Featured America’s Hugely Popular Toyota RAV4 To Finally Go Electric In 2026

that should be a nice modestly priced bev

 

No more TNGA ½arss platformed EVs ? Well good for them!

 

GA-K is TNGA.
Toyota New Global Architecture - Wikipedia
Sounds like they are further tweaking it for EVs, or this is just marketing talk.

 

There was a lot of fan-fare, but Chevron killed the first gen because they inherited the battery patient from it's buyout of Texaco - Early on...
They were very popular - Lease ONLY basis. I believe there was a petition to force Toyota to sell those old Rav4 EV to their current leasers.
I guess cars are like the fashion industry, What was old is new again....

Toyota RAV4 EV - Wikipedia

 

I thought there was a Toyota electric back in the EV1 days. My understanding is GM threw a fit when Toyota didn't crush their EVs.

Bob Wilson

 

Chevron prevailed in a $30 million patent infringement against Panasonic and Toyota.

 

At least GM had a better reason for not allowing sales on the EV1. Those were custom parts where all of the sub manufacturers had high hopes for making all of those custom aluminum parts (sheet metal aluminum A arms steering Etc) for many many years. Many went bankrupt when they stopped production. GM would have been on the hook to keep Parts going for what, 10 years? RAV4 on the other hand were pretty much standard parts that the ice used.
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I'm not sure that's a 'real' law or just a manufacturer's 'best practices', because I know in the medical equipment space, a lot of manufacturers has shorten the time frame to as low as 3 years. Part of the reason health care cost is sky-rocketing. New equipment means new training, disposables (one-time use, contaminated), customized battery packs - you name it, we get 'bent-over' for it.
Cheers....

 

Toyota did sell a few back then, and did give into public pressure to stop crushing the returned lease ones.

 

Gm still doesn’t have parts for their ev’s

 

I thought that was a read this headline but when you got into the weeds it was a PlugIn ... maybe offered in a new market but basically what Toyota already had with a bit more ICE/Atkinson thrown in.

 

$50K that's a lot more than a tesla model Y. Curious how many they sell in the US.

At $7K estimated more than the rav4 prime, if there is not heavy discounting they aren't pricing it to sell many Rav4 BEVs.

 

They will still not have the frunk They are just tweaking the current Camry Hybrid platform

 

That's what we have been expecting for awhile. It mimics Prius history, including the rhetoric. That first generation was on a unique platform, never intended for high-volume sales. It was an opportunity to real-world design test for creating a gen-2 hybrid targeting the masses. Toyota hit the ground running with that gen-2 rollout too. Seeing the successor to bZ4X being a BEV model of RAV4 is a natural next step. Heck, even the timing works well for those reliving that history.

 

That would be true if that was a unique platform but it has been used for years on ICE and hybrid vehicles. It is not new. It has been used since 2015.

Toyota New Global Architecture - Wikipedia

 

Demand for pluggy Camry intensifies...

 

This 2025 Camry owner agrees, but I think I just bought my last new car.

 

Do you really think semantics will make a difference to ordinary showroom shopper? What they consider "platform" is not what you and I see from an engineering perspective. That's why we now hearing from some bZ4X owners who made their purchase based on the "avoid the first year or two" approach... the same pattern as with Prius, no major upgrade necessary.

Detail about whatever is offered as "gen-2" won't matter either. It comes down to the same thing as in the past... owner endorsement. The more real-world stories we share, the more their intimidation fades. That secret to Toyota's success isn't really much of a secret... time. To really establish a new technology, patience is an essential part of the formula. Shoppers understanding how results were achieved is not.

I find the process quite fascinating, since the reverse is true too. Impatience and obsessing with detail has been the downfall of others... which is how "know your audience" came about.

 

Prius ah-la the genII had no equal regarding mileage & passenger/luggage capacity compared to other small cars. Even gen 1, despite its reliability flaws & smallness was beating the competition - simply because there was Zero competition in that kind of mileage range & cleanness. But BZ reviews are horrible because the car compares horribly against Apples to Apples electric cars - of which most are specifically designed for an EV. BZ - not so much. In large part, that was because Toyota fought against the EV. They bet 10s of millions on hydrogen, which put them way behind the eight ball for EV r&d even though decades of History continue to show it was a giant fail for the automotive application.
As for BZ ....Yes of course lessie's and owners are saying " ...avoid this..." it's because it fails to compete with similar class EVs - dollar to dollar.
Don't feel bad john, we bought a Nissan Leaf first iteration & it was horrible too. We acknowledged our bad choice, and learned from it. As you like to say,
"Lessons Learned"
Toyota will, as well.
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