The 2025 Toyota Camry XLE AWD Quietly Reinvents the Midsize Sedan

Say hello to next year’s bestselling hybrid, the 2025 Toyota Camry. That’s a prediction, of course, but the odds are stacked in favor of Toyota’s new midsize sedan scoring that honor. While just 12 percent of the 290,649 Camrys sold in America last year were hybrids, every 2025 Camry will blend power from a gas four-cylinder engine and one or two electric motors. 

It’ll be a major upgrade for owners returning to a dealer for their second or fourth or sixth Camry. Whether you judge it based on how it drives, how it looks, or how the numbers stack up on a spreadsheet, the ninth-generation Camry is a serious improvement over the car it replaces. 

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It’s Not Just About the Fuel Economy 

The Toyota Prius made the word “hybrid” synonymous with “high mpg” more than 20 years ago. These days, the benefits of driving a gas-electric car go beyond saving the planet and money at the pump. As hybrid tech has matured, the power balance has shifted to give the electric side of the house more authority. That means today’s hybrids deliver more of the punchy yet silky-smooth electric motoring we like in EVs and less of the asthmatic combustion-engine wheezing that’s traditionally made fuel economy specials so dang miserable.  

The Camry’s new powertrain proves how an electric motor can make an ordinary four-cylinder into something that’s better to drive. In front-wheel-drive cars, a 184-hp four-cylinder engine and a 134-hp electric motor team up to make a maximum of 225 horsepower. All-wheel drive adds $1,525 to the price and a second, 40-hp motor that drives the rear wheels. Because the total system power is limited by how much juice the battery can deliver, peak output only rises to 232 horsepower.  

Either way, there’s plenty of power to sail off from a stop under pure electric power before the engine is stirred into the mix. In city-speed passing maneuvers, our Camry XLE AWD test car responded to pokes of the accelerator quicker than the typical gas engine. You don’t have to wait for the air intake to fill up, the transmission to downshift, or the engine revs to build. The electric motor gives you immediate action while the engine builds steam.  

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While Camry ownership is not about the performance, the numbers add to the hybrid’s case. In MotorTrend testing, the 3,748-pound Camry XLE AWD hit 60 mph in an easy 6.9 seconds, a half-second quicker than the current 208-hp hybrid and four-cylinder models. Camry-driving speed freaks (all six of them) will be disappointed that right now there’s no replacement for the outgoing 301-hp V-6 model that hustled to 60 in less than 6.0 seconds. A Camry with the same plug-in-hybrid powertrain as the RAV4 Prime would fill that void nicely, though packaging a large enough battery in the car would be a challenge. 

But It’s Also About the Fuel Economy 

As the EPA likes to remind us, your mileage may vary, but in the hybrid Camry, there’s also a decent chance it won’t. The XLE AWD’s window sticker reads 46/46/46 mpg city/highway/combined, which suggests that no matter what kind of driving you do, the Camry will sip fuel like its communion wine. Our experience backs that up, with our observed real-world fuel economy stubbornly stuck in the mid-40s everywhere and every way we drove it. 

Just as remarkable as its fuel economy is how utterly unremarkable the Camry drives while achieving such impressive fuel economy. It’s obvious that Toyota designed this car to be a hybridized Camry rather than an enlarged Prius. You shift into drive not by turning a knob or jiggling a joystick but by sliding an old-fashioned gear selector into drive. There’s no one-pedal driving or high-regen mode, either. To slow the Camry, you use the brake pedal the same way you always have. In the Prius, when you lift off the accelerator or brake, you can often hear a high-pitched hum as a motor spins up to recapture as much energy as possible. That never happens in the Camry hybrid. 

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The only vestige of hybrid weirdness is that the Camry’s 2.5-liter engine still moos like a laboring cow when you stand on the accelerator for extended periods. It’s less of an annoyance these days because the electric motors have enough torque to keep the engine revs low while flowing with traffic. But in a world where automakers are capable of making V-6s sound like V-8s and EVs sound like gas cars, surely Toyota can figure out how to make its hybrids sound like anything other than a distressed farm animal. 

Smooth Operator 

The Camry’s sloping nose, narrow headlights, and subtly bulging rear fenders suggest a newly aggressive attitude to go along with Toyota’s rekindled interest in building sports and sporty cars. Don’t be deceived and/or alarmed. The SE and XSE trims get sport-tuned springs and dampers plus larger-diameter anti-roll bars for sharper handling. The XLE AWD tested here, on the other hand, is the same comfort-first Camry drivers know and love. The smooth, (mostly) quiet operation of the gas-electric powertrain spills over into the rest of the driving experience. Driving this Camry has a calming effect— even in the rudest rush-hour traffic. 

At the test track, this Camry is literally quite average. Its 114-foot stop from 60 mph is slightly better than the 121-foot average of every 2023–2025 model-year car that MotorTrend has tested. At 0.82 g, it has slightly less cornering grip than its contemporaries, to the tune of 0.02 g. 

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The dampers are slightly too soft for anyone who would call themselves a car enthusiast. It bounces on its springs with more movement than we’d like, and there’s some side-to-side head toss as the Camry crosses expansion joints through sweeping highway curves. But that’s the personal taste of a car enthusiast. It’s perfectly tuned for the sensible Americans who would buy this particular $40,780 Camry XLE in search of a near-luxury car without the price premium.  

The Tall and Short of It 

There’s some fat in that price from the sole option on our test car, the $4,760 Premium Plus package, which bundles a few upgrades with some annoyances. Front and rear parking sensors, a 360-degree camera system, a large head-up display, and ventilated seats are all positive additions. We could do without the extra active safety systems that beep and boop more than they help, especially the driver attention monitor, which nags you as soon as you look anywhere other than dead ahead. There’s also nothing premium-sounding about the nine-speaker JBL audio system. 

The real problem, though, is that the Premium Plus pack’s included panoramic sunroof subtracts 0.8 inch of front headroom that’s already in short supply. Two staffers measuring 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-3 agreed the Camry’s low roof would stop them from buying the car. With lots of legroom but similarly tight headroom, the rear seats work great for kids, car seats, and anyone built like Legs Go All the Way Up Griffin (YouTube it). Upfront, there’s great storage in the center console, easy-to-access USB ports, and upholstered trim with a cool crosshair pattern. 

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Toyota’s latest in-car technology also helps the Camry’s cabin catch up with the times. The crisp high-mounted center screen features large icons, easy-to-read fonts, and a simple menu structure on the left side of the screen. We do wish there were a customizable home screen capable of showing navigation and audio information simultaneously—at least the standard wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto offers an alternative. We love that the full array of physical climate controls makes adjusting fan speed or temperature easy and hate that reconfiguring the digital gauge cluster is a cryptic process that doesn’t get easier with practice. 

The Bigger Picture 

For years, Toyota has advocated for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by investing in hybrids rather than EVs. By building every example of America’s bestselling car with a gas-electric powertrain, the company is now putting its words into action more than ever. When Toyota converts 88 percent of Camry buyers from gas cars to hybrids, it will keep some 380,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere every year. That’s a drop in a massive bucket—equal to about 0.03 percent of the annual U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline—but cleaning up a fleet of 280 million vehicles isn’t going to happen overnight. 

The good news for Camry buyers is that whether they care about cleaning up carbon emissions or not, they get a better car either way. With the all-hybrid 2025 Camry lineup, Toyota is leading buyers toward a car that delivers even more of the comfort and quiet competence Camry buyers expect.