Toyota Rav4 PHEV review: Hail the new plug-in market lead

Résumé détaillé

The family SUV has come a long way from its compact beginnings, but Toyota’s latest plug-in hybrid makes a convincing case for its transformation ...

It was only a matter of time before Toyota, the kings of hybrid, got its plug-in recipe right. While they can’t claim to be the inventors of hybrid – pedants will point to the 1896 Armstrong on display in the Louwman Museum in The Hague – they certainly made it mainstream.

However, Toyota has long been more closely associated with regular hybrids. It is noteworthy that its first foray into PHEVs was with the Prius in 2012, but it was not really a serious commercial effort. More a case of “We could do this if we wanted, but we’re not so sure”.

To put some perspective on this, it was fitted with a 4.4kWh battery pack, five times smaller than on the new Rav4.

There was the 2017 Prius PHEV and even a previous Rav4 variant, but it wasn’t until 2023 and the fifth-generation Prius that Toyota really seemed vested in PHEV. Since then, they’ve added the C-HR and the Rav4.

The latest Rav4 version has increased its claimed WLTP electric-only range to 137km, depending on specification, due to increasing the battery capacity from 18.1kWh to 22.7kWh.

The improvements go beyond the battery: the new generation features a more powerful front electric motor, thereby delivering more overall power to this SUV than before.

Let’s park the PHEV element for a moment and consider the car itself. The Rav4 tells its own tale of how crossovers have grown.

This was a small hatchback crossover in the mid-1990s when it landed on these shores. Now it’s a behemoth.

Never mind that it’s longer, wider and taller – though, tellingly, lower to the ground – than the original five-door Rav4. It’s a whopping 700kg heavier, give or take a few dozen kilogrammes due to differences in the way car weights used to be measured. Either way, we are talking about the equivalent weight of a large horse.

Début de l'article, extrait de The Irish Times. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.