![]() The Prime is really quick it’s faster than the four-cylinder Supra sitting next to it in the Toyota showroom. The RAV4 Prime offers medium-range EV ownership benefits without any real drawbacks, apart from the initial price. The late comedian Mitch Hedburg observed that escalators don’t break, they just become stairs. The difference with a plug-in hybrid is that, once the battery is depleted, it just becomes a thrifty hybrid. Of course, they could also be doing the same with a full EV like a Nissan Leaf or similar. If these commuters were charging a RAV3 Prime at home during the week, they’d rarely need to burn fuel. Other more recent studies done in the Metro Vancouver area, which has many commuters coming in from the Fraser Valley, shows a median distance travelled of 23 kilometres. Running the air conditioning full blast sapped the pure-electric range below the best-case-scenario claimed 68 kilometres, but 50 kilometres of driving around covers a lot of ground for most drivers.Īccording to Statistics Canada, the median distance travelled by Canadian commuters is just 8.7 kilometres one way. The 18.1-kilowatt-hour battery can be fully charged in 12 hours on a Level One charger, or just an hour and a half on a Level Two.įor a Monday-to-Friday schedule of ferrying kids to summer camps and going grocery shopping and the like, the RAV4 Prime burned no gasoline. ![]() ![]() However, if you hook it up to a plug overnight – and you don’t even need to install an upgraded charger – it is perfectly happy to run errands on electrons only. This hybrid RAV4 is no more difficult to live with than a conventional car. Sports cars and burly off-roaders tend to grab the headlines, but mass-market vehicles are the real technological masterpieces. And I do mean everything: it’s a roomy, family-friendly crossover that consumes little fuel day to day, could be driven across Canada at the drop of a hat and has about as much power for passing and on ramps as a high performance machine like a Honda Civic Type R. This one, the plug-in hybrid Prime XSE, is the most expensive RAV4 you can buy, which makes sense because it is good at nearly everything. Discounting the fleet-sales advantage of pickup trucks, sales chart champions used to be compact sedans. Log In Create Free AccountĪt the time of writing, Canada’s best-selling passenger car is no longer a car.
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