Toyota RAV4 EV priced at $49,800

Toyota's goal is less than 20 a week, you can probably sell most of those by yourself.

 

Toyota usually sets goals it easily beats. A more interesting question would be production capacity.

 

They will only sell as many as they HAVE to. Meaning, I'd better get busy!
Danny, where's that RAV4 EV Forum!!
I'm going to extend the Certified Dealer discount there too on all cars ordered.

 

So when do we order??

 

Right now, you did what I'd asked a day or so ago: email me as being interested. And, if you are on EV boards for Rav etc, mention me.

 

there is nothing special about it, electric motors have instant max torque, so there is no racing to the redline, meaning when used fully, they get really good performance.

 

they are idiots. and honestly, i feel it bad for tesla... i have been reading their Model S PR that just came out about more than 300 mile range, it feels like they have to dress up the truth so much just to satisfy some crazy expectations from investors.

I dont think Toyota has any desire to lose money over EVs. Toyota is in this to make money, when they can, they will have their own built EVs, from their own components, from their own lithium ore mines they are building right now.

I suspect that will be when next gen Prius G4 switches to lithium and gets built in USA, China, Thailand and Japan to lower the cost... building 1.5-2 million or more of their lithium battery powered hybrids per year is what will actually bring the price down, not building 2000 EVs.

But dear god help the EV-only industry if customer expectations are that Rav4 with 42kWh pack should cost 30k or less.

 

I remember when "the hybrid premium" brought up by the ICErs resulted in a flurry of arguments claiming it was bogus by the Hybrids.

Now "the EV premium" is brought up by the Hybrids (IMO) in the same tone.

Well, the price of a Prius makes just about as much sense compared to an ICE as the EVs compared to a Prius.

My Prius in December 2009 cost almost double what Mom paid for her Malibu in February. Some $16000+ buys an awful lot of gas.

Again, just my opinion, but the RAV4 isn't the perfect platform for an EV as Tesla's batteries have to be shoved into an existing platform. Designing the next gen around Tesla's form factor should improve range, cargo area & reduce cost.

What is the limiting factor? Tesla has reservations for cars. Most of the reservations will become orders. Are the batteries for Toyota assembled from excess capacity or are Model S batteries being diverted for RAV4 production? Yes, Toyota dropped a pile of money but you don't want to pi$$ off customers who have enough money to buy your product.

How many $50000 cars are sold per month across the industry? How many Corvettes does GM sell? On a high end product production volume is kept low to keep the product exclusive and the price high.

The RAV4EV is being built to serve a need so it's being sold in that market. Let the 4 sections in CA work out the bugs. Better & cheaper vehicles will be on the way for the rest of us. When the Prius was sold only in Japan was the rest of the world whining?

The forecast is that the battery industry will consolidate into a handful of players & that costs & prices will fall as technology improves & supply increases. In a few years supply is forecast to exceed demand.

 

According to austin green there is something special; the sport mode does allow a bump in work capacity.

I can produce 3000 lbs torque on a bicycle with the correct gearing. In the end, horsepower or kilowatts is a better (in fact, the true) measure of a car's ability to produce power and I knew there's no way 154 HP could motivate the mass of this vehicle to 60 in 7 seconds.

This is an insane amount you paid for your Prius. As I've mentioned already around here I leased my Prius--no money down (just tax title, fees, etc.) at $180/month. I paid no hybrid premium whatsoever. What little extra this cost over a Corolla (pretending for a moment a Corolla is as large) I made up for in gas savings. And, putting my money where my mouth is, when this lease is up if I cannot get a strong deal on another Prius I'll go back to gas (though I may just buy this out, and it's looking that way now since there are no good deals these days). In fact, I replaced a second vehicle last year and I really wanted a Prius but they were all too expensive after the quake so I bought a V6 sedan which is currently getting about 22 mpg (but it's very fun).

 

I'm sure its for historical reasons as well as practicality. Toyota had to do very little work this time around as the vehicle was big enough to accommodate the batteries. The low volume seems to say they are trying to comply with the carb zev mandate, and this might be the least expensive way.

The contract is for 3 years, which is plenty of time to build a reasonable capacity at Tesla. It is all about toyota's timetable not tesla's capacity.

They sold about 1400 corvettes last month 1600 escalades, which means toyota wants to sell about 2 months production of one of these type cars in 3 years.

Certainly not, and low sales the first year are the right thing to do on a small roll out. The surprising low numbers were for the full 3 years. Toyota can still change there mind on that though.

Yep, which means it is time to get experience now before the volume comes on. Ford did a similar high pricing low volume on its focus ev, but talked about increasing volume in later years.

 

sport mode exploits it fully, normal mode limits it.

look at it this way, imagine if your V6 was constantly running as if between 4000 and 6000 rpms and that you could skip first 2-3k of low hp/torque? Thats how electric motors work.

 

I'm only quoting car and driver. What is special is how broad the power range of the motor is across RPMs? Tesla and Toyota did an excellent job here. The RAV4 is heavier and less aerodynamic than the leaf or volt and has similar peak power, but is able to apply the power across the speed range to accelerate better. They didn't say it had more than 154hp in this mode though, only more torque. Think of it this way the prius has 134hp and a eCVT, but when going under 5mph can use less than 40hp, the rav 4 will be able to develop much more hp earlier and keep high levels past 60mph without shifting.

The instant torque at any speed should make this feel faster than the V6 model, even though the numbers for 0-60 are lower.

That is true, but this apparently has much better performance than other non-tesla automobile motors.

 

It sounds to me like a great product.

Kudos to Toyota for allowing it to exist, regardless of the cost, and the ultimate reasoning.

Realistically? At nearly $50,000, I'm not buying one anytime soon, or probably within this universe.

But if a wormhole opens up, I'll jump through it...and maybe I'll end up somewhere where I have a spare $50,000 to buy a Electric RAV 4.

 

It's more normal mode reduces output to preserve range.

Electric motors and ICEs are two different animals. Peak torque for an engine is usually at an rpm beyond it's peak power. Motors are the opposite. Peak torque is when the shaft starts moving. Since torque is high at the start, acceleration is high then too. If we knew the 0-20, 20-40, and 40-60 times, you'd see the EV take off from the line first, but at the higher speeds its acceleration rate is dropping.

We also don't know the torque of the Rav4EV motor. There is a larger gap between power and torque for a motor than an engine. Plus, you don't have to go past your peak power to reach peak torque.

 

Not exactly.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nxF0-HQB5I"]Tesla Roadster 2.5 Acceleration - YouTube[/ame]

 

Consider how much bigger the new Rav4-EV is compared to the old ones, it is quite remarkable that it still gets a 100 mile range. Remember, every one of the early 2000's model got snapped up, so it won't be too strange if they sell well ... especially in the limited quantity of between 2,000 and 3,000 of them.

.

 

Let's see:
The kinetic energy of mv^2/2 at 60 mph (27 m/s) assuming m = 2000 kg is ~ 0.73 million joules
7 seconds at 200 kw = 1.4 million joules

So far no conservation of energy laws broken

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Btw, I had not noticed before that the ratio of pound:kg is within about 0.5% to the ratio of mph:m/s. Not being an engineer, I love approximations. 1:2.2 is easy to calculate without paper, since it is 10% more than double.

 

2002 Toyota RAV4 EV for sale | PluginCars.com

Rav4 EV

 

Just remembered another nugget about the "100 mile range" that the Toyota folks told us about - regarding the new RAV4-EV at the recent EV auto show, at the L.A. convention center. Toyota said that the rav has a "100 mile usable" range. To clarify, I asked a "yes or no" type question ... asking, "by claiming 100 usable miles, does that mean that the traction pack goes a real world 100 miles while neither accessing its lowest or highest capacity potential, because the RAV's traction pack is deliberately over sized like the Prius pack?" The answer was 'yes'. Hopefully they knew what they were talking about.

 

Literally a coping mechanism just kicked in in my head forcing it to abort vetting of your formula, so I'm going to just go ahead and assume your math is right. Still, from a simpleton's point of view I'm not aware of any car with 154 horsepower and a mass equal to this vehicle's that can get anywhere close to a 7 second 0-60.