Honda Cars : 2010 LA Auto Show, second gen Toyota Rav4 EV | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

The second generation Toyota RAV4 EV is the result of the Toyota and Tesla Motors collaboration. Based on the popular RAV4 compact SUV and powered by a Tesla electric powertrain, the RAV4 EV project adopts a new development model that incorporates Tesla’s streamline, fast and flexible approach with Toyota’s engineering and manufacturing leadership.

A total of 35 RAV4 EV’s will be built for a demonstration and evaluation program running through 2011. These demonstration vehicles utilize the current RAV4 vehicle built in Canada and integrate the Tesla battery and additional components built in Palo Alto, California. A fully-engineered vehicle is targeted to launch in 2012. The fully-engineered vehicle will target a range of 100 miles in a wide range of climates and conditions.

PERFORMANCE/SPECS
Exterior:
Unique front and rear styling
LED Foglamps
18" Alloy wheels
Special pearl white paint with aqua base – "mutually exclusive"

Interior:
Smart key system with push button start
Combination synthetic leather and fabric seating surfaces
Touch screen DVD Navigation system
Cargo volume equal to 2010 RAV4

Mechanical:
Powerful electric motor with Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery pack
Zero emission vehicle (ZEV)
Class-leading driving range, acceleration, and top speed
Real world driving range of approximately 100 miles

Source;
http://toyotarav4ev.com/browser.html

Honda Cars : We’ll See the New Toyota RAV4 EV Soon | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Interesting....I think by borrowing tech from Tesla will help them pass GM's Volt in the race for a viable EV....

By Chuck Squatriglia

They are keeping very, very busy at Toyota, where engineers are frantically developing the RAV4 EV and the brass promise to deliver the plug-in Prius and a slew of new hybrids within two years.

The most tantalizing tidbit was a tweet saying the new RAV4 EV makes its worldwide debut at the Los Angeles auto show in November. Not much else was said — Toyota’s tweeter only had 140 characters to work with, of course, and he or she really needs to work on brevity. But Toyota executive vp Takeshi Uchiyamada said the RAV4 EV will roll into showrooms in 2012, about the same time we’ll see the plug-in Prius.

The timing suggests Toyota has been working frantically on the EV it announced in July. The car is being developed with some help from Tesla Motors, which is providing batteries, motors and other tech to help jump-start the program. Big push aside, don’t look for Toyota to go nuts with electrics. Uchiyamada says cars with cords will comprise but a small part of the fleet.

“Based on the current battery technology, it is not feasible to have all-electric vehicles” for the entire fleet, he said during a presentation in Detroit, according to the Wall Street Journal. “As battery technology gets better, that transition will lead to more pure electronic vehicles. Liquid fuels are still a superior fuel because of their energy density.”

As for the Toyota-Tesla partnership, Uchiyamada told reporters Toyota can be “slow” to innovate and tapping Tesla allows it to work “in a much quicker way” as it makes a prototype electric version of its RAV4 cute-ute (pictured).

The plug-in Prius rolls into North American showrooms in the “May/June 2012 time frame” and the goal is to sell 20,000 of them, Toyota said in another tweet. That’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things — the company sold 356,824 Camrys last year — but it’s twice the number of Chevrolet Volts that GM will build next year.

As if that weren’t enough, said the company also will roll out six new hybrids by 2012. Two will wear the Lexus badge, and they’ll be new models — not hybrid versions of existing vehicles.

Source (pic from Jalopnik);
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/09/rav4-ev-la-auto-show/

Honda Cars : Tesla and Toyota to develop RAV4 EV, hope to launch in 2012 | 2013 New Honda Car Reviews 0

Toyota and Tesla have officially announced that the electric prototypes being developed by the California startup are based on the RAV4 crossover, and the two companies hope to have a production version ready by 2012. When we sat down with Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda last week, he revealed that an initial prototype was being built with a Tesla electric powertrain. Since then, Tesla CTO JB Straubel revealed that his engineering team was preparing two vehicles based on an existing Toyota platform for delivery by the end of July.

If the project comes to fruition, it will be great news for fans of the original RAV4 EV which debuted in the late 1990s. Several hundred of those vehicles are still on the road today and regularly turn up for sale on eBay Motors at premium prices.

The new RAV4s will use Tesla's liquid cooled lithium ion battery configuration that contains thousands of commodity laptop cells. The first prototype is already running and a larger fleet will be prepared this year for durability testing by Toyota.

Source;
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/16/tesla-and-toyota-to-develop-rav4-ev-hope-to-launch-in-2012/