Toyota RAV 4 Hybrid

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user 816

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Toyota RAV4 Hybrid

I was just reading up on this car, the good points,
good size (4.6m) and with a big boot, even a spacesaver spare.
Has a 2.5l Atkinson petrol and is either FWD or you can have AWD with a rear electric motor. Auto - CVT gearbox
Power output of 200bhp and 0 to 60 in 8.4 seconds, mpg in the 50's.
Tons of equipment, even more than a PHEV and not too pricey, just over £30K for a top spec.
Reported to drive not to sporty, comfy ride - suits me!

bad points, seems a very half hearted EV range is about 1 miles and no plug-in option, this means
it can't 'bend' the emission test result so isn't anything like as tax friendly as a PHEV.

Its 115g/km FWD, 118g/km AWD. This is still very good for a large quick SUV with 4 wheel drive and a petrol engine
and makes its BIK attractive compared to many diesel alternatives..

But... with just a few more KW of battery and a basic charging socket it could have knocked many 10's of grams off its official figure as the test course is only about 4.5 miles, making it a massive seller to the UK company car market.

Battery is apparently NiMH, cheaper than Lithium, so why didn't they add £600 on the price for a couple more kw/h's worth and a standard charge socket and sell thousands of them?
 
It is presumably a derivative of the Prius drive train which would explain the design choices. The Toyota hybrid system makes no serious attempt at being an EV - a Toyota engineer once described it to me as an electric turbo that allows them to make use of the Atkinson cycle engine with its improved fuel economy and still achieve a reasonable performance profile. The battery is just there to provide the power boost for acceleration - normal running is almost 100% petrol.

Obviously it cannot turn in the 140 to 150mpg that a PHEV can claim for short distance use, but on long journeys it is not carrying round a heavy battery pack that is not contributing anything and the Atkinson cycle engine is more efficient than the standard cycle engine in the PHEV.

oh, and by the way, the blessed Wikipedia does not like the description CTV for the Prius - they call it a dual-source or dual-port transmission. The effect is pretty much the same, but there are interesting differences in the design. Other documents refer to it as an eCVT (Electric CVT) - which is not a bad idea - I wonder if our Aussie and Dutch engineers will accept eCVT for the PHEV?
 
maby said:
It is presumably a derivative of the Prius drive train ...
Engine drives front wheels, e-motor drives rear wheels. Nothing like a Prius drive train, if you ask me.

maby said:
Other documents refer to it as an eCVT (Electric CVT) - which is not a bad idea - I wonder if our Aussie and Dutch engineers will accept eCVT for the PHEV?
Clearly eCVT is a name given to a very particular implementation (the one for the Prius and the likes). In the PHEV case it should be "Multi-Mode eTransmission", the name given to it by GKN.
 
maby said:
[The gear ratios are fixed, you know!
There may be presets, like with a radio tuner. And it may have a (strong) preference to settle at these presets. But I cannot imagine you could jump form one preset ratio to another, without passing all ratios in between. This would require interruption of the propulsion. And would totally defeat the purpose of having a CVT.
 
anko said:
maby said:
[The gear ratios are fixed, you know!
There may be presets, like with a radio tuner. And it may have a (strong) preference to settle at these presets. But I cannot imagine you could jump form one preset ratio to another, without passing all ratios in between. This would require interruption of the propulsion. And would totally defeat the purpose of having a CVT.

No, you misunderstand me - the physical gears in the Toyota drive train are limited to the gears in a three port differential - it's a single fixed gear ratio that sums the input from two separate drive shafts to produce a composite output.
 
anko said:
maby said:
It is presumably a derivative of the Prius drive train ...
Engine drives front wheels, e-motor drives rear wheels. Nothing like a Prius drive train, if you ask me.

....

Are you absolutely sure about that? The admittedly not detailed documentation on the Toyota web site leads me to believe that they are using an uprated Prius power unit in the front with additional electric motors at the rear to provide the 4WD. that is what Lexus (part of the Toyota group) did in their hybrid 4WD estates.
 
P.S. The Toyota blog web site says:

"Both front and all-wheel drive versions will be available, powered by a hybrid system that uses a 2.5-litre Atkinson cycle petrol engine and a powerful electric motor. The AWD model has an additional electric motor at the rear that provides extra traction and a 1,650kg towing capability, without the added weight and complexity of central prop shaft."

I'm pretty sure it is just an uprated Prius at the front with additional electric motors at the rear - exactly what Lexus has been putting in their "h" versions for several years.
 
maby said:
anko said:
maby said:
[The gear ratios are fixed, you know!
There may be presets, like with a radio tuner. And it may have a (strong) preference to settle at these presets. But I cannot imagine you could jump form one preset ratio to another, without passing all ratios in between. This would require interruption of the propulsion. And would totally defeat the purpose of having a CVT.

No, you misunderstand me - the physical gears in the Toyota drive train are limited to the gears in a three port differential - it's a single fixed gear ratio that sums the input from two separate drive shafts to produce a composite output.
I did misunderstand you. I though you where referring to the effect and not the implementation ;)
 
anko said:
So
Has a 2.5l Atkinson petrol and is either FWD or you can have AWD with a rear electric motor. Auto - CVT gearbox
really means:
Has a 2.5l Atkinson petrol and is either FWD or you can have AWD with an additional rear electric motor. Auto - CVT gearbox
? In that case, sure.

Indeed - I think the former statement may have been Bob's less than accurate reporting of the true design. An Atkinson cycle petrol engine without the addition of the hybrid components would handle terribly and probably need a 12 speed gearbox!
 
maby said:
anko said:
So
Has a 2.5l Atkinson petrol and is either FWD or you can have AWD with a rear electric motor. Auto - CVT gearbox
really means:
Has a 2.5l Atkinson petrol and is either FWD or you can have AWD with an additional rear electric motor. Auto - CVT gearbox
? In that case, sure.

Indeed - I think the former statement may have been Bob's less than accurate reporting of the true design. An Atkinson cycle petrol engine without the addition of the hybrid components would handle terribly and probably need a 12 speed gearbox!
True. I didn't interpret it as the rear motor begin optional. I though it was the engine driving the front wheels (under less demanding conditions) and the rear motor aiding the ICE via the rear wheels (in more demanding conditions).
 
It looks like a nice enough car and is something I might well consider if I were purchasing as a private buyer. For my pattern of use it would probably be slightly cheaper to run than the PHEV, but the increased BIK penalty would more than outweigh any saving in running cost.
 
I find a lot of the terms being thrown around by the car manufacturers to be deceptive, CVT and Hybrid seem to be used and abused to justify a huge range of different physical systems, and some where the motor is little more than an extra torque booster.

So for me the big question is wether its an EV drive train with an engine providing boost, or a ICE drive train with the motor providing a boost.

Which can probably be characterised by wether the engine-to-wheels coupling has a single fixed ratio gear, or if it has some kind of variable or multi-selectable gear ratios. i.e. a traditional gear box of some kind, the latter i would argue has no place being called an EV
 
discorduk said:
I ...

So for me the big question is wether its an EV drive train with an engine providing boost, or a ICE drive train with the motor providing a boost.

...

Well, with an EV range of about one mile, the Toyota drive train is definitely in your latter category. When we owned the Prius, I did occasionally press the EV button - but only if I was moving the car across our driveway to make room for one of the other cars to get in or out. That was more a case of avoiding an unnecessary engine start than saving any money.
 
maby said:
discorduk said:
I ...

So for me the big question is wether its an EV drive train with an engine providing boost, or a ICE drive train with the motor providing a boost.

...

Well, with an EV range of about one mile, the Toyota drive train is definitely in your latter category. When we owned the Prius, I did occasionally press the EV button - but only if I was moving the car across our driveway to make room for one of the other cars to get in or out. That was more a case of avoiding an unnecessary engine start than saving any money.

The battery size isn't a guarantee of how it's physically connected, for example the age old diesel-electric train systems, those have no battery at all, but there is no mechanical linkage between the engine and the motor, its only electric

So it is possible for a similar system to be used in a car, with just enough battery to store a bit of regenerative braking energy, and to take the strain whilst the engine gets up to speed.
 
With a CVT the ICE is able to run in the hot spot under most conditions and run a generator to provide the rear electric motor / battery with electrical enegy.

But 1 mile battery range, that's nothing :-(

Peter
 
ganderpe said:
With a CVT the ICE is able to run in the hot spot under most conditions and run a generator to provide the rear electric motor / battery with electrical enegy.

But 1 mile battery range, that's nothing :-(

Peter

But you have to recognise that Toyota are not building EVs, they are using hybrid technology to build more efficient petrol cars.
 
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