New Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid on sale in January – but it’s not cheap

The new Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid, Toyota’s range-toping RAV4, goes on sale in the UK in January with prices starting at £47,395.

With car makers striving to lower their average emissions as much as they can to avoid punitive fines, even Toyota is having to play the plug-in hybrid game, despite a long history of ‘self-charging’ hybrids, to get the benefit of the massively misleading official economy figures WLTP testing bestows on PHEVs.

That means the new Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid comes with official economy of 282mpg and emissions of just 22g/km, but, for a change, and depending on how you use the RAV4 PHEV, you could end up actually getting at least in the ballpark in the real world.

That’s because the RAV4 PHEV comes with a big 18.1kWh battery to power the RAV4’s electric motors – a 54bhp one at the back and a 180bhp one at the front – meaning you can actually drive it as an EV for a chunk of the time without the 173bhp 2.5 litre petrol engine joining in, and without having to drive like your granny.

All that means that if you actually bother to plug-in your RAV4 each night then you’ll have an EV with ample get up and go to do normal days (it defaults to EV running) and you’ll only need to bother the full-fat 302bhp and add in the petrol engine if you want to play, or on a long run, with an EV range of up to 60 miles in urban traffic.

Starting price for the RAV4 PHEV is £47,395 for the Dynamic version rising to £50,895 for the Dynamic Premium, both well-equipped and with the Premium adding in more sybaritic stuff like black leather, JBL Sound, Panoramic roof and fancy electric seats.

It’s a chunky price point – getting on for £20k more than an entry-level RAV4 – but if it suits your lifestyle it could be a sensible option as an EV without range anxiety.

The Toyota RAV4 PHEV goes on sale on 4 January, with first deliveries due in Q2 2021.