[darelldd]

All true..

The Rav4EV was "yanked" just like every other EV was yanked. As soon as the vehicles were no longer required under the CA ZEV mandate, the cars were no longer available. In Toyota's case, the program stopped ONE DAY after the mandate was crushed. My order went in two days before that. Whew.

http://www.darelldd.com/ev/rav.htm

Of course GM went the extra mile and crushed all the EV1's that didn't make it to universities or museums. The Ravs were being crushed too, as they came off lease. But we put a stop to that, and now they're being resold or at least kept for parts.

 

[darelldd]

The consumers were getting over $30K ? of tax credit or rebate over the 36 months do not remember clearly if you leased or financed the Rav4EV's

Uh... no. The incentives brought the price down to about $33k. But the car had to initially be purchased at $42k, and taxes paid on that... and then we had to sign up for, and wait for the various incentives. The whole process took about three years and was pretty darn confusing!

 

[darelldd]

Not only the Toyota, but EVERY mass-produced ev in the United States. All are gone now.

Well, no. They're not all "gone" - they just aren't offered new any more. I purchased my Rav4, so nobody can take it back. And I also own a Ranger EV. The EV1 I had, has unfortunately met an utimely demise.

Lots of pics of them if interested: http://www.darelldd.com/ev/

(same link as in my sig).

 

[darelldd]

Hi Clett -

Thanks for the nice words on the site.

Those guys are still going strong, and want to make a market for solar auto like that. They're actually looking for early adopters who want to test it. They say that they see a 10% gain in fuel economy... but I'm skeptical at best. This thin panels are quite inefficient!

 

[darelldd]

Yes, the Sunpower panels are nice... but not flexible! I think the hit from air drag from having a couple of flat panels up there would negate any benefit! Now flat panes *could* be Frenched into the roof of the Rav, I suppose - but not something like the swoopy Prius roof.

There's the rub, I'm afraid.

 

[darelldd]

The reason the Rav4 EV was discontinued was because of cost and battery issues. $42,000. Plus Toyota needed the manpower to develop new hybrid technology. The Rav4 had gone to a new body style. Most of the people on the waiting list would back out once they found out the total cost.

And you get this information from where? The "hybrid" technology was developed alongside the battery tech, and the hybrid technology is as good as it is BECAUSE of the battery tech.

I'm sorry... none of this rings true. Battery issues? Which issues were those? The fact that the batteries are lasting well over 150k miles when most folks assume they'll last about 30k? Regarding the new body style... that style was released two years before the retail program even began!

There were many reasons the program was terminated. These are them, however.

 

[darelldd]

Battery issues? Which issues were those?

My understanding is that there were some political issues regarding inductive vs. conductive chargers, and the Rav4EV wasn't using the preferred charger...

Wow. That's a new one. There were politics involved in charger choice early on, as the various auto makers duked it out. But that was mostly GM, and Toyota just followed GM's lead. Most production EVs (including the Rav) started life as conductive cars, and ended as inductive. But none of this has anything to do with the program ending, that's for sure!

Fact of the matter is that there are more small paddle inductive chargers in CA than all the other types combined.... the the Rav uses the most available one.

 

[darelldd]

I should of been more clear about the battery issue. The battery pack that was used quite expensive.

Yup. Quite true. Doing the "right thing" often costs more money. At least at first. Certainly easier and cheaper to keep making gas cars in the short term - as all car makers will tell you.

Thier have been failures in the battery packs on Rav4 EV unfortunatly.

Of course. But not even a significant amount! There are failures of IC engines as well, but we sure keep building those!

The question is what was the incident rate for this type of failure on the Rav4.

Very, very low. The car makers would LOVE to parade this number around, but alas, there isn't much of a number to parade!

The conversion process was one at time conversion.

They were hand assembled, yes. No other way to cost-effectively make just over 1000 units. They'd obviously be MUCH cheaper in mass production, but we never got there, so we have a bit of chicken-and-egg thing going on here! And just for the sake of accuracy - these were NOT conversions in any sense of the word. That Rav gliders were produced to be built out with gas or battery power. They were built from the glider up as either gas or electric, nothing was "converted."

1249 Rav4's were produced total.

My count shows 1288. Close enough, certainly.

While the new Prius sales are over 50,000 units anually.

Ain't that grand!? Shows what mass production AND marketing will do for you. If the Rav had enjoyed the same, it would have been interesting to see what the market really would have been like. As it was, two years worth of Rav4EV "production" was sold/leased in just eight months - with little to no advertising, zero trim options, old body style, huge sticker price and a total TWO color choices! Amazing.

It was because of high manufacturing volume this happened. The Rav4 did not have this going for it. Plus the cost of maintaining parts for such a low volume production vehicle.

But wait. You're saying here that the Rav4EV production was stopped because Toyota only made a limited number, and therefor could only sell a limited number, and therefor the market was really small? How does that make sense? They created this little tiny "market" and then blame that small market for the demise of the program!

This is one the reasons why the some manufactures crushed thier electric cars. The other was so could write off the cost of the project more quickly.

There are WAY more politics invloved here, but certainly these are some of the many reasons we don't have EVs today.

So one wonders why all the makers are pretending to WANT to produce Fuel Cell vehicles, if EVs were too darn expensive and hard to do...