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Alex (not verified)    September 20, 2019 - 11:37AM

I guess I belong in the "other" category. I bought a RAV4 Hybrid last April, and I'm sorry I did. The car is, IMO, not quite ready for prime time. I would recommend readers wait for the 2020 models.

There are two significant problems. The first is that it's difficult or impossible to fill the gas tank at the pump; automatic pumps keep shutting off. You can make a concerted effort to top off the tank, but this is bad practice both for the car and the environment, and is illegal in many places. Because of the difficulty filling the tank, it's hard to calculate the MPG; you have to measure it over many fills, and take an average. This issue affects many owners, and is well discussed online on RAV4 forums.

The second issue is that if you forget to turn off the engine system, or don't push the start/stop button hard enough, the engine can remain enabled, and you won't know it. The car has a so-called smart key, which doesn't need to be in a keyslot for the engine to keep running. This mistake is an easy one to make, as the car is a hybrid and typically completely silent when you park it. The gasoline engine only comes on after the hybrid battery is discharged.

If you do this in an enclosed home garage, the car can produce lethal amounts of carbon monoxide; this has been well described for Toyotas in newspaper articles. If you do this at a airport where you leave the car for a few weeks, I believe you can discharge the hybrid battery, which would likely require having the car towed to a Toyota dealer. Discharging the hybrid battery is much more of a problem than discharging the 12V battery in a conventional car; you cannot simply have the car jump started; it needs to be towed to a Toyota dealer.

This problem was fixed in American hybrids and other cars with smart keys years ago; Toyota has announced they are correcting it in 2020 models. Which doesn't do 2019 owners any good.

These comments are, of course, just one person's opinion. As they say, your mileage may vary.

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