( How does the 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid do offroad? We push the crossover SUV to its max in the mud, through the rocks, and up difficult offload terrain in Colorado to see how it does when its all wheel drive system is completely maxed out.
This new rav4 has an electronic on-demand all-wheel drive system that engages and disengages when it’s needed something tells me it’s probably needed right about now hey check it out that’s the new toyota rav4 hybrid and today we’re going to take it off-road and we’re going to get it stuck because in this video we’re gonna not only take that rav4 of our
Colorado rocky top trail we’re also going to put it in the tfl slip test see if we can get it stuck and purpose on the rollers and then see how it works in the real world as well so i say we just start hitting the trail and see what this thing will do now here at tfl if it’s got out wheel drive and it’s a crossover or suv with pretty decent clearance you
Can bet we’re gonna test it offroad and today we’re using our new trail called rocky top now if you recall from a couple of videos back our typical goldmine hill is closed permanently but this new trail is actually more difficult in a lot of ways because it’s steep it’s very articulated and it’s got some good rocky sections now why aren’t we taking this rav4
Hybrid up the trail in the first place well it’s because it’s got a really interesting all-wheel drive system because unlike most vehicles that have an engine in the front and then drive shafts that go to the front and rear axles the rav4 hybrid only has a gasoline engine that powers of the front wheels out back it’s all electricity because there’s a separate
54 horsepower electric motor generator that powers exclusively the rear end we’re gonna find out what that means in the tfl slip test so let’s cut to stage one right now of our slip test and see if we can’t get it stuck with just the front wheels in the rollers here we are the tfl slip test this is a very difficult test that we put all-wheel drive in four-wheel
Drive vehicles through now the way it works is we’re gonna back on to a length of assembly line roller like this here and you can see they spin which means we’re gonna get certain wheel stuck at certain points to see how the all-wheel drive and traction control systems cope with different scenarios so the first scenario is gonna be the front wheels stuck in the
Roller now because these front wheels are just gonna spin and spin and spin it’s gonna be up to that rear motor generator unit to propel us off they’re the ones that have traction now i did put a strip of white tape here on the wheel so you know how fast it’s spinning when it’s spinning and when those rear motors kick in so this is how this is gonna work i do
Have a trail mode and a trash neutral button we’re gonna run the test in normal mode so no trail mode traction control on just like you’d get into the car and start it up so i back under the rollers put it into neutral and then let the vehicle settle let’s make sure we’re in there nice and good which we are then simply into dry i’ve put off the brake and just a
Little bit of throttle okay so not a bad result at all it did take a little bit of spinning but hardly any throttle before we get off let’s try it one more time this time i’m gonna try it in trail mode so let me engage trail mode into neutral let it settle now in trail mode it should engage the rear end just a little bit quicker that’s what i’m hoping so put off
The brake onto the throttle whoo actually that was a much worse result let me try it one more time in trail mode i was kind of disappointed with that it’s actually not all that great if i’m being honest now trail mode is the off-road mode so that’s the one we’re gonna use up the rocky top foot off the brake a little bit of gas yeah actually i was more happy with
How it engaged in your normal mode this is the kind of stuff that you guys use your rav4 for getting you to the campsite and toyota has given us some things in the rav4 that helped us along our journey the all-wheel drive hybrid you see behind me has 8.1 inches of ground clearance it’s actually not the most in the rav4 lineup because there’s an adventure model
With 8.6 however the hybrid does have something the adventure model doesn’t and that’s more horsepower 219 combined system output when you get the all-wheel drive hybrid which is significantly up from the standard gas model and that’s going to help us get up rocky top because here at 9,000 feet of elevation every extra bit of power we can get the better this
Right here is the most important piece of tech in any off-road vehicle i am of course referring to the tires now these are michelin primacy all-season tires they’re not all that grippy they’re not a true altering and they’re probably going to hold us back on the rocky top trail when it gets really rocky however there is one more thing that is pretty good about
The rav4 that’s inside that piece of offer tech in here is the trail button now when i engage the trail button it kind of tightens everything up in the ah wheel drive system the rear end which is electric powered is more aggressive it distributes power to slipping wheels faster and more aggressively it should be the ticket we need if we’re gonna be successful
Off-road however it is still software it’s not a proper locking differential it’s not a low-range transfer case but having even some type of software driven tech to help us out off-road it’s nice to have there’s this conception in the automotive industry that if you lift a car put some black cladding on it it’s all of a sudden more rugged more off-road worthy and
I just don’t buy it and neither should you because it takes a lot more than that to make a vehicle capable of hitting the rocks you need a strong stout platform on which to hang suspension that flexes and articulates and keeps tires on the ground you need underbody protection for when you hit and scrape and get the bottom so you keep the fluid where they need to
Be but in my opinion most importantly you need a low-range transfer case something to multiply the available torque something that helps you climb up these steep grades and the rav4 doesn’t have much of any of those if i’m being honest we’ve got independent suspension we don’t have any lockers not a ton of ground clearance and we don’t have a low range but we do
Have that electric motor and i can already tell you that it’s giving me more control up this steep hill i can feel it engaged that immediate torque of that electric motor is huge i am crawling up rocky top right now in electricity only which is pretty incredible now we’re getting to a little bit of a hard part here and we’re gonna be articulated we’re gonna have
Two wheels on the ground two wheels in the air it’s time to run over to the slip test see how it does in a controlled environment and then let’s see how it does here this is the diagonal slip test so the way this is gonna work is i’m going to back on to the rulers and we open up the window actually now the front left and the rear right already loss of traction
I’m trying it in normal mode first so traction control on like usual foot off the brake and just a little bit of throttle ooh good result they’re actually very good results we try it one more time i hope you can see the white tape spinning just a little bit on the wheel now this time i’m going to engage trail mode into drive oh even better results so at the
Diagonal slip test which is a very common off-road situation in which you have a loss of traction at diagonal wheels in trail mode this is trend mode again yeah i’m actually pretty impressed but selvam doesn’t allow a little bit more slip in the normal mode but that means it allows a little bit more wheel speed and a little bit more opportunity for the brakes
And the traction control to engage to get you unstuck so we got off the diagonal slip test with ease pretty much in the controlled environment but what about on well the rocky top trail because this is one heck of a hill now i’m gonna put it into trail mode for this i think we’re gonna need every bit of traction every bit of help we can get coming up here it
Can feel it articulating up on the rock and go down slow not gonna be responsible for damaging this toyota actually impressive result so if you feel the wheel spinning just don’t have the traction however i will say it’s not stopping me from spinning so i like that we’ve had that issue with some subarus in the past and we give it a little bump it’s definitely
Struggling a little bit give it just a little bit more of a bump there we go so a little bit of throttle a little bit of momentum but with trail mode on we did get up the first challenging part of rocky top so this rav4 has a cvt a continuously variable transmission and i got to say usually up here this vehicle would be pretty much beached with a cvt because
They don’t do well off-road at slow speed maneuvers but with the help of those electric motors i am very impressed it probably doesn’t look it on camera but this is a steep hill this is not an easy flat paved road this is a fairly rocky pretty dang steep off-road trail and we’re cruising around an easy mode right now with trail mode on just because the electric
Motors have so much torque now it’s gonna get really hard up here and before you go any higher i think we should look at how the vehicle does on the three-wheeled slip test the most difficult of them all and then let’s see how it does on the hardest steepest part of the rocky top both front wheels and the rewrite they’re gonna be lodged in the rollers only the
Rear left has traction this is not only a test of that rear 54 horsepower electric motor generator but also a test of traction control can it break that wheel that’s spinning to force power to the only wheel with traction it’s a hard test let’s see if it can do it okay so three wheels slip test toyota rav4 i’m in normal mode traction control on okay into neutral
Letter settle and now into drive oh it’s slipping okay so it’s not happening in normal mode what if i select rail here on the dash come on okay so that’s supposed to be the most aggressive all-wheel-drive setting how about if i turn to my traction control ah okay traction control turned off so a lot more slippage i’m gonna turn my traction control back
On because that is not what i need i need the brakes to engage to force power to the wheel with traction let me try trill mode one more time traction control on oh almost hit it there i think we’re making stuff so we’re still stuck all right arguably the hardest part of rocky top it’s steep it’s loose i’ve got trail mode engaged trash control on i’ve been
Very impressed with the traction control programming on the rav4 it’s allowing a very good amount of slip and with trim hood on guys in av mode which it you know just cycles through automatically i’m crawling up a hard trail without even you think a gas motor now this is steep it’s loose it’s going to be a challenge for sure okay good so you think a little bit
Of throttle there goes the gas motor trying to avoid big scary rocks and it look like they want to take out our fancy new wheels yeah just some mirrors really quick here some slippage right away and it maintained just a little bit of momentum you kind of have to i hate it off road because that’s when you start breaking things when you start applying speed but
I don’t have much of a choice now there’s a hard line and an easy line we’re gonna take the hard line actually want me to scratch that there is a crazy hard line and a hard line i’m gonna take the crazy hard line at first see what this bad boy does really feel the track jules has been working now i’m beached i’m stuck here so wow let me wrap it up careful there
Goes there goes there goes good result good result good result lily modulated yes good good good good good good good bad bad bad bad he’s available oh that’s so much tyre though let me try giving a little bump here oh we’re up were up we are up the rav4 did it on a difficult line as well oh very impressed with that now it didn’t grab the wheels as much as i
Wanted it to does to distribute power but it did get us up which is impressive nonetheless okay so this hybrid here is pretty loaded this is the xse trim comes in at close to 38 thousand dollars which is a lot of money but i do have a lot of nice tech wireless charging a great infotainment screen pretty decent seats of course are heated and then you gotta talk
About the gas mileage goods at the hybrid 40 mpg combined in a crossover is pretty good now okay and this part of the trail i can go left and do the big rocks we can go right and do the smaller rocks i’m gonna go right because i don’t trust the ground clearance of some of those larger stones so we’re gonna take these smaller ones now you’re probably thinking how
Come i don’t just mash it and make my way up the hill well a couple reasons hey i’m not gonna break toyota’s rav4 because they were kind enough to lend us this vehicle to test and when you start using speed yes you can probably go farther places but you also run the risk of breaking things especially at just over eight inches of ground clearance and speed isn’t
Really a test of a lot of this vehicles capability because i can speed over anything in well anything if i take a ferrari and run it up this hill of 30 it’s probably gonna make it no this is a test of the all-wheel-drive system this is a test of the traction control system of the tires and speed just eliminates the most of that now i will say that articulation
Not very good i mean but even still we made it we’re at the top of the rocky top trail rav4 pointed a rav4 hybrid x se we made it to the top of the rocky top was it graceful not really was it easy also not really was it pretty arguable but most importantly we are here we probably pushed this vehicle beyond what it was built to do today but it really held up
Well we didn’t break anything having those electric motors is super satisfying when you’re off road because the cvt doesn’t deliver a lot of power to the ground neither does the naturally aspirated engine at 10,000 feet at 1,100 rpm but those electric motors bam they’re ready to go they’re always there they’re always scrambling you up the hill and for that reason
Come on guys it’s pretty impressive now toyota if you’re watching this i’d love to drive a non hybrid rav4 up the rocky top maybe an adventure model so maybe we can make that happen but as always on tommy with the fasten car go back to tal car comm for the best off-road hybrid raffle reviews
Transcribed from video
We Take The 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid To The LIMIT Off-Road Deep In The Mountains By TFLoffroad
