eschatfische
Well-known member
This time last year, my wife was thinking about changing jobs from one where she took public transportation to one where she’d have to commute over 70 miles a day. As someone concerned about climate change but who enjoys driving, she wasn’t concerned about the actual drive, but was concerned about emissions. Having been obsessed with Tesla news for some time, I remembered seeing an article about a compact SUV with a speedy Tesla drivetrain and decent range, but at a lower price than the Model S. “Why don’t we go check out that electric Honda CR-V,” I suggested.
I quickly corrected my error, and we were on our way to the Toyota dealership for a test drive. While we were impressed by the drive, it was the incentives that were the real eye opener, since this was back when Toyota was offering $9300 off, 0% financing and willing to haggle so they could get rid of the 2012 models still on their lot. In just a day we had gone from being only slightly aware of the RAV4 EV to being, because of those insane incentives, serious about a purchase.
We bought it Memorial Day weekend last year. We still love it. And as with any new electric car owner, there was loads of learning and lots of surprises. Here's a few of those.
Many of the surprises have been positive:
1) It has been much more reliable than expected.
Before purchasing, I read about issues in this forum and was aware of the problems that many folks have had - but after one year and almost 16,000 miles, we’ve had zero problems with the physical car. No check EV light, no loss of power, no heater failure, no charging issues, no loud hum. It runs exactly the same today as when we took it home for the first time. (We did miss a few charges due to the early charge timer issues, but we haven’t missed a charge since October of last year when we got the new firmware to fix those. We did also have the problems with Entune which have since been resolved on Toyota’s side. All the issues have been software, not hardware.)
2) Range has been substantially better than expected.
The day after we bought the car, my wife and I drove her commute on a standard charge, deliberately driving at fast highway speeds with the air conditioning blasting, with me wringing my hands and hoping that we didn’t make a mistake. When we got home and had plenty of bars left, we realized that the range of this car wasn’t just as advertised, it was far better than advertised.
I don’t know what happened with that EPA estimate of 103 miles, but it’s so easy to get so much more than that, I think a different reporting methodology from the EPA might be best.
3) The sounds the RAV4 EV makes are endearing.
After getting the RAV4 EV, I was surprised by all of the clatter. With the popular conception of electric cars being quiet, the RAV is an almost hilariously noisy contraption. After a year, I find it endearing - the vacuum-assisted brakes whirring when you first touch the door handle, the klonk of the traction battery engaging into READY mode, the goofy grind of the low speed noise generator, that click, whirr, BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ when you go to charge. This car’s certainly got a personality.
The one noise I didn’t like, of course, was the beeping in reverse, but that’s been disabled at the dealer.
4) Battery degradation seems virtually non-existent.
Maybe we’re missing a few miles, or maybe we’ve covered up some degradation with better EV driving techniques, but we still use the same number of bars to do the same trips. We’re hoping for the best.
Some of the surprises have been neutral:
1) Toyota whispers in one ear, Tesla in the other.
The car really does have a split personality, and for the first couple of months, I was unsure how to drive it, whether I should take Toyota’s Prius-like advice to drive more efficiently, or I should succumb to the beckon of the Sport Mode button and shock the other people on the road with the RAV’s performance. I’ve mostly reconciled that (driving efficiently most of the time which quick bursts of sport mode for fun), but it’s funny how you can actually feel the two different manufacturers arguing with each other about what an electric car should be.
2) Nobody ever asks me about it.
As much as I don’t want to drive a flashy car… I sometimes wish someone would notice it. Other electric car owners talk about how they’re stopped and get asked about their car, while the RAV4 just looks like a RAV4 and nobody cares. I’ll ultimately take the RAV’s roominess over flashy looks, but man, I wish I had the chance to evangelize once in a while.
3) Owning an electric car does require a lot of analysis.
There was more planning and calculation than I expected. Comparing EVSEs and calculating electrical load, trying to estimate just how much the EV will cost with different tiered or time of use rate plans, calculating the payback of the lower cost of ownership against the higher purchase price, figuring out the tax implications, and of course, calculating distances of various trips.
4) There’s nothing else on the market like the RAV4 EV.
The Teslas? So beautiful, such amazing range and performance, so much more expensive. Everything else? Much less range, is smaller, or both. Even with the Model X coming out next year, it seems strange there’s no major competition for the RAV - the RAV addresses almost every concern we have about electric cars as a family (price, room, range, performance) in a way that nothing else does. A lot of people lease because they think something better will be on the road in three years, but I’m not sure we’re going to see any other cars out there like this one any time soon.
Some of the surprises, unfortunately, weren’t positive.
1) The heater is really quite bad.
When I thought about potential downsides of using EVs, I honestly hadn’t considered the inherent problems of heating, where there’s just not much excess heat to pump into the cabin due to the efficiency of the motor. The slow, power-sucking heater of the RAV has certainly been the most problematic aspect of the car for us, even though it does technically work. We usually just close the vents, crank the seat heaters, and go from there unless it’s in the low 40s or below (which thankfully isn’t often in the Bay Area.)
2) The public charging infrastructure is worse than it looks.
Looking at Plugshare or Chargepoint, it looks like there are countless charging stations around the area - but virtually none of them have much value. It seems like each station is 1) in an expensive parking garage, 2) being used by a Leaf, or much to my consternation, a plug-in hybrid that doesn’t really need to use the charger, 3) deathly slow because it only runs at 208 volts and 20-32 amps, or 4) all of the above. My faith in electrical cars becoming a mainstream, viable option for many has only been strengthened over the past year - the range of the RAV4 EV after charging overnight works out just fine for us 99.8% of the time - but my faith in there being a viable public charging infrastructure has been shattered.
3) The design of the rear door and the position of the J1772 port makes unloading the car a pain.
I hate that, in our closed, small garage, the charging port is on the same side of the car as the opening for the rear of the hatch - we have to eject the charging door, put it in an unlocked-but-not-open position, unload the car, and THEN plug in. While I understand that this is a conversion, and that’s just where the fueling door was, it would be so nice if the charging port were on the other side, or even in front or back.
4) The volume control and forward/back controls for the passenger are completely insane.
Curses to whoever created that awful musical note tray! They really should have had a passenger-accessible volume and forward/back controls, or added them to the interface in a way that doesn’t result in a tray coming out and blocking the information you want to see.
5) Toyota customer service has been just terrible.
The vast majority of the interactions with my car have been a pleasure. The vast majority of my interactions with Toyota, on the other hand, have been an exercise in frustration. We’ve been turned away for basic service because an EV tech doesn’t work the day we were scheduled for (despite them knowing it was an EV-related appointment). I’ve had to deal with service advisors who have no idea how to set up an EV appointment. The techs at Entune will continually deny any problem with the software or Entune servers despite clear evidence to the contrary. Trying to get dealers to call me back to sell me a service contract over the phone was a fiasco. Finally, for safety reasons, Toyota should publicly release information on the software releases that they install on our cars - it is absurd that we have to play the “how did they change our cars” guessing game. I had always considered Toyota a forward-thinking company, and I expected a certain number of service problems given that the RAV is a compliance car, but man, it’s been much worse than I ever expected.
But in the end, we love our RAV4, and while we intend to drive it into the ground and wait a while before getting anything else, it’s pretty much assured that our next car will be another BEV. Perhaps next time around, it’ll be a Tesla with an actual Tesla logo.
I quickly corrected my error, and we were on our way to the Toyota dealership for a test drive. While we were impressed by the drive, it was the incentives that were the real eye opener, since this was back when Toyota was offering $9300 off, 0% financing and willing to haggle so they could get rid of the 2012 models still on their lot. In just a day we had gone from being only slightly aware of the RAV4 EV to being, because of those insane incentives, serious about a purchase.
We bought it Memorial Day weekend last year. We still love it. And as with any new electric car owner, there was loads of learning and lots of surprises. Here's a few of those.
Many of the surprises have been positive:
1) It has been much more reliable than expected.
Before purchasing, I read about issues in this forum and was aware of the problems that many folks have had - but after one year and almost 16,000 miles, we’ve had zero problems with the physical car. No check EV light, no loss of power, no heater failure, no charging issues, no loud hum. It runs exactly the same today as when we took it home for the first time. (We did miss a few charges due to the early charge timer issues, but we haven’t missed a charge since October of last year when we got the new firmware to fix those. We did also have the problems with Entune which have since been resolved on Toyota’s side. All the issues have been software, not hardware.)
2) Range has been substantially better than expected.
The day after we bought the car, my wife and I drove her commute on a standard charge, deliberately driving at fast highway speeds with the air conditioning blasting, with me wringing my hands and hoping that we didn’t make a mistake. When we got home and had plenty of bars left, we realized that the range of this car wasn’t just as advertised, it was far better than advertised.
I don’t know what happened with that EPA estimate of 103 miles, but it’s so easy to get so much more than that, I think a different reporting methodology from the EPA might be best.
3) The sounds the RAV4 EV makes are endearing.
After getting the RAV4 EV, I was surprised by all of the clatter. With the popular conception of electric cars being quiet, the RAV is an almost hilariously noisy contraption. After a year, I find it endearing - the vacuum-assisted brakes whirring when you first touch the door handle, the klonk of the traction battery engaging into READY mode, the goofy grind of the low speed noise generator, that click, whirr, BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ when you go to charge. This car’s certainly got a personality.
The one noise I didn’t like, of course, was the beeping in reverse, but that’s been disabled at the dealer.
4) Battery degradation seems virtually non-existent.
Maybe we’re missing a few miles, or maybe we’ve covered up some degradation with better EV driving techniques, but we still use the same number of bars to do the same trips. We’re hoping for the best.
Some of the surprises have been neutral:
1) Toyota whispers in one ear, Tesla in the other.
The car really does have a split personality, and for the first couple of months, I was unsure how to drive it, whether I should take Toyota’s Prius-like advice to drive more efficiently, or I should succumb to the beckon of the Sport Mode button and shock the other people on the road with the RAV’s performance. I’ve mostly reconciled that (driving efficiently most of the time which quick bursts of sport mode for fun), but it’s funny how you can actually feel the two different manufacturers arguing with each other about what an electric car should be.
2) Nobody ever asks me about it.
As much as I don’t want to drive a flashy car… I sometimes wish someone would notice it. Other electric car owners talk about how they’re stopped and get asked about their car, while the RAV4 just looks like a RAV4 and nobody cares. I’ll ultimately take the RAV’s roominess over flashy looks, but man, I wish I had the chance to evangelize once in a while.
3) Owning an electric car does require a lot of analysis.
There was more planning and calculation than I expected. Comparing EVSEs and calculating electrical load, trying to estimate just how much the EV will cost with different tiered or time of use rate plans, calculating the payback of the lower cost of ownership against the higher purchase price, figuring out the tax implications, and of course, calculating distances of various trips.
4) There’s nothing else on the market like the RAV4 EV.
The Teslas? So beautiful, such amazing range and performance, so much more expensive. Everything else? Much less range, is smaller, or both. Even with the Model X coming out next year, it seems strange there’s no major competition for the RAV - the RAV addresses almost every concern we have about electric cars as a family (price, room, range, performance) in a way that nothing else does. A lot of people lease because they think something better will be on the road in three years, but I’m not sure we’re going to see any other cars out there like this one any time soon.
Some of the surprises, unfortunately, weren’t positive.
1) The heater is really quite bad.
When I thought about potential downsides of using EVs, I honestly hadn’t considered the inherent problems of heating, where there’s just not much excess heat to pump into the cabin due to the efficiency of the motor. The slow, power-sucking heater of the RAV has certainly been the most problematic aspect of the car for us, even though it does technically work. We usually just close the vents, crank the seat heaters, and go from there unless it’s in the low 40s or below (which thankfully isn’t often in the Bay Area.)
2) The public charging infrastructure is worse than it looks.
Looking at Plugshare or Chargepoint, it looks like there are countless charging stations around the area - but virtually none of them have much value. It seems like each station is 1) in an expensive parking garage, 2) being used by a Leaf, or much to my consternation, a plug-in hybrid that doesn’t really need to use the charger, 3) deathly slow because it only runs at 208 volts and 20-32 amps, or 4) all of the above. My faith in electrical cars becoming a mainstream, viable option for many has only been strengthened over the past year - the range of the RAV4 EV after charging overnight works out just fine for us 99.8% of the time - but my faith in there being a viable public charging infrastructure has been shattered.
3) The design of the rear door and the position of the J1772 port makes unloading the car a pain.
I hate that, in our closed, small garage, the charging port is on the same side of the car as the opening for the rear of the hatch - we have to eject the charging door, put it in an unlocked-but-not-open position, unload the car, and THEN plug in. While I understand that this is a conversion, and that’s just where the fueling door was, it would be so nice if the charging port were on the other side, or even in front or back.
4) The volume control and forward/back controls for the passenger are completely insane.
Curses to whoever created that awful musical note tray! They really should have had a passenger-accessible volume and forward/back controls, or added them to the interface in a way that doesn’t result in a tray coming out and blocking the information you want to see.
5) Toyota customer service has been just terrible.
The vast majority of the interactions with my car have been a pleasure. The vast majority of my interactions with Toyota, on the other hand, have been an exercise in frustration. We’ve been turned away for basic service because an EV tech doesn’t work the day we were scheduled for (despite them knowing it was an EV-related appointment). I’ve had to deal with service advisors who have no idea how to set up an EV appointment. The techs at Entune will continually deny any problem with the software or Entune servers despite clear evidence to the contrary. Trying to get dealers to call me back to sell me a service contract over the phone was a fiasco. Finally, for safety reasons, Toyota should publicly release information on the software releases that they install on our cars - it is absurd that we have to play the “how did they change our cars” guessing game. I had always considered Toyota a forward-thinking company, and I expected a certain number of service problems given that the RAV is a compliance car, but man, it’s been much worse than I ever expected.
But in the end, we love our RAV4, and while we intend to drive it into the ground and wait a while before getting anything else, it’s pretty much assured that our next car will be another BEV. Perhaps next time around, it’ll be a Tesla with an actual Tesla logo.
