Who Is The Toyota RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid Best Suited To?

Article by Downtown Toyota Brisbane’s Jon Wimhurst -Senior Toyota Sales Consultant

The RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid is going to suit the person who likes the idea of electric, but is not ready to go full electric. That is probably the cleanest way to say it. They still want petrol, they still like hybrid, they still want the RAV size and the RAV features, but they are looking at electric and thinking, “I would not mind trying that, but I do not want to jump all the way in.”

That is where the Plug-In Hybrid fits. It gives them a way to try electric driving without giving up the things they already know and like about a Toyota hybrid. You have got petrol, hybrid and electric working together, so it is not asking the customer to change everything about how they drive. It is giving them another option.

It suits short weekly driving

If your week is made up of shorter trips, the Plug-In Hybrid starts to make a lot of sense. Work and back, school drop-off, shops, local running around, that type of driving where you are not doing hundreds of kilometres every day. If you can charge it at home, you might use very little petrol during the week.

That is the real advantage. It is not about saying you will never use petrol. You still have fuel in the car, and you still have the hybrid side. But for a lot of normal weekly driving, you may be able to use the electric side a lot more than people think.

I use my own household as the easy example. My wife and I are considering one ourselves, and where we live compared to where she works makes the Plug-In Hybrid make a lot of sense on paper. She works Tuesday to Saturday, and the idea would be that she could charge the car at home and use the electric side for her work week without really touching the petrol side. Then when she goes down to Mount Tamborine to see her sister, she can just hit the normal button and use the petrol hybrid side like you would expect. That is the bit I like about it. You are not locked into one way of using the car.

The work-from-home customer is a good example

I had a customer who works from home and does about 200 kilometres a month. Maybe 50 kilometres a week. For that sort of person, the Plug-In Hybrid could be perfect. She does not want to go full electric, and she still likes a RAV.

So the conversation becomes, “Well, you can go down the normal Hybrid road, or there is this Plug-In Hybrid coming. What do you think of that?” And when someone is only doing those sorts of kilometres, you can see why the PHEV becomes interesting.

She may not use much petrol at all if most of her driving is local and she has the ability to charge. That does not mean the petrol side is not important. It is still there, and that is part of the comfort of the vehicle. But for her actual day-to-day use, the electric side could be doing a lot of the work.

Some people will buy it for the power

Not everyone is looking at the Plug-In Hybrid just to save fuel. Some customers want the power. It is expected to be the most powerful RAV we have had, and some people like that. They may not know exactly when they are going to use it, but they like knowing it is there.

That extra grunt will be a real reason for some buyers. Other buyers will be more focused on the ability to use electric for short trips and petrol hybrid for longer drives. That is the good thing about it. Different customers will see different value in the same car.

It is a good step before full EV

The Plug-In Hybrid is also going to suit people who are interested in electric, but still have a bit of concern around charging infrastructure, longer trips, or range anxiety. And that is fair enough. Australia is a big place. People drive long distances, they go away, and they do not always want to be thinking about where the next charger is.

With the Plug-In Hybrid, you do not have to make that full jump. You can use electric when it suits you, then use petrol hybrid when that makes more sense. If someone is never going to charge it, or they do long highway drives every day, then we would need to talk that through because the normal Hybrid might make more sense for them. But if they are doing short trips, charging it, and using that electric side, then yes, it can be a very good fit.

The main thing is that the car has to fit how the customer actually drives. If the electric side lines up with their normal week, the Plug-In Hybrid becomes very interesting. If it does not, the normal RAV4 Hybrid is still a very good answer.

To find out more about your options with the Toyota RAV4 and Toyota Electrified contact Jon and the team at Brisbane’s Downtown Toyota today.