2016 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid revealed. But it’s all rather DISAPPOINTING

The first hybrid Toyota RAV4 has been revealed at the New York Motor Show, complete with electric 4WD. It also previews a 2016 facelift for the RAV4 range.

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Toyota started to tease a facelift and a hybrid for the RAV4 last week – even though the current RAV4 is only a couple of years old – but the reveal of the 2016 RAV4 Hybrid, and a facelift for the rest of the RAV4 range – is more about what’s coming for 2016 (certainly for the UK).

So, for 2016, the RAV4 will be getting the usual facelift fodder of new bumpers and new lights to make it look a bit more like it belongs to the same family as the Avensis and Auris, an interior that Toyota promises will use nicer materials and more soft-touch ones, more technology – including a 360-degree view and improved Toyota Safety Sense – and titivated instruments.

But it’s under the skin where the 2016 RAV4 offers something properly new (well, new for the RAV4) with a hybrid powertrain, basically pinched from under the skin of the new Lexus NX 300h.

That will offer reasonable performance – even if it comes with a woeful CVT gearbox – and a sort of 4WD with an extra electric motor. But it does seem a bit half-hearted.

What we would have hoped Toyota would do is try and emulate the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, with a proper plug-in hybrid option and a price point that matched the existing range. But they haven’t.

Instead, it feels like a half-hearted effort to breathe some life in to the ailing RAV4, but without much commitment.

And not only is the effort half-hearted, so is the delivery – you won’t be able to buy a RAV4 Hybrid until 2016, and even the facelift won’t arrive until December 2015.

By which time the RAV4 – and the new RAV4 Hybrid – will be even further behind the Zeitgeist.