the car into the dealership about six times and they kept telling me there was nothing wrong with the car and they would not adequately test it to make sure it was okay.

They then did some extensive wiring repairs to fix the problem but the problem became much worse. The transmission made it up here as if the engine was surging when it actually it seemed as if it was going into two different gears at the same time and would not provide power from the engine to make the car go. I just found out that there is a class action lawsuit on this particular type of 8-speed permission that also applies to the Toyota sienna vans. There is also a fuel pump recall on my car where the car may stall or have hesitation issues as what I've experiencing. I feel as if I'm a guinea pig driving a very unsafe car that does not seem to be fixable.