I still want an EV but I guess I will have to wait a bit while until they evolve a bit more, maybe one that has a 100 mile battery range and a gas driven 35kw generator system like the concept car I saw last week.

The Hybrid is probably what your looking for, not eV. Toyota is not even really big on just eV, they are 100% devoted to hybrid.

btw, Rav will never get good seats, you need to look at Lexus or the like to get comfortable seats.

With the commercial fusion nuke plant being built in TN (Type One Energy Co.), the future of eV is still questionable. We can probably make power w/o issue, we just cannot transmit it, plus batteries are still very toxic items. However, fusion power paves way for Hydrogen, which is in the biz plan for Toyota. Once we have fully functional fusion power, access to H is unlimited and we have solved energy issue, won't need fossil fuels any longer.

 

9 months and 18,000 miles later we traded the Rav for a new loaded 2025 Odyssey.

Did not consider a Sienna?

 

We bought a new Sienna in 1997, then another in 2004, then another in 2013, in 2021 we looked at them and test drove, but I did t like what felt like a lack of power when accelerating from 65 to 80mph with a 4 ranger the 2021s had switched to. So we switched to the Odyssey that still has 290hp and quicker acceleration to pass. And we still,like Odysseys better than Siennas

 

Summary: the Prime did not fit your Mission Profile of a lot of long road trips.

 

I’ve always found it a little ironic that hybrids shine in around-town gas mileage, but are often a little worse than gas-only when you take them on the highway. However, great gas mileage in local driving fits the mission profile of many drivers very well.

For me the Prime takes it one step even better, since we have good electric rates and all-electric around town is very economical. I seldom need more than the approximately 48 mile range for daily use.

 

hybrids shine in around-town gas mileage, but are often a little worse than gas-only when you take them on the highway.

Hybrids are a lot heavier than gas only. Unless your long road trip is downhill all the way, a hybrid will use more energy to travel the route.

 

Not true. I get my best gas mileage with my hybrid on long road trips. Twice now, coming home from my annual trip to southern Utah, I have gotten 47 MPG (1st time) and 48 MPG (this summer). The ICE only RAV4 can't do that.

Trick is to keep your speed down. On these long road trips, I stay on the back roads where the speed limit is 55 to 65 MPH, not I15 where the limit is 80 MPH. Speed eats gas.

 

"Not true" [for you] I would not call what you do "a long road trip." It sounds like back road sightseeing. You'll be doing a lot more slowing down and speeding up on that back road, so some battery regen will happen. The savings on gas is not the prime directive, it's a bonus.

Most other people go on a long road trip to get somewhere specific for some important reason. As fast as possible, because how long is your life? If an 80 mph interstate is available, most people are taking it at that speed, not the slow back road to save a few bucks on gas. Most people would call that penny wise, pound foolish.

 

Even if I stay on I15 at 80 MPG (I do that on my way down), my hybrid gets 40+ MPG. Again, the ICE only can't do that.

Trip is about 400 to 450 miles each way. Since my hybrid range is nearly 600 miles, I easily do that on one tank of gas. Again, the ICE only can't do that (600 miles on a tank).

 

(I do that on my way down), my hybrid gets 40+ MPG.

Again, downhill the heavier weight plays in the hybrid's favor.

 

I'm taking a long trip soon in '24 Prime, will report back... so far longer local trips have shown excellent mileage.

 

Even the EPA MPG numbers tell the same story: the hybrid is more fuel efficient than the gas only for all driving conditions.

2022 LE AWD (non hybrid): city/highway/combined MPG 27/34/30
2022 LE hybrid (AWD): city/highway/combined MPG 41/38/40

The weight difference is not all that much: 3450 verses 3710 lbs.

The Prime, however, is significantly heavier: XSE Prime 4300 lbs and the EPA gas mileage is a bit less: 40/36/38 but is still better than the gas only.

(These numbers were taken directly from the 2022 sales brochure. Toyota stopped making sales brochures a couple years ago).

 

well, as long as there is "room" in the battery to accept charge.

In a perfect world, the downhill recuperation is equal to the extra power needed on the uphill side. Eventually all the hills even out in the long term.

 

Yes, your results make sense to me. My 2022 Rav4Prime XSE gets 38-ish mpg in sustained speeds over 80 mph. At 72-ish gets 42mpg but 55-62 gets 44+mpg. I traded in my Ford Mustang Mach-e after 6 months for the Rav4 and now never worry about finding a refueling station. In hot weather my 'EV only range' hit 49 miles this summer.

 

As someone who owns a R4P and a Sienna I would say that in theory a minivan is a lot better configured for long-range travel than a compact crossover. However, for our latest 5+ hour trips (one way) we somehow ended up using the R4P, and I am not quite sure why. Maybe because it's a lot niftier on winding mountain roads, quieter at higher speeds, and has better ground clearance for gentle off-roading.

I do find 34 mpg quite low for a R4P at highway speed (I'd say that driving conservatively @70 mph should yield around 40).''

Hybrids are a lot heavier than gas only. Unless your long road trip is downhill all the way, a hybrid will use more energy to travel the route.

In theory, yes, but in reality hybrids still achieve higher fuel efficiency at highways speeds, only the gain is smaller.

I don't have much experience with driving a hybrid on a very level terrain (a couple hundred miles in central FL), but most "real-life" interstates I know of do have grades, and that's where IMO hybrids have an advantage (thinking of the East Coast, but also CA, OR, MT, and AK).

Speaking of a non-plug R4H, it's only 300 lbs. heavier than its gas-only counterpart, which means its rolling resistance is perhaps 8% higher. Moreover, at high speeds it's the drag rather than rolling resistance that eats the gas. So, maybe you are looking to lose 2-3% of your fuel efficiency due to the extra weight, but gain 10-15% through recuperating power while going downhill.

"Not true" [for you] I would not call what you do "a long road trip." It sounds like back road sightseeing. You'll be doing a lot more slowing down and speeding up on that back road, so some battery regen will happen. The savings on gas is not the prime directive, it's a bonus.

Most other people go on a long road trip to get somewhere specific for some important reason. As fast as possible, because how long is your life? If an 80 mph interstate is available, most people are taking it at that speed, not the slow back road to save a few bucks on gas. Most people would call that penny wise, pound foolish.

I think the problem here is semantics. Here is what Copilot thinks a road trip is

"A journey taken by car, motorcycle, or other road vehicle—usually over long distances and often for leisure, adventure, or exploration. It’s not just transportation; it’s a travel experience built around the open road"

I agree with AI on this. For us, driving for 8 hours @ 80 mph with two restroom stops would not be a road trip; that's more like long-haul truckin' and it's hard work, not a vacation .

 

Talking about road trips, a road trip I make all the time (3-4 times a year) is from northeast Texas to northeast Colorado, and back a few months later. It is 14 hours door-to-door, 13 hours behind the wheel. Elevation gain is 5000 feet stretched out over 600 miles. It seems flat the whole way, but there is a grade. Going, the car is downshifting and slightly straining all the way. Coming back, almost coasting by comparison. This is especially true with a trailer. Think how much energy it must take to lift a Rav4 and its contents 5000 feet. So the uphill-downhill thing is real.

 

My Southern NJ experience with almost 16,000 miles on my 2024 RAV4 Prime is as follows: 1) During the past few weeks, the Level 2 home charger in my garage will charge up the battery to an indicated 56 miles of EV driving; 2) anytime I drive over 50 miles an hour, I toggle the "HV" switch on my center console; 3) the indication on the instrument panel, settles in around 46 mpg while on the HVsetting; and 4) around town, the EV-only setting usually settles in between 3.5 and 4.5 miles per kWh. As many will know, Southern NJ is pretty flat with few hills and valleys. When I visit Western MA the numbers are a little different.

 

On small drives, maybe even 1mi downhill, the mpg's will be high.
It's not always 47, and it will balance back out to reality.

It's only meaningful if you can take it fully charged full with gas on open flat hwy that has little head/tail winds. Drive it to empty. Then it's math, total mi / 14.5. That's the best it can do.

 

OK, I should re-read all this over, so I may be making a mistake... but..

rav4-lim says that numbers are wrong because the gasoline used to recharge the battery is not properly recognized.

First, the system does NOT recharge the battery to full, i.e. 42 mile capacity..

Next, the statement ignores the reality that the car clearly prefers to recharge to battery to it's "working" level when it is advantages, it does not instantly run a full recharge on the battery when it is drained down.

Maybe I'm being overly simplistic, but it seems these things were not considered in rav4-lim's "calculations"

 

Next, the statement ignores the reality that the car clearly prefers to recharge to battery to it's "working" level when it is advantages, it does not instantly run a full recharge on the battery when it is drained down.

Maybe I'm being overly simplistic, but it seems these things were not considered in rav4-lim's "calculations"

It does not matter when the ice charges batt, or if the batt gets full or not, you have to realize that charging batt steals fuel from MPG. 10kWh into batt means 25kWh of fuel was used. The ice MUST burn fuel to charge the batt, and it does so at an incredible efficiency of just 40%.

My example gave best scenario for best MPG's.
Here's the ideal setup. You charge the batt to 100% at home by plugging it into the wall. Not really possible, but that's how we start "full" on batt and gas tank. That batt can move vehicle 42mi w/o ice, so that we don't steal fuel from ice and put it into batt, when the batt goes to zero you disconnect it, from there it's all ice until gasoline runs dry.

Any other scenario, like constant charging batt, discharging batt, charging batt, means you are wasting 60% of the gasoline used to create that energy going into the batt. On a long trip, which is no more than 1 tank of gasoline + 42mi, that batt may actually charge and discharge more than the initial 42mi a full batt can give you, but that means it's stealing fuel from the overall MPG's. There's no such thing as "gallon" in joules. We do know how much energy is in 1gal of gasoline, about 120MJ. 60% of that is wasted by ice no matter where it goes, the fuel must burn in ice at 40% efficiency. 14.5gal of gasoline provides approx 120MJ x 0.4 x 14.5 = 696MJ to use for motion, radio, electric seats, charging batt. That's all you get, the electric side of the system does not mysteriously turn that maximum available into something more. And although the electric side is say 98% efficient from batt to emotor, you wasted 60% of the gasoline used to charge the batt.

The best MPG possible, from full tank and full batt, is 1 full tank via ice + 42mi, all from 14.5 gal of fuel.
Again, all energy derived comes from ICE, no way around it.

"MPG" for hybrid is a gimmick. On a range test, I am willing to bet the hybrid Rav will go approx 40mi further than my ice-only Rav, when the hybrid batt starts off as full as it can be.

btw, I am using the 40% ice number, super conservative, usually found only in advanced diesel engines. Gasoline that is norm aspirated is 20-30%.

If anyone has any Rav that has gone more than 520mi on a full tank, lets see it.

 

It really doesn't matter where the gas is used and for what; doesn't matter if you have a hybrid or gas only. If gas is your only source of energy input, the bottom line is how far can you go on a gallon of gas.

As I posted above, I can go up to 48 miles on a gallon of gas. Not all the time, nor on all trips, but I have gotten mileage like that several times over the four years I have owned my RAV4 hybrid.

The Prime has another source of energy input: plug into a wall outlet. Thus it is possible to go more miles for the gas you buy than the hybrid.

 

so, reading this thread:

one person states that it's technically impossible to get more than 35 miles to the gallon

many people state from real experience about 10 mpg more.

oh drat, what to believe?

going to arizona in about a week, oh what will i do? (hand-wringing ensues)

 

After reading this thread, I am getting the impression that owning a hybrid will cost me more money to purchase with slightly better gas mileage than I am getting now with my 2021 RAV4 XLE

 

Max horsepower is not max efficiency. At about 23 minutes of the well shared Weber State video of the RAV4 hybrid eCVT, he shows a chart of the engine efficiency. Keeping the engine in the region of that torque and RPM will produce the most efficiency, about 39%. Right at the beginning of the video, Prof. Kelley states that the Toyota hybrid gas engine has one of the highest brake thermal efficiencies of any engine.

That is one of the beauties of the eCVT: keeping, if possible, the gas engine in that most efficient region. (Also, the eight speed automatic in the gas only RAV4. The more gears you have, the better chance to have the engine in the best efficient region of operation). Yes, if you stomp on the gas, the engine will give more power and the RPMs will increase, but at the expense of efficiency.

 

Excess power? More jibberish.
There's no excess. ICE makes power, where that power goes is A+B thing.

Here's more proof that adding the hybrid end to ice wastes fuel.

Take an arbitrary amount of gasoline power, lets say 150kWh worth of fuel. The ice wastes 60% of that no matter where that burn goes. So that leaves input to ecvt at 60kWh. Of that 60 lets say you peel off 10 into batt, so 50 to wheels and 10 into batt for later use. Now the system wants e-power so it take 10kWh from batt, but the batt/moto system is probably in reality only around 90% efficient, so now you are wasting 10% of that stored 10kWh, you waste 1kWh.

So do the math, 150 - 90 - 1 = 59kWh. The batt/emotor wasted 1kWh, stealing that (wasting) from overall mpg.

If you hop in hybrid and every trip says you're getting 40 42 45mpg, all BS, because on 1 tank of gas you will NOT be driving 580mi, simply not possible.

It is possible to run ice in most efficient ways, but it does not really matter, even in best ways the ice can only be 40% efficient, which is over estimate for norm aspirated ice. High compression forced air ice can get 50+% efficient, but as you know, Rav aint that.

Ask another question, if the electric end was so great why have any mechanical linkage between ice and wheels at all? Why not connect motor directly to a generator, and from there run everything from electric. This is how locomotives work. In cars, having stored electric to dump fast when needed allows for the quick burst acceleration.

That is exactly how the first hybrid cars were built about 125 years ago by Ferdinand Porsche. Dr. Porsche is considered the inventor of the hybrid (gas/electric) car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner–Porsche

Why not do that today? The Toyota eCVT was called the hybrid synergy drive for a reason: it can add the power from the gas engine and the power from an electric motor together to drive the wheels. Thus you can have more power at the wheels than a gas engine alone or an electric motor alone. The eCVT also allows you to keep the gas engine at the most efficient "sweet spot" of efficiency.

If you do the "locomotive" approach, gas engine drives a generator which drives the electric motor, you must have the generator/motors of the same power capability as the gas motor, i.e. much bigger than the RAV4 hybrid/Prime electric motors.

But the bottom line still remains: how far can the RAV4 hybrid go on a gallon of gas. I have shown that, at times, I get 48 MPG.

The gas tank is said to be 14 gallons, but the usable capacity is more like 12 or 13 gallons since there is a reserved space. Thus, I can go 12 X 48 = 576 miles on a tank of gas.

BTW, my son reports his Prius often does 60 MPG.

Funny, we also have a Prius Prime, 2021

That routinely gets 58-62 mpg.
In the right climate, I’ve seen 72 mpg on highway trips, 70 mph seems to be a sweet spot for that car.
Also done with a depleted battery on purpose.

 

there are 2 ways to argue:

argue the facts
deny the facts

wonder which is happening?

p.s. I have no issue with post #37

 

I'm befuddled and confused by this whole deal!

 

The electricity for the rear motor (MGR) mainly comes from the HV battery. In a series hybrid ("locomotive" lay out) the motor powering the wheels gets it's electricity from a generator which is driven by gas/diesel engine; no battery involved.

Possible, but rarely (only when the EV battery is low), MGR can get it's electricity from MG1, but since MG1 is much smaller than MGR, it cannot produce as much as MGR may need.

 

The electricity for the rear motor (MGR) mainly comes from the HV battery. In a series hybrid ("locomotive" lay out) the motor powering the wheels gets it's electricity from a generator which is driven by gas/diesel engine; no battery involved.

Possible, but rarely (only when the EV battery is low), MGR can get it's electricity from MG1, but since MG1 is much smaller than MGR, it cannot produce as much as MGR may need.

Its hard to stay within same units or nomenclature when making our points. What I mean is, "electricity" is just the carrier of power.
Keep it all in power (kWh).

All the power stored in that HV batt, came from gasoline.
There's only two devices that can supply electricity, the generator and batt. The sum of that power for any period of time, all came from gasoline via ice.

w/o any batt, MGR could only produce what MG1 was supplying it, 30hp(max) minus a little waste.
But that math is silly too. If I steal 30hp from ice to supply power to MGR, the sum of all power to wheels is less than ice max, actually wasting a smidge more using the gen/motor. The best thing from this scenario is, putting some power at the rear wheels if (if) the driving conditions would benefit from AWD at that time. ice + mg1/mgr is wasting more fuel than ice drive alone.

If there was any magical savings by using an mg1/mgr setup, you would then just make mg1 a 176hp gen to match the output of ice, and then run the wheels from all electric. But there is no such magical savings, if there were then Toyota would not be using a tiny 30hp MG1.

Again, if anyone wants to try a Prius Prime that has a 9gal tank and see if you can get more than 385mi out of it, any driving style you wish, i'd be happy to see that evidence. I see there's no bet takers.

 

there are 2 ways to argue:

argue the facts
deny the facts

wonder which is happening?

p.s. I have no issue with post #37

Perhaps this: What is Sealioning?: A Type of Trolling | Merriam-Webster

I'm befuddled and confused by this whole deal!

See above. Not very common on this particular forum. I have a feeling our vigilant moderators are going to pull the plug soon