Talk:Toyota RAV4 EV

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[edit] RAV4 EV Demand

i think we should unbold "this car is the cost equivalent to a 111.1-mile-per-gallon small SUV." wikipedia is about sharing information, not advertising
If we accept that a battery pack is needed as often as every 50,000 to 100,000 miles at a cost of $26,000, this drives the cost per mile up significantly. At 100,000 miles per battery pack, we're talking about 26 cents per mile (even ignoring the cost of electricity, this brings the real "mileage" versus $3 gas to just over 11 miles per "gallon"). To retain a neutral POV, battery replacement life and cost needs to be factored into the "mileage" estimate. Speculation about future developments in battery technology aren't relevant as they aren't available yet.
That would be reasonable if the battery needed to be replaced at 50K or 100K miles. But it does not, there are a number of fleet opperated RAV4 EV's with more than 100,000 miles on their original batteries with little degradation in range. So we still don't know how long the batteries will last, but we can say it's more than 100,000 miles... --D0li0 09:22, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Also, if ones adds the cost of replacing batteries at 100,000 or 150,000 miles to RAV4, you should add the cost of replacing the gasoline RAV4 components that wear out at similar mileage. Also note that Southern California Edison has said they've seen less than 0.5% failures in 14,000 RAV4-EV batteries they have operated since 1998.

The vehicle sold far ***faster*** than expected, and after just eight months the retail program was terminated. This sentence doesn't sound right within the context of the article with the word "faster". It sounds like the word "fewer" should be used.

No, I believe ***faster*** was intended and correct. Toyota originally planned to sell the vehicles over 2 years, and sold out in eight months instead.

per a search of the rav4 ev group [1]
I stopped searching after a few pages, and have listed interesting results in reverse order oldest to newest. Along with this 2002 RAV4 EV on ebay which sold for $53,100 rescently I have to think that something odd is going on if MSRP was $42,000. It appears to me that these vehicles in fact did sell faster than expected despite their very limited availablility. What if they had been available nationwide, would they have sold 5x, 10x, 20x as many? At 10x they would have sold about 1,060 in 2000, 1,600 in 2001, and from what I can tell 3,000 to 7,000 in 2002. This seems comperable to a vehicle like the Honda Insight at 3,788 4,726 and 2,216 durring those same years. What about the waiting lists, perhaps in these limited markets they could have sold an additional 1,000 to people on those lists, maybe 10,000 to 20,000 nationally? Similar to the Prius sales of 6,401, 15,556, 20,119, and 24,627 in 2004? It's really hard to get a clear picture of what really happened. You can take the auto companies side "not enough demand", or those who tried to buy these types of vehicles from the auto companies "all were sold, with many more people on waiting lists". --D0li0 13:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Oct 16, 2002 - Friends of the Earth opposes EVs
Comentary on the "Demand"
Dec 17, 2002 - My 2002 is PURCHASED and in the driveway
Dec 28, 2002 - Battery life
RAV4 Sales by year....
  • 1997 69
  • 1998 359
  • 1999 255
  • 2000 106
  • 2001 160
  • 2002 1st half 218
  • 2002 2d half (my guesstimate) 82
  • Estimated total 1249
That puts Toyota ahead of:
  • EV1 (1110)
  • S10E (490)
  • EV+ (300)
  • Chrysler Epic EV (207)
  • Nissan Altra EV (130)
  • but behind the Ranger EV (1812, including 500 U.S. :Postal Service special models).
  • Nissan shipped 200 Altra's to California in 2002, they also have about 100 Hyperminis on the roads.
Jan 9, 2003 - Where are the RAV4 EV ads?(thread)
  • [2] [3] sad stories about sales people.
  • TV add
  • Toyota apparently delivered 220 vehicles to the general public in 2002 [4]
Jan 10, 2003 - Some comentary on the discontinuing of the program RAV4 EV discontinued(thread)
Jan 15, 2003 - We were very pleased and honored today when several top Toyota executives surprised us today by arriving at our dealership offering congratulations for our dealership on being #1 in Rav4 EV sales! Toyota Salutes Toyota of Hollywood!
Mar 20, 2003 - Toyota had its own electric vehicle effort. The company sold 500 electric RAV4 sport utility vehicles from last February until this January, when it canceled the program due to low demand, despite an advertising campaign. EVLN(RAV4 EV not canceled due to low demand, GM's vacuum tube thinking

[edit] Bias

I am all for electric or alternatively powered cars and all that, but this article is very biased, and reads (as mentioned below above) like an ad for the RAV4. I am removing the bold and, if I have time in the future, will take a more critical look at the wording and choice of statistics.Njerseyguy 22:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I would encourage a change of the presentation of statistics, but not the content. If they're factually accurate (which most of them are), it's a decision of how to present them, not if... just my $0.02 Dw09577 20:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Performance

I've fixed the performance section to be more objective. 0-60 performance of the RAV4EV is around 18 seconds. Although this beats the 4-cylinder version in some 0-60 tests, (20 seconds) The comparison is not neccessary. Dw09577 20:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Charging

For more objectivity, I've removed the comparison to amt of time used to connect a standard fuel pump and the RAV4EV's charging cable, and simply stated the time it takes to plug it in. Dw09577 20:27, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mileage Costs

Where did 27 MPG for the non-EV RAV4 come from? According to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm the 2003 RAV4 2WD manual was 24 MPG, and the automatic (the more appropriate point of comparison) was 23 MPG. —Preceding unsigned comment added by EarlKillian (talk • contribs) 01:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The EPA revised its guidelines for MPG starting with 2008 year models. The MPG listed on the site is revised to match the new guidelines. The 2003 RAV4 2WD manual had a 27MPG rating, revised to 24MPG. Likely this is where the info came from.Audrina (talk) 22:32, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wearable Items

I've removed more comparisons to the gas RAV4EV, added in actual figures from articles written at the time of vehicle's release. http://www.evworld.com/archives/testdrives/rav4ev.html Dw09577 20:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lawsuit over NiMH

There was a patent infringement lawsuit filed by ECD against Matsushita, Toyota and Panasonic in 2001. Jeff Carr 17:04, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Charging, again

I'm having trouble with this:

The RAV4EV's batteries can be recharged from being fully depleted to fully charged in about 5 hours. Charging is supplied via magnetic induction by a wall-mounted 6000-Watt (8 horsepower) charging unit on a 220 volt, 30 amp, North-American "clothes dryer"-type plug.

This paragraph is claiming is that a full charge amounts to 30 kilowatt hours applied to the car. Let's assume 80% efficiency in the charge/discharge cycle, so we have 24 kWh to use from the battery. That is the energy equivalent of about 2-2/3 liters of gasoline - about 0.7 gallons! (Gasoline is around 9 kWh/liter)

Given the EV's superior efficiency this might be equivalent to almost 1.5 gallons. Still... that's a "full charge"?

Some clarification and sources are needed here. My guess? Maybe it CAN be fully recharged in about five hours... but not from a 6000-watt feed? Jeh (talk) 00:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit: Ok, elsewhere it says the full capacity of the battery pack is around 27 kWh. That's consistent with the claimed charge time. But it isn't at all consistent with a claimed 80 mile minimum range. Again, this is the energy equivalent of just about 3 liters of gasoline. Jeh (talk) 00:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New versus Old Picture

I liked the cut-away picture of the Rav4 EV better. It showed that the batteries didn't take up any space inside the vehical because they were under it. I have heard many anit-EV people say that you cant have any trunk space in an EV because of the batteries. Do we really need to drop that image? Thanks Bluetd (talk) 02:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)