New Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid Review – It's not on sale yet, but is it the car South Africa needs?

co.za, Music, no matter how big car is. You can still save 420 per month budget, the official insurer of good South Africans, hello and welcome to a brand new Toyota. But not only is this a new Toyota, its also a new kind of Toyota and theres a little bit of a clue as to why its special theres, a bit of a blue effect happening in the badge here. So you might have heard of Bevs battery electric vehicles, you might have heard of ATVs hybrid electric vehicles. This is a pH EV, a plug in hybrid electric vehicle, and we know its one of those, because Toyota have put a badge on the side which says plug in hybrid. So let me take you through whats, going on here underneath the Bonnet, a 2.5 liter four cylinder non turbo petrol engine on the front axle, an electric motor on the rear axle, an electric motor, so its all wheel, drive between the axles an 18 kilowatt hour battery. So this is a petrol engine, car and an electric engine car, and that means you get two fuel filler caps, so on the left, thats, where the petrol goes and on the right is where you plug it in when you get home, this car can function as Both a full EV and as a full petrol powered car now all of that might seem a bit confusing. So let me show you how it works in the real world Music.

Now your first question might be what makes this different to the other RAV4 hybrid. You can buy or the haval H6 hybrid that you can buy well. Traditionally, an HEV will have a very small battery about a tenth of the size of this 18 kilowatt hour battery. It will also only have one maybe two Motors, but those Motors will be quite small and not have particularly large outputs. The difference here is youve got a much bigger battery youve got two Motors, and one of those is huge. One of those electric motors alone puts out 134 kilowatts. The petrol engine puts out 136 kilowatts. The rear motor puts out 40 kilowatts. Now, if you add all of those together, thats a large number which I havent calculated yet, but it doesnt matter, because the system has inefficiencies and it has software which controls it and basically what it means is you get an output of 225 kilowatts of power now Thats quite a lot of power in a RAV4. It means this car can do zero to a hundred in six seconds, which feels a little bit unnecessary. But it is quite fun as well and very easy to overtake on the highway now going back to the difference between a hybrid and this, a pH EV is that this car can run exclusively in EV mode, all the way up to highway speeds and Beyond. When a hybrid can probably only run to about 40 to 60 Ks an hour in full electric mode, this cars default mode is full electric mode.

Every time you get in it tries its best to stay in full electric mode for as long as possible. Now you can really game the system here and you can plug this car in at night into a normal wall. Socket takes between six and nine hours to charge the battery completely full, and when you wake up, youve got a completely full battery that can take you about 60 to 80 Ks, just on electricity alone. Now what that means for somebody like myself is that I could probably go Monday to Friday without using a single drop of petrol. My commute is 10ks to work and 10 10ks back and occasionally obviously Ill. Go to dis, chem and buy half of this game or Ill have to run to some other shop, something out of the way or maybe maybe go out for a bite to eat. But thats all easily covered in 60 to 80 Ks. So if I earned this car pretty much Monday to Friday, I wouldnt use a drop of fuel Music. So you have all the benefits of a fully electric vehicle, but if, for some reason, youve run the battery flat and you dont get a chance to charge it overnight at home, you then have the backup of a normal petrol engine under the Bonnet with its own Fuel tank that you can fill up at any petrol station, so the concept of range anxiety just goes out the window and you can also force it into charge mode where it will then run the petrol engine continuously and charge your battery for you.

So if you know youre gon na park, the car – and you wont, have a chance to charge it. You just lock it into charge mode and after about half an hour to 40 minutes of driving, it will almost have charged your battery full and Toyota have made it super easy to choose between all the various modes of the car. So down. Here is your mode. Selector region youve got one called Trail now that will lock the car into all wheel, drive mode, so youve got maximum grip on slippery surfaces. Then youve got a button which you can switch between hybrid vehicle and EV vehicle, so you can lock it into either of those modes and if you hold that down, then you get that charge mode that I mentioned and on the right here. Youve got Auto EV, Auto HV, and what that does is let the car decide when its best to be an EV mode or HV mode based on the changing road conditions. Music, foreign Music – and all of this leads me to think that phevs are the perfect solution for South African motorists because lets face. It were a country of Road Trippers. We love road tripping, we love long distance drives and electric vehicles just arent great on long distances and Im saying this as somebody who has done a long distance road trip in an electric car, its completely possible, the infrastructure is growing all the time. However, for a lot of people, its a bit difficult to wrap your head around and also lets face it, we live in a country with energy insecurity, which is a very nice way of saying that the government is completely us Music.

So what does this translate into? In terms of your costs of running this car, well, the petrol engine right now is averaging 6.3 liters to the 100, but thats, obviously not a true reflection of what this car is capable of, because one of the options you have is zero liters to the hundred. So how do you calculate that in terms of energy costs? Well, the battery is 18 kilowatts and, if youre paying two Rand a unit of electricity at your house, that means that to charge the battery will cost. You 36 rad, now thats, not even two liters of petrol right now and thatll. Take you about 60 to 80 kilometers, which makes it extraordinarily cheap to run if you always ensure that the battery is topped up. However, when you start to discuss the price of this vehicle, everything Ive just said starts to make less sense. Unfortunately, and I kind of wish it was different, so let me get this out up front. You cant buy this car right now. Its third of South Africa have brought in a couple of these units and theyre, giving them to the press and theyre testing them at their Factory, as well with their own staff and its just to see whether this phev can work in South Africa and to help Educate consumers as well so weve been lucky to have a go in it. That means a Toyota. South Africa absolutely will not give me a price for this car.

However, we can speculate the top spec hybrid E4, which is the hybrid that you can buy right now. The RAV4 top spec one is 785 000 Rand and I think using my crystal ball of pricing speculation that this car would probably go on sale for a smidge under 900, 000 Rand, probably lets call it 100K more than the RAV4 that you can buy right now. The hybrid, a hundred thousand Rand is going to buy you quite a lot of petrol, isnt it, and this caught is based on the gxr spec, the top spec gxi, which has nice things like seat coolers and that sort of thing and that car costs 250 000 Rand, less than this potential price of this car, 250, 000 Rand thats also thats quite a lot of petrol isnt it that you can buy with the money you save by just not buying a pH EV, and so as much as I love this concept. I do think it is a bit of a difficult sell and the thing is theres no way to get around it. When you add complexity and components to a drivetrain, the costs are obviously going to go up. The cost of lithium batteries is expensive. Youve got a big electric motor in here. Youve got another one at the back. Youve got your petrol. Motor youve got quite a complicated drivetrain, all of that costs money, and that means that phevs are always going to be a bit more expensive than all of the siblings in their stable and thats a Pity, because I think I really do think the more I drive This car, the more I enjoy it and the more.

I think that this is just about the perfect electric vehicle solution for South Africans right now, Music. Now I have come to really appreciate the experience of an EV car. For me they are the best commuter cars that money can buy. If money is No Object right now I would have an EV and, of course, something interesting to drive on the weekend because they are pretty dull but as a commuter solution, EVS makes so much sense. So as Im crawling quietly here through the leafy suburbs, Im having a wonderful full electric vehicle experience, its completely quiet its totally smooth, it is just about the best way to transport yourself from A to B in busy traffic. But I know at the back of my head: I know that Ive got that safety net of the combustion engine underneath the Bonnet. I can stop and fill up the tank anytime. I like. If I have an unexpected trip. I know I wont have a problem and on the way home, I can charge the battery Music. Are you busy trying to decide between two cars? Three cars? Four cars: five: cars, six cars. We have an excellent compare tool on our site, which will help you make sense of all the different pricing and all the different specs youll find that on our main site, as well as in our app its super slick, its easy to use its highly detailed. Its constantly updated with the latest information and pricing – and I can guarantee you itll – make your life a ton easier check it out on our website link in the description below.

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