Electric vehicle sales may be rising quickly at long last, but many buyers are still not ready – or willing – to go all in on a battery-only car.
The compelling evidence is found in the phenomenal popularity of hybrid vehicles that combine both an electric motor with a traditional combustion engine.
We’ve come a long way since the 2001 Toyota Prius – and its successive generations – first made a household name of petrol-electric cars.
Toyota, naturally, remains one of the benchmark manufacturers of hybrid vehicles, and it’s the company’s latest-generation RAV4 that forms our in-house comparison test here.
The recently launched sixth-generation RAV4 heralded the first plug-in hybrid variant to be offered in Australia, sold alongside the regular hybrid model.
As Australia’s biggest-selling SUV, the new RAV4 gives us the perfect set of twins to compare.
Our test models are the RAV4 XSE AWD Hybrid and the RAV4 XSE AWD Plug-in Hybrid. So even the trim grades are identical!
There is a $5000 difference, though. The XSE AWD HEV costs from $59,015, while the XSE AWD PHEV is priced from $64,015.
The RAV4 Hybrid range starts from $45,990; the RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid range begins from $58,840.
In our video comparison featuring Chasing Cars presenter Shana Zlotin and Mamamia’s Annaliese Todd, we don’t just look at the technological differences between a plug-less hybrid (HEV) and a plug-in hybrid (PHEV)…
We also conduct a real-world fuel test to find out how much petrol each of the RAV4 models uses on average.
We drove the RAV4 PHEV around our 122km road loop twice.
The first drive was in pure electric mode to assess whether the plug-in could match its claimed (WLTP) distances of 122km (front-wheel-drive model) or 113km (for the all-wheel-drive version we tested).
For the second loop, the RAV4 PHEV ran with its battery – much larger than the one fitted to the regular hybrid – depleted to a low state of charge (SOC).
How far did the PHEV get on its battery only, and how did its fuel consumption compare with the efficiency of the HEV? And which version delivers the best performance?
Find out in our video comparison. As Shana says in the video, the results are “fascinating”!
Mamamia is Australia’s largest women’s media brand with a purpose to make the world a better place for women and girls.
