Heading into 2025, I’d’ve guessed that Tesla’s overhauled Mannequin Y crossover would have been this 12 months’s largest automobile launch—no less than so far as this EV web site is anxious. However Tesla’s momentum is fading, and it’s Toyota that simply dropped the largest bomb of the 12 months to date.
The sixth-generation RAV4 SUV is right here. Most significantly, each model of it has no less than one electrical motor. Similar to earlier than, Toyota will promote you a hybrid RAV4 and a plug-in hybrid one. However beginning with the 2026 mannequin 12 months, the purely gas-powered RAV4 is not any extra.
It is a very large deal. The RAV4 persistently ranks as America’s hottest non-truck automobile. Final 12 months, Toyota bought some 475,000 RAV4s on this nation, touchdown behind solely the Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-Collection vehicles. With the flip of a change, Toyota is about to get way more Individuals to decide on far cleaner automobiles. And most of them gained’t even assume twice about it.
Picture by: Toyota
It pulled the identical trick with the Camry (America’s eighth-best-selling automobile) final 12 months. Switching that automobile to hybrid-only gave a large enhance to Toyota’s electrified automobile gross sales, which accounted for practically half of its total U.S. enterprise final 12 months. The RAV4 is a far greater vendor. And as a crossover, it’s the precise automobile sort that U.S. patrons need.
Toyota hasn’t shared gas economic system figures for the brand new fashions, so we’ll have to make use of final 12 months’s stats to place this all into context. The 2025 non-hybrid RAV4 received 30 miles to the gallon. The hybrid received 39 mpg, so it makes use of about 25% much less gasoline, all else being equal. If the practically quarter-million annual non-hybrid RAV4 gross sales develop into hybrids, we’re speaking about an entire lot much less gasoline consumption over time.
And that’s not even accounting for the brand new RAV4 PHEV, which has an extended electrical vary than earlier than (50 miles) and now comes with DC fast-charging functionality. These upgrades ought to make it extra interesting, for one, and push homeowners to drive extra miles on electrical energy alone.
Picture by: Toyota
This brings us to the elephant within the room: The RAV4 Hybrid nonetheless burns gasoline. Regardless of how in style or environment friendly hybrids get, they’re an inadequate long-term answer for our worsening local weather disaster. Research present that EVs are far cleaner to function, and a no-gas future ought to be the last word objective.
However the transition to electrical automobiles gained’t occur in a single day. Between the Republican trifecta’s gutting of pro-EV insurance policies and basic trepidation amongst mainstream automobile patrons, EV gross sales progress in America is trying rockier than ever. And if persons are going to maintain shopping for combustion automobiles it doesn’t matter what for a while, they may as nicely sip gasoline as an alternative of gulping it.
Contact the writer: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
