You and the RAV4 will very quickly go off one another if you ever dare to drop the charge needle into the red. The Curse of the PHEV is once you’ve depleted its battery, you’ve got a 2,000kg lump – including a chunk of useless battery ballast – hauled by a reedy, overworked engine.
Toyota rav4 hybrid free#
Then there’s the free road tax, and the rock-bottom company car bill.Īnd the bad news? There must be some bad news. Still, hardly helps rebuild the buying public’s trust in the post dieslegate age, does it?Ĭourse, what makes the RAV4 a clever PHEV is viable all-electric range – even in the depths of winter you can crank up the heated seats – front and rear – and manage a decent round trip to school, work or the shops without waking the engine. None of that’s Toyota’s fault (don’t hate the player, hate the game and all that). It’s all very respectable, which makes the claimed 280mpg and 22g/km lab figures all the more ridiculous. Total range when brimmed with petrol and electricity was close to 500 miles. Running as a hybrid, economy settled at around 40mpg. If the whole 18.1kWh battery capacity was useable that’d equate to 41 miles of e-range, but somewhere around 35 miles is more plausible. It’s nicely efficient: 2.3 miles per kWh in EV mode matches our recent best in the all-electric Audi e-tron. Going PHEV has made the RAV4 heavier and more expensive, but it’s made it a heck of a lot nicer to drive. In a Porsche Carrera GT.īut because the RAV4-PHEV can lean back on its cushion of surging electro-torque, the engine never sounds strained, like it’s going to burst through the glovebox and ask you to ease up on steep hills. Normally these elastic-band transmissions panic when asked to out-accelerate a glacier, and pin the revs higher than a terrified learner attempting a hill-start. No, the best bit is how proper electrical boost takes the pain and tinnitus out of driving a big, heavy car fitted with a CVT gearbox. Even with a kerbweight just shy of two tonnes, the RAV4’s rapid. When the twin e-motors megazord with the unremarkable 2.5-litre non-turbo petrol engine, the result is a heady 302bhp. Ask the poor guy in a Golf GTI who unselfishly moved over as I indicated to join a dual-carriageway last week, only to helplessly watch the RAV4 steam off toward the horizon as he – a dwindling speck in the mirrors – sheepishly pulled back in behind. That looks like a big hit of electric power.
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