Toyota RAV4 Hybrid AWD test: comfortable and innovative but niche

The Toyota RAV4 Hybrid four-wheel drive is a surprisingly good drive – but still trying to find its audience

Thursday 19 May 2016 08:24 EDT

Beneath the chubby exterior is a new hybrid drivetrain in a four-wheel drive. The RAV4 runs well but uses up plenty of fuel

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What’s all this then? Why, the familiar figure of a Toyota RAV4, the motor giant’s medium-ish sized SUV. The RAV4 sub-brand, if I may call it that, has been around for a couple of decades now, and you may recall the early ones, much more utilitarian, smaller, youthful affairs, living up to the RAV acronym as Recreational Active Vehicle.

Since those lazy days on the beach the RAV4 has grown up, become more of a family transport thing, and put on some weight (haven’t we all?) and I’m not sure the new body is “beach-ready”. The latest incarnation was launched three years ago, and is now in need of a facelift (aren’t we all?). So there are some tweaks to the styling, making it a little shaper as Toyotas tend to be nowadays, with revised interior and a lower roofline. The slabby sides and relatively short stature do make it look a bit chubby. The revolution, though, is under the bodywork – a new hybrid drivetrain. What’s more, this hybrid petrol/electric combo is in four-wheel drive form. This is the really smart bit, and something that, a few years ago, was beyond even Toyota’s clever engineers (Toyota group’s Lexus RX Hybrid SUV, for example, looked like an SUV but owners were told, quietly but firmly, not to take it off-road).

Well, they’ve cracked it, though I have to say that, like most drivers, I didn’t actually get all down and muddy with the RAV4. Unlike traditional four-wheel drive vehicles, the Toyota RAV4’s all-wheel drive consists of separately driven front wheels (from the petrol engine) and rear wheels (pushed along by the torquey electric motor). It is, like most aspects of hybrid motoring, an arguably overly-complicated answer to a question few people ever ask, in a world where a clean diesel and conventional all-drive system does the job just as well, and is hardly less green. Fortunately for Toyota, they have a RAV4 diesel that precisely matches this description.

There is plenty of power and acceleration but the RAV4 is quite noisy at higher speeds

Indeed, this is the Hybrid RAV4’s odd weak spot – greenness and, the other side of that coin, fuel consumption. Admittedly with a fairly heavy foot, I couldn’t get better than 40mpg out of my test vehicle, which is not bad for a relatively heavy vehicle (1.8 tonnes) but could be better, because some of that extra weight is derived from the big battery pack it carries. The truth is that the 2.5-litre petrol engine does a perfectly good job of serving the RAV4, and the electric motor is there to add a little extra oomph at lower speeds. Plus that novel all-wheel drive set up.

I found the RAV4 a surprisingly good drive; nowadays it is more car than SUV, and it handles just fine. There’s plenty of power and acceleration too, but, as with all CVT (continuously variable transmission) automatic gearboxes it is quite noisy at higher speeds. This spoils the refinement of the RAV4, which is otherwise near faultless. I do have to report, though, that, on my example, the wiper stalk had a very slight vibration at certain speeds, an especially unnerving experience in a Toyota where such things are not supposed to happen. I also feel obliged to mention, for balance, that the brand, with Honda, usually tops the reliability charts.

So that’s what all this is then; a comfortable, innovative, impressive feat of engineering, but one still trying to find its audience.

Nice – but niche