Toyota RAV4 Hybrid Detailed Review with Real World Economy

this is the Toyota RAV4 hybrid and I'm going to review it starting with the looks this is the front this is the side it's a 168 centimeters tall that's about five foot six but it just feels taller I can't even see the top of the roof unless I jump so I'm going to check and ah no that is about right it can also Wade through up to half a meter of water so that's half a meter that is above the center of the wheel and it's above the plastic moldings at the bottom of the doors and this is the rear you press here to open the boot all bar the base spec icon model get the electric Boot and then we have 580 liters of space which is big for this size of car under here is a spare wheel that's good to see and I'm going to try and remove this parcel shelf one-handed ah that was actually quite easy to put the rear seats down there's no handy thing here that you can pull although there is a 12 volt socket that's good to see you have to use these levers see if I can do it one-handed yep oh whilst carrying a camera then we have a flat load area 1690 liters it comes with a 2.5 liter four-cylinder petrol engine mated to Toyota's clever two motor hybrid transmission you can have it as either front wheel drive or four-wheel drive if you get the four-wheel drive variant you get a motor at the back so then it has a total of three motors the front wheel drive has 218 brake horsepower but the four-wheel drive has 222 so they are close both have 221 newton meters of torque zero to 60 front wheel drive is 8.4 seconds and the four-wheel drive is 8.1 getting in and out is easy the doors open wide nice big opening easy to hop in and out although I can't put my foot on the floor whilst I'm sitting on the seat so I do have to sort of hop out a little bit but that's the same with all these SUVs and the rear door again big opening as well yeah no trouble now that I'm in the rear I'm pleased to say there is ample room my feet go under the seat in front easily and this seat is set in my five foot ten driving position and the seats are incredibly comfortable very padded and soft I think it is fake leather but either way it's comfortable there is an armrest here two cup holders my elbow doesn't go anywhere near those holes so that's comfortable events down there and what looks like yeah some USBC ports looks like there's a pocket on the back of this chair but it's not it's a dummy it's just a line a seam that's a pocket though it's one light up here grab handles either side and the door card that has a padded armrest too in fact all this feels soft that's hard that's hard and so isn't that but feels incredibly sturdy I think this is going to last a very long time the rear visibility that's not so great this seat has got these big haunches either side affecting my view out the front even if I lean to the side it's not great so if you suffer from car sickness you may be worse off in the back of this car than some others now for the driving position this seat is already set in my driving position how far back does it go not that much actually I can still operate the brake and the gas just fine if you're particularly tall try this car before you buy it I'm only five foot ten and most of my length is in the Torso not the leg although it doesn't feel that way at the moment um that's as far forward as the seat goes and is about the length of my foot between the seat and the brake pedal let's get to a more comfortable position and see how high it goes see if I can keep a hands worth of yeah so it's just over a hand of distance between my head and the ceiling how low you can also adjust the seat like that and that is about two what about the steering wheel how far in and out oh that's quite a lot actually a bit more on average and an up and down that is about average head restraint goes all the way down so there's no Gap in here so even if you're short it will still catch your head and that's as high as it goes now for a detailed view of the interior and I'm going to start with this door plenty of padding here for the armrest this is all padded feels of very sturdy quality this is hard but Rock Solid and the door makes a good Sound electric windows and mirrors this is a half liter bottle you could probably get a one and a half liter bottle down there with some extra storage on the side I don't know what this thing is no idea just some sort of slot here but doesn't actually go anywhere that's your electric boot this is cool if I press that button that happens you can see around the car I've seen that before and I'll turn that off now automatic high beams some storage there that's a little bit grippy that surface padded nice and soft you can adjust the intensity of the vents there and obviously the direction digital instrument cluster in the Middle with analog at the sides steering wheel it's round good thickness not too chunky these Plastics they don't feel luxury but they feel sturdy and this material on the steering wheel feels like it's going to last a long time I don't think I could scratch that very easily not the most plush but sturdy Everything feels like it's going to last for ages big knobs look at that easy got your dual button there so you can have different temperatures on either side or press it again and it sinks them together demister controls big buttons for heated seats with a click when you press them good when you've got gloves on some padding down here wouldn't say pattern actually it's like a rubber mat to try and stop your phone from moving although I don't think it's going to be very successful and that's where you plug in for Android auto this is a little bit small actually for my phone with this lead I probably need an angled lead but then my phone is stupidly big 12 volt socket again big lever that you can use to pull it in between drive neutral reverse and park and you've got your up and down for your I'm not sure what it is it's not gears this car doesn't really have gears some sort of fake gears I think hold so if you come off the brake the car doesn't move electronic parking brake Drive modes and EV buttons you can do a short distance on Eevee if there's battery available a little bit of storage here although I don't think it's a good idea even though it's a little lip I think things are just going to go flying if you put them in there glove box is damped a reasonable size and seats are incredibly comfortable I've already driven this car two hours along the motorway and I suffered zero fatigue Auto dimming rear view mirror this one is a dynamic one also gets a black roof lining and got lights there on the sun visors as the light every time I lean on this bit here it makes like a weird sound I can hear that I think it's the two levers touching each other cup holders there let's try the half liter bottle yep no problem probably fit a decent sized thermos flask in there that's nice and padded so comfortable armrest and oh we have a tray and a nice big box with some felt at the bottom and two more USBS I've counted I think five USBS so far that's one for each person in the car here's a quick idea of what you get with each trim level there are four available the base one is called the icon and I think that gets pretty much everything you probably want you get cruise control radar cruise control the auto steering when there's lines and it can follow the car in front Dual Zone climate control Auto lights Auto high beams Auto wipers rear parking sensors rear camera road sign assist privacy glass on a base model it's not often you get privacy glass on the base model reclining rear seats an Apple carplay and Android auto that's all on the base model for 35 350 pounds pay an extra 2 800 pounds for the design and you get an electric boot keyless entry voice recognition and front parking sensors of course you get you get different styling things with these different trims as well you get bigger Wheels with the design but for 2 800 pounds you know I'm not very happy with that upgrade in my opinion the base one seems really good value then there's two top spec models and they're within 400 pounds of each other you've got the dynamic which is 6185 pounds more than the base and you get the XL which is 5785 pounds more than the base model so you get everything for the base model has you get everything the design has but the dynamic and the XL both those two top spec models share an electric driver's seat puddle lights and ambient lighting plus different size wheels but where they differ is dynamic goes for style and Excel seems to go for more luxury and like a winter pack so the dynamic gets gloss black on the bumpers on the side of the car a gloss black roof a shark finale and some gloss black mirrors and uh black roof lining the XL doesn't have all that gloss black it does have some Chrome inserts in the door handles it has fairly normal styling but 400 pounds cheaper than the dynamic and you get a heated steering wheel you get a warning light on the dashboard if your screen wash is low a de-icer for the front wiper a headlight cleaner or should I say headlight cleaners more than one I'm sure and you get electric seats at the front not just the driver's seat like you do in the dynamic but both the front seats are electric with memory function so I think the XO in my opinion unless for me I'd choose that over the dynamic but for value for money well the icon wins oh and if you want four-wheel drive you can't have that with the icon design and up for four-wheel drive and four-wheel drive is 2375 pounds more the seat belt gets height adjustment which is nice because you can get the seat belt exactly where you want it and it's not something you get very often these days I'm going to start the driving with maneuvering firstly does it creep so if I come off the brake does it move forwards yes it does can I stay super slow without stopping and starting in a jerky way yes I can I can't keep a completely consistent speed I am speeding up and slowing down a little bit but it is very usable what about rear visibility big Square Windows a little bit of a blind area where the C pillars are and all cars get reversing sensors and a reversing camera this has the 360 camera but you have to pay extra for that reversing is pretty easy actually because the wing mirrors are huge you can really see what's next to you you don't have to lift your head that high you certainly don't need to lower the mirrors to see either side of the car what about the Turning Circle well I know it's 11 meters which is good for this size of car but what about the steering that's one turn 1.3 turns it's fairly average but 11 meters for a car this size is fairly impressive and the steering is light for the size of car this car is very easy to maneuver I'm now trying it on some out of town Country Roads and this Bend corn is relatively flat there is a little bit of lean I'll reset the trip computer now and see how it does got some national speed limit coming up soon 60 miles per hour and I'll also launch it another Bend it does it does handle surprisingly well considering the height of the car I believe it is around about 1 600 kilos which isn't actually that heavy for a car of this size especially when you consider that it's um hybrid with a battery but it's not a big battery it does a lot with that little battery coming up to the National speed limit section now let's put it into Sport and put my foot down [Music] yeah that's a that's a pleasant amount of acceleration it's just so smooth and that's what I love about Toyota's hybrid system I am a fan because although yeah you get the engine going it's never really bothered me that much but what I like is that you you don't get the jerkiness of the gears now there are some gearboxes which are very smooth but still they're not as immediate if I put my foot down it goes there's barely any delay whatsoever and at low speeds around town being able to go into EV mode when you're at low speeds is Pleasant it's relaxing I'm actually quite surprised with how well this car is handling and it took that bump nearly 60 miles an hour probably the best I've ever taken it usually that bump does upset cars but this one yeah didn't seem to care there's no one behind me so I can stop here and launch it let's see how it does it's in sports mode zero miles an hour no one coming floor the throttle very good naught to 30 is impressive there's 50 and there's 60. did that just as the road started to go uphill we didn't quite make 60 before the bottom of the hill the car has double Wishbone suspension at the back let's put it in normal mode now Mac first and strut at the front that's probably why it handles well independent suspension all round the gas pedal is nice because it's linear the brake pedal it feels nice to begin with but when I want to break a bit harder it doesn't progress as much as I want it to I think I'll break a bit harder I press a bit more and not a lot happens I have to do extra than I'm expecting but the beginning of it is nice the steering is actually well weighted it might be a little bit on the light side for me but that is an opinion it has similar amounts of feel to what most modern cars have so I got 39.5 miles per gallon on that Country Road Drive and considering how I was driving it and the size of the car that's impressive let's see how it does on the Urban Roads I've just reset the trip computer starting the Urban Roads and this is where I enjoy hybrids at the moment I'm in EV mode you can often get like 50 plus percent in Easy Mode when you're driving around town I've seen as high as 70 not in this car I've not tried this car on Urban Roads properly yet but in a Toyota Yaris and as a result you end up getting incredible MPG at the moment I'm at 99.9 which is essentially as high as it goes the auto steering doesn't really work very well around town and that's because the road markings aren't very good there's too many road work markings around and parked cars so I just leave it switched off but I do find the radar cruise is still useful I'm in traffic now and the radar cruise is making my life easy it's doing the starting and the stopping not all hybrids are the same and I think Toyota make one of the best systems there is the simplest way I can explain it without getting technical is it allows the engine to be either on and running at an efficient state or off so therefore you get more out of each liter of fuel you use than you would if you didn't have this system for example I'm in traffic right now if I was in my petrol manual set lay on there'll be points where my engine will be giving me zero percent efficiency because it will be running but I wouldn't be moving anywhere whereas Toyota hybrids can get up to 40 efficiency in Optimum conditions but they stay closer to that more of the time 96.9 miles per gallon usually driving this route I'll be in the 30s if I'm lucky especially in traffic like this I just did a significant part of traffic sometimes it takes me around about 10 minutes although I don't think it took quite that long this time I don't think I heard the engine come on once it was in EV mode the entire time which is why 99.9 miles per gallon I'm coming up to a 40 road now and from here it's mostly uphill so I suspect the economy will go below 99.9 but we'll see what it does I'll do my normal Urban route I'm usually lucky to get 40 miles per gallon on this route and the traffic was a lot worse today than usual so it's going to have a hard time but then I don't think traffic seems to bother this car too much the 0 to 60 performance of this car of 8.1 seconds this is the four-wheel drive variant doesn't really tell you the full story because it's 0 to 20 is I don't want to use the word startling but surprising yes it does surprise me which means if you've got a small opportunity to take around about the car is there and ready for you put your foot on the go pedal and it goes there's no delay it just gets up and moves the heated seats aren't that hot they're warm they're pleasant but usually if I have it on the top setting I can't handle it for long and have to go down one so high on this is more like medium in most cars I'm used to but there is only two settings here I had it on high during my whole journey of getting the car which was about 90 miles you haven't seen that clip yet you're going to see it after I've done the urban driving it's the first thing I filmed but it's the last thing I'm going to show you just because I have a routine on how I do the videos and I wouldn't have had time to do it last simply because well daylight so after the urban trip I got 60.8 miles per gallon and the traffic was worse than usual and I'm in a big SUV usually I'm lucky to get 40 miles per gallon in much smaller cars and I was in comfort so that's a seriously impressive number now I'm going to show you my review on the motorway which I've already filmed on this occasion I'm going to be able to thoroughly test how it's like at high speed because I have a 90 mile journey to do which is going to take me the best part of two hours most of it is Motorway so is a slip road to the M23 let's put my foot down and see what it's like not bad pickup's good and the sound from the engine isn't too bad either usually people complain of the ecvt making a sound and it does do that but it's not very loud I'm now about 24 miles into the journey and I'm averaging about 53.5 miles per gallon however there's been a lot of 60 50 and 40 speed limits because of some traffic however I'm just coming into a 70 now so hopefully I can stay at 70 for some time road noise and wind noise are around about average but I would say there's slightly less road noise and slightly more wind noise than I'm used to the wind noise is coming from this Wing mirror I think it's quite big but overall though the volume level in here when I'm doing 60 to 70 miles an hour is normal it's what I'm used to it's not particularly quiet but it's not particularly loud either the radar cruise control is quite brisk so the truck in front has moved over now and it does accelerate fairly quickly more quickly than I would like it to although this would be to some people's taste when the car is accelerating itself I prefer it to accelerate gently there's no way to adjust how quickly it accelerates and breaks with the adaptive cruise control some cars give you the choice of controlling you know like slow medium or fast but there's just one setting in this one the lane Trace assist which is essentially Lane centering works better when there's a car in front at least that's how it feels to me when it's only following the lines it's more likely to bounce me from left to right ever so slightly it's not bad it's not dramatic but I have been in cars where the system is better where it can keep me more centered overall though it is keeping me in the center of my Lane it just wanders a little bit to the left and the right as it does it now I'm approaching some slower moving traffic let's see how this radar cruise control slows me down so the trucks pulled in front of me it's noticed it's breaking that's quite comfortable we didn't leave it too late I mean if I was driving I would have done it earlier than that but it's definitely acceptable this is such a nice place to spend in traffic I've got the radar cruise control on at the moment and it's just following the car in front it's stopping and starting with the car and it's even keeping me in my Lane I don't have to constantly keep using the gas using the brake I can just watch the car make sure everything's okay and relax see I'm not using my legs sitting here cars slowing down carrying front slowing down let's see what the Finish is like are we going to stop oh not quite it'd be interesting to see how it stops if it has a chauffeur finish I don't think I've actually come to a complete stop yet oh looks like I will do soon it does accelerate and break a little bit too quickly for me I could see I didn't need to accelerate much there but it's trying to keep up the car in front this is the finish the ending oh wow that's good that's that's very smooth and then to get going again I need to press resume or the gas pedal if I'm waiting for any amount of time I'm not sure that time limit is if there is a time limit some cars have like a three second time limit where if you stop for three seconds you have to press the button if it's less than three seconds it will go itself you see it just accelerates a little bit too quickly it's a cure in front of me I don't need to rush up to this uh black car in front of me I can just make my way there gently where the lane centering doesn't work is when you're on a sharper bend the sort of Bend you get as you join a Motorway the little blue lines here go out to say that you need to do it and they've gone out just now so it's not handling it here and then you have to take over the steering yourself so that's interesting it's um seems to oh no it is still keeping me in my Lane but the blue lines went I think with these dots it means it's following the car in front I guess it's still doing some kind of steering assistance but it can't handle sharp bends this radar cruise is particularly good at dealing with cars that pull in front of me some systems slam on the brakes and try and regain the following distance as soon as possible sometimes that's not very safe especially when there's a car behind but this system it notices the car is in front but instead of slamming on the brakes it does back off gently and safely I'm coming to the end of this Motorway Journey now I'm in a 50 speed limit but I have been doing 70 for quite some time about half of the journey was on the a12 and most of that has been 70 and I've been able to do close to that speed and the average economy over the whole journey 55.7 now 0.8 miles per gallon I'm very impressed in how relaxed I've been on this journey and how could the fuel economy is I'm using economy levels of fuel yet luxury levels of comfort and the driving assistance systems in the traffic make traffic less of a chore I'm also impressed with the road noise before I said it was a bit lower than average but I've been on some proper noisy roads yet it didn't seem to make much more noise in this car it seems to hush the road noise on the poorer surfaces it's now the next day after filming the video I've just driven the car back 90 miles again but the other way this time I could stay at 70 most of the time apart from a short section of 50 at the beginning and I got 48.8 miles per gallon so that can give you an idea of what you can get when you're able to stay at 70 for a long time so it's comfortable it's economical especially around town but also on the motorway it's reasonably priced compared to its Rivals there's loads of space in here and everything is Rock Solid and I haven't even mentioned the warranty yet it has a 10 year or 100 000 mile warranty whichever comes soon as all you have to do is service it at Toyota and if it has less than a hundred thousand miles on it and you service it a day before it's 10 years old they still give you the year how good is that I think this SUV in this class is the best all-rounder I mean it does depend on what your priorities are but as an overall carve for just somebody wants a car that just works and is nice to use I think this one wins in this class if you found the video interesting please give it a thumbs up subscribe to get my future videos and until the next one cheerio

Channel: Richard Fanders

Views: 202,350

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Id: lYk-KYzzO1I

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2022