Toyota RAV4 Hybrid as a towcar

The hybrid version seems to cost about £3,000 more. That would pay my total diesel bill for more than 2.5 years. No economy for me 

Since the original question was posed by MartinOrd 1, only one person has given a relevant answer

We took a Rav4 Hybrid out for a test drive albeit solo last Wednesday.

Great car and is certainly well specified to tow our caravan.

Anyone else have experience of actually using a Rav4 Hybrid to tow a caravan please?

I have just bought a RAV4 hybrid and will be towing my Coachman wanderer with it in March. So of there are no other answers to the specific question, I will update you then...

It would be interesting to compare the towing performance and fuel efficiency between the Mitsubishi Phev and the RAV4. The Phev has a 1500Kg tow limit and the RAV 1650Kg

It would be good to get some real life towing figures for both these cars as some members maybe considering these new or used as their next towcar.

There seems to be a lot of info on the web, I got curious so here is a snippet of what I have found, please don't take as "read" cos (a), the webs not always right or  (b) I might have got it wrong. and (c) these are damn complicated cars with oil cooled motors and generators running up to 14000rpm and airconditioned battery packs, multi drive modes etc. for example (a)EV mode  2 electric motors driven no petrol engine running, (b)series mode Petrol engine runs at fixed speed but just drives generator which powers battery and one or both electric motors and (c)parallel mode where the Petrol engine is engaged with the front wheels and the rear electric motor can be driven if the battery has enough charge! more Phew than Phev...

The two cars have similar series EV/Parallel-Hybrid drives but different Batteries the Phev has Lithium ion  25 Ah 300V and RAV4  NiMH (Nickel Hydride) at 6.5Ah 240V. (from best info I can find) The Phev being a plug in as well as an engine charged car has a short but useful battery only range approx 30 mi The RAV seems to be designed as a Electrically assisted car having a very short battery range solo approx 0.6 mi.

The generators appear to give 50kW RAV-70kW Phev from info on the web.

The traction motors are 2x 25kW (assumption) on the  RAV and 2 x 60kW on the PHEV both cars a.c. motors driven through a dc/ac inverter drive at approx 600V

 I believe efficiency, mpg and emissions on both cars are gained by the electric drive enabling the petrol motor to operate in its most efficient range. Obviously keeping the petrol engine in the peak efficiency range is much easier when the car is solo. If the generator that is powered by the petrol engine cannot supply enough energy to the battery and electric motors to keep the petrol engine within its peak efficiency range, fuel consumption will be drastically increased. This might happen at full load towing on a long several mile incline where once batteries are demanding full charging current and the electric motors are also demanding a lot of current. From the figures above this situation would seem more likely to occur with the Phev but that is speculation.

I am interested in some real world towing and solo world mpg figures back to back with a diesel equivalent. And what state the batteries are in after 5 or 10 years use..... My local Mitsubishi dealer doesn’t recommend the Outlander PHEV for towing, advised sticking with diesel.....

has anybody thought about a motorway crash involving both petrol and battery powered vehicles. one spark and BOOM. was watching the series about the A1 motorway and police and highway patrol would not touch the hybrid in case it was still live and waited for recovery wagon to remove it after a crash. as mentioned earlier 25Ah and 300v. wow. 

Interesting comment lornalou, the 300V is DC too, if you grab hold of something live it is more difficult to let go than AC. 

Its good that someone actually has the vehicle under discussion so can give us some real facts and practical experience rather than the blether, sorry I mean speculation we normally get on this subject.

Perhaps Liam you could expand a bit on the types of towing journeys, the performance of the car when driven by petrol and battery. 

Is the transmission 4wd? manual or Auto gearbox?

Is the battery recharged only by the petrol engine, or can it be plugged in?

Will the car automatically switch to petrol engine power when the caravan is electronically detected, or does it start off with battery power?

Will the car actually tow at all using battery power?

I have a Toyota Auris 1.8l hybrid and will be swapping for a Hybrid Rav later this year with a view to using it as a tow car.  For those who are not aware of how the Toyota hybrid technology works the Auris and the Rav 4 are both self charging hybrids so there is no option to plug either in. The car decides when the motors kick in and are charged directly either from the engine or from re-generation when braking. As far as I understand it the Rav AWD has front wheel drive from the engine and  a pair of motors which power the rear wheels with the ECU deciding when and how much drive is put through each wheel. As standard the Rev has Trailer sway control which senses if the load being towed starts to shift its weight and puts power to individual wheels to maintain the stability of the car.

I can switch my Auris to battery only but this only works below 20mph and is only good for about 13 miles then the petrol power kicks back in. There is a "normal" mode which uses petrol only and a "power" mode which combines the engine and motors producing about 140bhp. The Rav will produce about 220bhp depending on which year/variant you have

The info regarding how the power is used by the Rav above needs fact checking but I'm still reading everything I can get hold of and will update if I find any more info. Hope this helps