Toyota’s Highlander EV Fleet Page Says 28MY — That Doesn’t Mean a 2028 Launch

Toyota’s U.S. Fleet availability page currently says the all-electric Highlander is Delayed and now planned for 28MY and that ordering timing has not yet been announced.¹ That wording is real, but it does not establish that the Highlander EV’s U.S. launch has moved to calendar 2028.¹

The same Fleet page does not give a calendar launch date, production-start date or first-customer-delivery date. It also still shows a MY27 Series Start Up to Build Out Order Dates: TBD field while carrying the separate 28MY delay note.¹ In other words, the Fleet page is a planning and ordering surface with unresolved timing fields, not a clean announcement that retail sales have shifted into 2028.

Toyota’s own consumer-facing newsroom still labels the vehicle the 2027 Highlander.² On Sept. 3, Carscoops reported that a Toyota U.S. spokesperson told the outlet the company had not changed the launch timeline it announced in July and still targets a 2027 launch.³

Those sources can coexist because a model-year planning label and a calendar launch year are not the same thing. The current evidence supports saying Toyota Fleet is planning the BEV as 28MY on that surface while Toyota’s separately reported launch target remains in calendar 2027. It does not support turning the Fleet notation into a confirmed delayed until 2028 headline.¹³

Toyota has already acknowledged one production delay

When Toyota unveiled the electric Highlander on Feb. 10, it called the vehicle the 2027 Highlander and said U.S. sales were expected to begin in late 2026 and continue into early 2027.² That was Toyota’s forward-looking launch expectation at the time, not a guaranteed on-sale schedule.

By July, Toyota had acknowledged a production-timing change. Kelley Blue Book reported on July 10 that a Toyota spokesperson confirmed the Highlander EV’s production timing would be delayed by at least eight weeks for what the company described as additional adjustments.⁴ KBB reported that Toyota did not specify what those adjustments involved.⁴

Toyota’s Fleet page says it was last updated July 22 and now carries the 28MY note, but that page-level date does not establish when that specific line was added or changed.¹ It still does not supply an exact production or retail date.

Fresh reporting has raised the possibility of another delay beyond Toyota’s July position. The reviewed evidence does not establish that as a hard fact. Carscoops’ direct Toyota-spokesperson reporting instead says the company considers its launch timeline unchanged from July and still aimed at 2027.³

What remains unknown

There is still no exact current start-of-production date in the reviewed sources. Toyota has not announced an ordering date on the Fleet page, and the packet does not establish a current retail on-sale date or first-customer-delivery date.²¹³⁴

The reviewed sources also do not explain why Toyota’s U.S. newsroom continues to use the 2027 Highlander label while its Fleet availability page says 28MY.²¹

The current evidence is narrower than a delayed to 2028 claim: Toyota’s Fleet system says 28MY, Toyota’s newsroom still says 2027, and Toyota told Carscoops its calendar launch target remains in 2027.²¹³ Exact production, ordering, on-sale and first-delivery dates remain unresolved.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Toyota Fleet — Highlander Vehicle Availability — Toyota Motor North America, page states last updated July 22, 2026; observed Sept. 6, 2026. https://fleet.toyota.com/ftc/public/fleet/highlander.htm Establishes the current Delayed and now planned for 28MY wording, the statement that ordering timing has not yet been announced, and the still-present MY27 order-date fields marked TBD. The page does not establish a calendar launch date, SOP date or first-customer-delivery date. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Elevated Style Meets Modern Power in the Next Generation 2027 Toyota Highlander — Toyota Motor North America / Toyota USA Newsroom, published Feb. 10, 2026; updated March 30, 2026; observed Sept. 6, 2026. https://pressroom.toyota.com/elevated-style-meets-modern-power-in-the-next-generation-2027-toyota-highlander/ Establishes Toyota’s current 2027 Highlander labeling and its original expectation that sales would begin in late 2026 and continue into early 2027. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Toyota Denies Its Highlander EV Has Been Delayed Again To ‘2027 Or Later’ — Carscoops, Sept. 3, 2026; observed Sept. 6, 2026. https://www.carscoops.com/2026/09/toyota-highlander-ev-delay-again/ Carscoops reports that a Toyota U.S. spokesperson told the outlet the launch timeline had not changed from the July position and still targets 2027. The article also discusses separate further-delay reporting that this newsroom does not treat as independently established fact. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. 2027 Toyota Highlander EV Delayed as Hybrid Sales Surge — Kelley Blue Book, July 10, 2026; observed Sept. 6, 2026. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/2027-toyota-highlander-ev-delayed-as-hybrid-sales-surge/ KBB reports that a Toyota spokesperson confirmed a production delay of at least eight weeks for additional adjustments; it does not establish an exact revised production or retail date. ↩ ↩² ↩³