Toyota RAV4 Hybrid Wait Times See No Light at End of Tunnel For Canadians... Why?

Here in the states, things seem to be getting better. Wait times for new cars are becoming shorter and as the economy starts going back on the rollercoaster of good and bad, we are starting to see either short or long wait times for U.S buyers. This depends on mostly where you live and how well connected your dealer is to the allocation’s office. In April, we covered how long average RAV4 owners were waiting for their RAV4, and it came out to be somewhere between 6 months to a year. Sadly, this is still the same case for most Americans.

To add fuel to the fire, Canadians are having it even worse with RAV4 Prime waiting times were 3 years for some! That’s 2025 if you put that in retrospect. Now granted, not all dealers are going to honor the waiting time and give you a 2025 model RAV4 Prime once you get it. I still don’t know how that’s going to work out, but I guess it’ll kind of be like Tesla and their waiting times.

By the way, check out our latest article on how the Tacoma might be following the Tundra with oil change limits.

But for the regular RAV4 Hybrid, waiting times in Canada have significantly risen. If you may remember, Toyota had to close 2 plants a few months ago and they opened up a little while after. Shouldn’t this solve that problem? Apparently not.

On Facebook Toyota RAV4 Hybrid group, Mark Wasney asked, “Can Any other Canadians on here share how long their RAV4 Hybrid took to arrive from order date to delivery? I ordered on May 17/22 and was told 6 months initially and has now changed to 16 months.” That is an insane waiting time for a car that is meant to be mass produced. Remember before 2020 when you could walk into a dealership and pick a car out and drive it out that same day? Oh, how I wish for that peak era of existence. I wanted to see if any other Canadian on order had similar insane waiting times…turns out they do.

Dan Shire said, “Ontario, ordered a 2022 hybrid XLE from a large Toronto dealer (Ken Shaw) the first week of March. I’ve heard twice from the salesman, first that the car was NOT in the factory queue for September and that by November they’ll be building 2023s only (2 RAV4 factories in Ontario). Last week he indicated more delays but no timeframe expectation, except it’s likely going to be a 2023 model.”

Thankfully his dealer said he would honor the year model change which means that he would get a RAV4 Hybrid with the upgraded infotainment system that is said to be available as a refresh for the current generation.

Margaret Fry said, “Been waiting 8 months for a hybrid.” They did not specify which province they were in but given that they too have a long wait time, I would probably think they live in a secluded area.

I really hope these wait times get shorter because the more people see that wait times are long, the more likely they are to defect to other manufacturers like Ford or Chevy…most popular for Hybrid compact SUVs being Honda with the CRV. But I hope that Toyota can do something and get these wait times lower.

What do you think? How long was your wait time? Let us know in the comments below.

Harutiun Hareyan is reporting Toyota news at Torque News. His automotive interests and vast experience test-riding new cars give his stories a sense of authenticity and unique insights. Follow Harutiun on Twitter at @HareyanHarutiun and on YouTube at Toyota Time for daily Toyota news.