Toyota Unveils Throwback 4Runner TRD Surf Concept at the 2024 SEMA Show

Embracing 4Runner’s Go-Anywhere Spirit, TRD Surf Revives Removable Roof Nostalgia as a Tribute to So-Cal’s Surfing Legacy 

Toyota proudly introduced the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept, a striking concept vehicle inspired by Southern California’s vibrant surf culture, at the 2024 SEMA Show. Built at the Toyota Motorsports Garage, the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept combines the rugged, open-air spirit of the first-generation 4Runner with the cutting-edge technology and design of the all-new 2025 4Runner, creating a unique tribute to the adventurous lifestyle that shaped a generation.

The 4Runner TRD Surf Concept draws inspiration from an iconic time in history when the Toyota 4Runner became a staple at 80s So-Cal beaches, as surfers sought the perfect wave. Marty Schwerter, lead builder and Director of Operations at Toyota’s Motorsports Technical Center, said his vision was shaped by his own experiences cruising the Pacific Coast Highway in a Toyota mini pickup. He saw the spirit of the first generation in the 2025 4Runner and envisioned a concept that captures the essence of those sun-soaked days.

“The 2025 4Runner reminded me of the original, with its rugged look and powerhouse 4cyl engine. I knew it had the potential to be the ultimate beach cruiser,” said Schwerter. “We wanted to create something that would resonate today while paying homage to the past. The removable top was a must, just like the original, and we made sure it’s as functional as it is stylish.”

4Runner TRD Surf Concept began life as an all-new 2025 4Runner TRD Limited. The iForce 2.4L turbocharged engine delivers 278 horsepower and 317 pound-feet of torque through an eight-speed automatic transmission. Power is distributed by way of a full-time four-wheel drive system, with an electronically controlled dual-range transfer case. A custom exhaust gives the factory powertrain a satisfying exhaust note.

Schwerter’s team immediately started focusing on transforming the most capable 4Runner into the perfect beach boss. However, creating a “factory” 4Runner that looks and performs equally well with the top off as it does with the top on, posed a number of challenges.

“Engineering a legitimate, removable top; going from a 4-door to a 2-door while maintaining functional windows; flipping the front passenger seat for improved rear seat access; and adding 2-inches of width to both sides were all just tip of the iceberg issues,” Schwerter said. “What makes this build so stellar has less to do with the changes themselves and more to do with the amazing way that they all work together—the result is truly greater than the sum of the parts.”

Every detail of the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept has been meticulously planned and crafted to celebrate its coastal roots. When focus shifted to the removable top transformation, nothing was left to chance. To gain real-world insight, a practice run was done on a GEN5 4Runner. Once work began in earnest, the team spent several days lining everything up. The removable top was built in-house, blending traditional fabrication with CAD and modern 3D printing technology to shape cutlines that perfectly mirrored both sides of the body, creating a perfect fit. Designed to be easily removed by a single person, this feature provides the open-air freedom synonymous with the 4Runner legacy.

As rugged as it is stylish, the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept’s long-travel suspension system features billet aluminum front upper and lower A-arms, designed to handle the toughest terrain while providing a smooth ride. Steering upgrades, custom front axles, and Toyota Tundra rear-end housing complement the custom suspension. At each corner, 37-inch tires, mounted to 17x.8.5-inch custom wheels, complete the concept’s muscular appearance.

In preparation for any adventure the 4Runner TRD Surf Concept might encounter, the weatherproofed interior includes soft, waterproof flooring and a front passenger seat that flips forward to allow easy access to the rear seating area. Accessories include a custom surfboard “Travel Quiver” made specifically for this concept, which pairs perfectly with the roof rack.

The 4Runner TRD Surf Concept also highlights the collaborative spirit within Toyota, bringing together various departments such as TRD North Carolina, TMNA Production Engineering, Service Parts and Accessory Development (SPAD), AAP, and Motorsports and Engagement Marketing to bring this concept to life.

“This vehicle not only showcases Toyota’s engineering prowess; it also reflects the passion and creativity of our team members who are dedicated to pushing the boundaries.  And besides, who doesn’t love a concept dedicated to surfing!?” said Mike Tripp, group vice president, Toyota Marketing.

The 4Runner TRD Surf Concept will be on display at the 2024 SEMA Show from November 5-8 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in the Toyota booth (Central Hall, Booth 22200). Attendees are invited to visit Toyota’s booth to experience this innovative concept up close and discover how Toyota continues to honor its heritage while embracing the future of automotive adventure.

Toyota, Revel Offer Complimentary DC Fast Charging for Toyota and Lexus Battery EV Customers in NYC

• Revel operates largest network of public fast charging stations in New York City
• Agreement provides Toyota and Lexus customers access to complimentary charging at Revel charging stations
• Toyota Ventures investment into Revel supports adoption of electrified mobility solutions

Toyota Motor North America (Toyota) and Revel announced today an agreement to provide Toyota and Lexus battery electric vehicle (BEV) customers with complimentary access to Revel’s DC fast charging network in New York City for approximately three years through October 14, 2027. Revel currently operates the largest network of public fast charging stations in New York City, with four high-volume stations open 24/7 offering both NACS and CCS plug types.

“Charging should be a seamless experience and is crucial for customer satisfaction,” said Christopher Yang, group vice president, Toyota EV Charging Solutions. “Working with Revel will help elevate the charging experience for our customers in the New York City area while underscoring Toyota’s commitment to supporting sustainable mobility solutions and enhancing the ownership experience.”

Toyota Ventures, Toyota’s early-stage venture capital firm, first invested in Revel in 2019 and has supported Revel’s efforts to expand its DC fast charging network in New York City and other markets by providing Toyota the ability to further research and evaluate charging program opportunities. Supplying Toyota bZ4X and Lexus RZ battery EV (BEV) customers with complimentary access to Revel’s charging network supports Toyota’s goals to increase widespread adoption of electric vehicles through customer convenience.

“Revel is proud to build on our strategic collaboration with Toyota to accelerate urban EV adoption. As we expand our charging network in New York and California, we are excited to create more opportunities for Toyota and Lexus drivers to charge fast and, starting now, charge free,” said Frank Reig, Revel’s co-founder & CEO.

Revel currently operates 64 fast charging stalls in New York City across four stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. That includes the recently opened Pier 36 Charging Station, Revel’s first site in downtown Manhattan featuring ten 320 kW chargers. In the next year, Revel is planning to grow its NYC network to 300 fast charging stalls, with new locations such as a mega 60-stall station in Maspeth, Queens and a 48-stall station outside LaGuardia Airport. The company also has seven sites in development across the Bay Area and recently announced its first lease signed in downtown Los Angeles.

For more information on the program, please visit Revel’s page for Toyota or Lexus.

Toyota’s New Risk-ATTEND Program Is On the Fast Track To Help Keep Teen Drivers Safe

Getting a driver’s license can be a major milestone for anyone. For teenagers, it’s even more significant, as it symbolizes another step toward independence.

In fact, young drivers (ages 15-20) accounted for 11.7 million (5%) of all licensed drivers in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. With that many novice drivers on the road, it’s important to help keep them as safe and well-informed.

That’s why Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) team is doing its part to help educate teen drivers. In partnership with Discovery Education and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass-Amherst), CSRC developed Risk-Anticipation Training To Enhance Novice Driving (Risk-ATTEND). The web-browser-based training program was developed to find ways to accelerate a novice driver’s skill of detecting and anticipating latent hazards.

“What we are trying to study in this project is the ability to anticipate risk,” says Zhaonan Sun, a principal scientist with CSRC. “Most teen driver crashes are due to three critical errors: lack of scanning, speeding and distraction. We’re trying to deal with lack of scanning or lack of meaningful scanning. Even if you see something, if you don’t know what it means or what to anticipate, it’s meaningless scanning.”

So far, statistical analyses have shown a significant improvement in hazard anticipation accuracy post training as measured by eye glances. In addition, 84% of the 53 participants increased the number of full stops at stop signs after training, compared to stop sign adherence before the training.

“Given our history in developing training programs for teens, we expected to see improvement in teen driving skills, but our expectations were exceeded when we saw the actual results,” says Shannon Roberts, an associate professor at UMass-Amherst. “The next step underway is to confirm that the improvement in teen driving skills seen in the simulator translates to improved driving behavior on the road.”

A Fresh Perspective
For Sun, working on Risk-ATTEND was exciting and rewarding.

“My previous experience involved what happens when the crash has already happened, but I think it’s very important to help prevent that crash from happening both from the system level and from a driver perspective,” he says. “I think it’s very exciting if we work from the source to educate teens through the internet to enhance their skills and help decrease their risk of a crash— that would be beneficial for society, for the teens and for the families.”

Broadening Accessibility 

For Risk-ATTEND, the goal is to make the program accessible to the public and make it easier and more convenient for teen drivers.

“So, basically people need to set up a semi-professional environment with the steering wheel and everything else to make driver education happen, which is good,” Sun says of previous driver education programs. “We know it’s effective, but it’s not super accessible to the general public.”

He adds, “With the age of personal computers, cell phones, tablets, we want to do something that can be accessed on any personal devices through the internet, and teens from anywhere can access it at any time.”

Jason Hallman, the senior research manager for CSRC who’s been with Toyota for over 12 years, said working with the community is important.

“CSRC is uniquely an open and external entity within Toyota’s North American R&D Center where we’re finding new ways to enhance safe mobility with university collaborators and sharing what we learn openly for the entire safety community to benefit from it as an industry,” he says.

Community Support Is Essential
Working with education partners like UMass-Amherst was essential to bringing Risk-ATTEND to fruition. The institution was responsible for recruiting 53 participants between the ages of 16 and 18 with less than or equal to six months of licensure in the state of Massachusetts. Participants were exposed to a pretraining and a post-training drive of 10-15 minutes each in the simulator.

“UMass has a rich history of conducting impactful research on teen driver safety,” says Anuj K. Pradhan, an assistant professor at UMass-Amherst. “Toyota has been an amazing partner on this study. The company’s vision and resources allowed for creativity and rigor in the research, and because both teams spoke a common language of safety, the collaboration was a seamless and ideal one.”

Roberts agrees that it was a harmonious partnership. “Working with Toyota on this process was a pleasure,” she says. “In the beginning, we developed a straightforward plan to achieve our goals, and we were successful. Throughout the process, Toyota was consistent, supportive, and overall, a great partner.”

Additionally, Toyota worked with Discovery Education, a company that provides digital learning resources for schools, to develop a public-facing version of Risk-ATTEND on TeenDrive365 — a comprehensive program designed to promote safe driving habits and help put an end to distracted driving for teens.

“They’ve got deep expertise in how to reach the teen audience, and they were very instrumental in this,” Hallman says of Discovery Education’s expertise. “They are also helping to amplify this training into school systems.”

Discovery Education has worked with Toyota since the launch of TeenDrive365 in 2016.

“At Discovery Education, we nurture student curiosity by connecting the real world to the classroom,” says Amy Nakamoto, executive vice president of Corporate Partnerships at Discovery Education. “Engaging digital tools like the Toyota RISK-Attend self-paced module help students build critical skills and better prepare themselves for a future of possibilities.”

Together, all three entities created a training program that they hope will help make teens better drivers and decrease the number of car crashes within this demographic.

“Toyota provided the research-informed prototype developed by Toyota CRSC and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and we leveraged our expertise to design and build an engaging module for students,” says Nakamoto.

Evaluating the Data 
Based on the initial findings, which show a vast improvement in hazard anticipation, Toyota believes the training program can help educate new young drivers.

“We proved it in the driving simulator by looking at the hazard anticipation forecast skills, which is calculated by various factors,” says Hallman. “For example, the gaze where their eyes are looking. We also know that the number of full stops at stop signs increased after training.”

During this evaluation process, participants wore eye-tracking glasses to track where the participant is looking and whether they’re looking at the scenarios or not.

“From there we can calculate and understand whether they’re actually anticipating the risk,” Hallman adds. “This is very different from the open platform we’re launching, because there we cannot track people’s gazes or where they are looking if they’re on their personal device. So, we just ask them to use the mouse to click where the risk is. But we know this is an effective method. We have proved it through statistical analysis using eyesight and other proctors.”

Setting Up the Scenarios

The team used data to determine what 13 driving scenarios would be the most beneficial for teens.

“Teens are more likely to be involved in certain types of crashes, such as failure to yield and run-off-road,” says Hallman. “So, the scenarios that were picked emphasize those types of potential crash scenarios, like how another vehicle exiting a hidden driveway might cause an inattentive driver to veer suddenly off the road to avoid a collision.”

At the start of each scenario, participants are given an overview of what they’re going to navigate through. For example, if there is a bus at the stop light on the left, but it’s blocking the driver’s view, they may not see any vehicles on the adjacent lane of the bus.

“So basically, if we turn left and we don’t anticipate that an oncoming vehicle may be obscured behind a larger oncoming vehicles, we may face a sudden brake situation if we’re very attentive or a potential collision if we’re not being super attentive,” says Sun of his favorite scenario in the program. “This is something hard to learn in the real world.”

The training uses scenarios that are common but are typically hard to anticipate. It gives them the advantage of playing out potential risks in advance.

“To learn that from a natural perspective may take months and it could be after licensure for one year,” says Sun. “If you’re driving in a suburban or rural environment, you probably have never seen that. So that’s very meaningful to anticipate where the risk would be and what could be blocking your sight and what could be in your blind spot.”

Each of the scenarios is at an intersection or going around a curve. When the training starts, participants are presented with five images that go by quickly, and users must click where they should be looking. Participants’ outcomes are explained at the end of each scenario.

Steering Teen Drivers in the Right Direction
Risk-ATTEND is also a program that could help parents and educators come together and teach the rules of the road to teens in an engaging way that’s stimulating and straightforward.

“Interactives and self-paced modules meet today’s students where they are, increase engagement and help with retention of critical information,” Nakamoto says of the program. “It is my hope that every novice teen driver takes the module and increases their ability to spot and avoid hazards.”

Roberts shares that sentiment. “Through the partnership with Toyota, thousands of teens will be exposed to Risk-ATTEND and will improve their driving behavior. My biggest hope for the Risk-ATTEND program is that it will continue to be effective in improving teen driving skills.”

Celebrating Manufacturing Day: 10 Interesting Facts About Toyota’s U.S. Plants

 

October is Manufacturing Month, and the first Friday is Manufacturing Day, a time to recognize and celebrate the work invested in the expansion and advancements of the U.S. manufacturing industry.

Toyota is proud of the achievements of its manufacturing plants and the employees who make them possible. Below are some interesting facts about the company’s 10 manufacturing plants across the United States.

1. TABC, Inc. (California): Toyota’s longest-running North American plant

Toyota’s manufacturing story in the United States starts in Long Beach, California. TABC is the company’s longest-running plant in North America and has played an essential role in assembling products since 1972.

2. Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina: Up and running in 2025

Toyota North Carolina is the company’s newest U.S. manufacturing plant and is expected to be up and running in 2025. It’s Toyota’s tenth plant in the U.S. and is the first to focus on the assembly of lithium-ion batteries.

3. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama: A $49 million solar array, in collaboration with Huntsville Utilities and Toyota Tsusho, supplies more than 70 percent of the plant’s energy needs

Toyota is committed to renewable energy and sustainable practices. In fact, Toyota Alabama collaborated with Huntsville Utilities and Toyota Tsusho on a $49 million solar array project, completed in summer 2024. The array provides 70 percent of the plant’s energy needs.

4. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana: Plant infrastructure to assemble an all-new, three row battery electric SUV

Toyota will prepare for assembly of an all-new, three row battery electric SUV with an investment at the Princeton facility that will provide plant infrastructure.

5. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky: Company’s Largest Plant in the World to Welcome BEV

Toyota Kentucky is Toyota’s largest plant globally, employing nearly 10,000 Kentuckians in high-quality, stable advanced manufacturing careers. The plant, which started assembly in 1988, will be the first Toyota plant in North America to assemble a battery electric vehicle for the North American market.

6. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Missouri: By the end of 2023, Toyota Missouri replaced every manufacturing line with the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA)

Toyota is committed to bringing innovation to every product it makes. At the end of last year, Toyota Missouri replaced every manufacturing line with the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA), a new automobile platform that adjusts to vehicle size and configuration so that one platform can assemble multiple types of vehicles.

7. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi: Home of a global bestseller

The Blue Springs plant is the only U.S. facility to assemble the world’s best-selling vehicle, the Toyota Corolla and just celebrated its 2 millionth vehicle assembled since its inception in 2007.

8. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Tennessee: Collaborating with West Tennessee school to help improve career readiness in STEM

Education is a top priority at Toyota and for the communities in which it operates. In January 2024, Toyota Tennessee kicked off a major collaborative effort with the Jackson-Madison County School System to offer middle school students a high-tech STEM curriculum.

9. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas: Helping close transportation gaps on the south side of San Antonio

Toyota aims to connect with the communities around its plants and provide opportunities through grants, internship programs, collaborations and other pathways. For example, Toyota Texas partnered with VIA Metropolitan Transit to provide on-demand transit services for residents on the south side of San Antonio.

10. Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia: Started an agrivoltaics program to help drive sustainability forward

Sustainability is always a priority at Toyota. In fact, the West Virginia plant started an agrivoltaics program in 2023 that combines agriculture and solar power generation. To maintain the area around the plant’s 5-acre solar array, a herd of sheep is brought in to feed on grass and weeds. The 2.6 megawatt system generates enough electricity to power 420 homes.