future owner of a prime

Hello all, great community!
I just put a pre-order down for a '22 prime base model.

I'm in Canada so supply issues mean I may not have it until the new year

This is my 2nd new car I will be purchasing. A little background info on me and my situation.

I bought a new '12 civic, has been great. Only used it for leisure and roadtrips, so it has relatively low KMs for the year. I'm only sharing that bit of info because due to its light use and great condition I will be able to get a good return on it, as compared to last year. Possibly higher in the future, it's great on gas and I do wish I could keep it until it died, but having switched over to the gig economy I can see value in selling it now while its high in resale value, and switching over to the PP.
I didn't really plan to sell the Honda, but rideshare companies require cars no older than 9 years.
Sorry if that sounded like an ad to sell my car here, I'm not trying to do that, just explaining the happenings.

It just wouldn't make sense to get another gas only car, and I'm not interested in beta testing unpolished luxury boxes.
Excluding android auto as a feature for the higher trim made no sense to me. Leather and better speakers are nice but Android compatibility is an ultra must, plus the large tablet screen looks awful imo, and wow, capacitive buttons, I thought those went out of style in the early 2000's.

Of course the Rav4 Prime is the #1 option, but from the dealers here it sounds like one might get the 2023 before the 2022.

I didn't really haggle on the Civic when I bought it new as I got a small hookup bringing the price a tiny bit down, and I haven't yet had the opportunity (or I'm not sure if that's advisable) to haggle with Toyota. I'm not sure how one would haggle without the car itself being available, not sure if that works in favour of the buyer or seller.

Overall I had a great experience with Honda, so I'm hoping for the better or the same from Toyota.

I've done my research, but as this is another pretty big purchase for me I have a few questions/concerns. More rhetorical. Of course the ~8-10 year warranty has conditions, and does give a peace of mind, and overall I do trust the Toyota brand for reliability. I dont think I'm buying a lemon but I grow concerned that covid has not just delayed, but changed operations in some way to become more efficient or meet demand, compromising batches for a few years. Everything obviously passes all checks, and I have no doubt they're super rigorous in every step of every supply chain, but these are sort of unprecedented times and mistakes of today may not reveal themselves until 3, 4, 5 years, who knows? Or maybe just after the warranty.
Another concern is if it just doesn't arrive in time, but this is not yet an issue.
Another question that I would have answered myself had the Prime model been available for demo is, well, I know that the "AC mode before you enter" is mapped to the fob, but I'm reading mixed reports online that it's the HVAC unit, so I'm wondering if I can instead heat the car for 10 mins if the dials are set in the right way. (Canada)
Another question is: exactly how much "hp" does it generate? I feel it has to be higher than what is in the specs, in power mode and ICE engaged it's pretty quick and responsive, has anyone ran it on a dyno?

Of course recalls happen all the time to all companies but these are especially unique times, and I didn't have these concerns when buying the Civic, I didn't even test drive it because a few family members had civics as well so I knew exactly how it handled.

Due to limited availability I was only able to test drive the higher trim Prime here, which was a mess because I got stuck waiting for a train for the majority of it, plus I wasn't able to test what the sound system for the base model would have been like, I really hope its not a treble machine. My limited experience test driving it though was great, it felt like a normal car. I remember trying a Prius back in 05 and it felt like how Teslas feel now to me, the brake pedal is very light to the touch, but that's just my experience with it. It's peppy enough when it needs to be, and that's all that I would expect from this type of car.

I'm sort of mind blown that only recently it became a 5 seater, that might've been a red flag if they kept that trend up until this year.

So, until it arrives I'm just reading up on the vehicle, I'm sad to see so little resources online for the base (aside from this community of course), most YT vids are for the higher trim, understandably so, but even from owners there's almost nothing. I am very much looking forward to casual hypermiling, and possibly getting a comma3.

 

So here is the latest chapter in the saga of me trying to purchase a '22 PP

Back when I made my acct here, I had made a deposit payment with yota for a '22 prime, I had no idea when it would arrive and neither did the dealership. I check in with my sales rep semi weekly to sort of check, or just update options on my build (body color, tint), still no firm date throughout these checks, so none was passed on to me.
I had requested an ETA as far away, so as to plan a sale of my current daily driver to time the transition between whips as smoothly and flawlessly as possible, and the sales rep was understanding of the situation and the terms were more or less agreed upon, that: in the worst case scenario, if the shipment of cars (including mine) shows up late or suddenly overnight, I would get a grace period of holding to suddenly prep and sell my dd.

And then the worst case scenario occurs. Not only am I no longer being guaranteed a hold of any sort, I'm being asked aggressively to finalize the sale, or I assume someone will outbid me? on a car I put a deposit on???
I can go in and pay in full, but logistically I can't make use of, or store 2 cars. I would have figured brass would be empathetic of the situation, but I'm getting strong vibes that it's attracting eyes with deeper pockets than mine, and at the end of the day if someone is going to offer them 50+k for it, I don't completely blame them, but it is a super bummer and speaks volumes of the culture at toyota. Very disappoint.

 

My current car that I use for work ages out on Jan 1, so I was more or less relying that i'd have this PP by then, worst worst case scenario a week or 2 after Jan 1.
In order to secure a spot on the "wait list" I had to pay $1000, which goes towards the purchase of the car.
I feel like if I would've paid for it in full I still would be getting screwed over. I talked about this as an option (paying for the car in full on arrival) but decided to finance for the sake of credit, but it was not necessary.

Thanks for the sympathy guys, I totally understand that it's a seller's market and that I'm sadly in a vulnerable situation.
I literally spelled out all scenarios, including this one to the sales rep I was dealing with and everything was understood and agreed upon, now the dealership manager is trying to throw the sales guy under the bus by saying he dropped the ball by promising me to hold it.

As there is extreme scarcity of stock, there is absolutely no issue with having a place to hold it (they have a huge lot of hundreds of spots but only a dozen occupied), but they are wanting for me to give them a firm date, completely forgetting that they couldn't give ME a firm date to make this transition smooth.

I already saw the car as soon as it arrived as the sales rep called me to check it out, confirmed only 3km on the odo. I stressed that I don't want this car being used as a test drive vehicle, nor do I really want anyone else inside it aside from toyota employees. I have a strong feeling this request is not being fulfilled.

When I put the deposit down I knew I was throwing away much of a chance at bargaining, and I was ok with that. If im going to buy something brand new I want to pick all of my desired options from the factory, I guess it's sort of nice knowing someone else will benefit from my choices.

After visiting all the toyota dealerships in my city, I chose the one I went with because they seemed to be the friendliest and they touted themselves as the "largest" in BC, so that means they would get the "biggest delivery" compared to other dealerships, which I've now learned means absolutely nothing. Seinfeld was ahead of his times.

 

No, and I don't think you've missed anything but my principles tell me that I shouldn't have to incur any cost because the dealer won't do simple things (by simply not advertising and making public that my car exists on the lot). This is just a non-issue, which creates stress, which shouldn't be part of the car buying experience.

If it were a non-chip shortage era I would have been sympathetic if they needed me to rush my car off their lot if it was overflowing, but this is the opposite, and a dealer choosing to advertise a "held" car is f'ed up.

But I'm thinking now that yeah, I should go in and pay in full or drive it off the lot asap if I want to guarantee that it won't get sold to someone else. That, plus at least knowing that it will be MSRP and not marked up, and the cost of gas in the gap of time, were I to wait for the next shipment, who knows how long that is.

It's been radio silence from them since I spoke to them last over the phone making clear that I am not releasing the car. But I wouldn't be surprised if its already sold and driven off the lot as I type this.

Well guys, Rav4 Hybrid?

edit: fulltime rideshare driver, and car ages out at end of year.