Talk:Toyota RAV4 EV

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.

• Battery life

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)

• http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/ravev/rav4ev_0_home/index.html - Official notice.
• they set up a program to sell 360 cars a year for two years, sell them all in a single year
• Yet the number was 700 ev's - were sold out in 10 month's.

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Frankslapperinni (talk) 13:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC) Keep in mind that the transfer of energy from the batteries to the electric motor and wheels (not charging) is about 90-95% efficient-incredibly high- whereas for an internal combustion engine it's about 20%. An internal combustion engine would really need around 4-5 gallons of gas to draw upon the same amount of energy in the battery pack that holds only 0.7 gallons worth of energy. The fact that an electric car can go farther on less energy is not so unbeleiveable when you think about it.

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)

Accuracy of Chevron Claims

The article contains the statement: "Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the NiMH EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron's unit won a $30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for the large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco."

This appears to be factually incorrect. In fact, according to the Cobasys wikipedia page, "Cobasys is currently contracted to provide NiMH battery systems for the GM's Saturn Vue Green Line SUV, GM's Saturn Aura Green Line sedan, and GM's Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid Sedan." To clarify, Cobasys is the company that actually owns the patent in question. This statement is fully supported by the references on that page. Further, I think the facts would be much clearer if references to Chevron in this article were to be replaced with Cobasys. We can still clarify that Cobasys is owned in part by Chevron (though news articles recenty seem to indicate GM may purchase the company outright, so that may not even be accurate for long!). Please forgive me if I use this talk page inappropriately, it's my first effort to contribute to wikipedia. Defiancecp (talk) 15:09, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Sales table

I moved the sales table from the article here, for the purpose of keeping a record, because:

• no citation/reference;
• includes estimates that are possibly original research;
• contradicts to total sales reported by Toyota.

---North wiki (talk) 19:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

RAV4 EV Production by Year (est.)

1997	69 (fleet lease only)
1998	359 (fleet lease only)
1999	255 (fleet lease only)
2000	106 (fleet lease only)
2001	160 (fleet lease only)
2002 - 1st half	218 (fleet lease) plus 147 (sold/lease-purchase)
2002 - 2nd half	82* (fleet lease) plus 153 (sold/lease-purchase)
2003 - 1st half	28 (sold/lease-purchase)
Total	1575*

* Indicates estimate, based on serial numbers 1001 through 2575

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Move discussion in progress

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120 Volts

Regarding this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toyota_RAV4_EV&diff=next&oldid=1063477995

The North American electrical grid is 120 volts, not 110 volts, with a maximum deviation of ±5% (114 to 126 V). Refer to ANSI standard C84.1. Calling it "110 V" is a common mistake and should be fixed in all articles, even if the source states "110 V". This is simply a notation mistake and should not be carried over from the source, the same as if a source mixes up "kW" and "kWh". — Glenwing (talk) 18:49, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

The US grid is indeed nominally 120 VAC. But that doesn't mean your plug will have 120 VAC on it. The grid is actually 120 VAC +/- 5% (ie 114-126 VAC) with infrequent occurrences to 120 VAC -13% +6% (ie 104-127 VAC). As more appliances are turned on, the voltage tends to drop to the lower end of the allowed range. Thus, a vehicle that is advertised as charging at 120 VAC for, say 40 hours, will take longer if the actual voltage at your plug is 110 VAC and you might be tempted to sue the manufacturer for false advertising. Therefore, some manufacturer protect themselves by supplying the pessimistic charging time at the lower volts. See https://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/mybusiness/customerservice/energystatus/powerquality/voltage_tolerance.pdf  Stepho  talk  20:35, 3 January 2022 (UTC)