Rav4 Charge to Charge Tour

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palmer_md

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 19, 2012
Messages
64
Location
Sacramento, CA
Today I attended the Charge to Charge tour in Sacramento. Perfect day to walk in the park and look at the latest in EV technology. I took a test drive in the new Rav4ev. Wow! What a great car. Quiet and smooth like my Leaf but it has a lot more power. Especially in performance mode. I started the drive in regular mode and when at a stoplight with a long straight and no cars in front, I gave it a punch an it really accelerated nicely. A little while later I put it into performance mode and the speedometer turned from a calm blue color to an angry red, and when you punched the accelerator in this mode it REALLY moves. You can definitely feel the difference. I'm not sure there is any more power in the performance mode, but the "ramp" of the power is much quicker. In normal mode it ramped nice and gently but quick, but in performance mode the ramp is almost instant and you have full power. Both modes are far more powerful than in the Leaf. The car is very comfortable, and very Toyotalike. I've been driving Prius' since 2002 (on my third) and my wife had an older Rav4 (non EV), and the interior feel is very Toyota, and you'll recognize the gear shift knob and the seats and the dash general design. The biggest difference is that all the dash is glass gauges and it has the nice big screen in the center of the dash. I’m not a fan of the iPhone center control system. But perhaps I could get used to it. Just seems weird pressing the home button all the time to change functions. The speedometer and info behind the steering wheel seemed very well done. It would take a longer test drive to know for sure, but I feel this is done right, but the main Nav/Info/Audio system seems clunky. Its a little slow to respond to actions an navigation seems clumsy. It would again take a bit of time to know for sure, but these are my first impressions. Love the tesla drivetrain and the Toyota vehicle. Time to trade in my Leaf for one of these.

Pictures here: http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16
 
Apparently the Rav4 Charge to Charge tour is not quite the hit that the Leaf tour or Tesla tour was. It is not generating any buzz in the news nor has it generated traffic for this site. We have only 7 members and 9 threads. I really like this car and I'm quite sure anyone who drives a Leaf would just drool over the advantages this car has.

The car went on sale this week. Any news of how many were sold?
 
This forum has been quite slow - thanks for posting the info you did! I found it interesting that there was a charge-to-charge tour. I hadn't heard anything about it until you posted...

Perhaps that's why it hasn't had hardly any press? Toyota hasn't done a great job of advertising it like Nissan did with the Leaf tours....
 
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