2024 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid XSE AWD Review

Hey this is Mike. Thank you so much for choosing this video. Today we're checking out a 2024 Toyota RAV4 hybrid all-wheel drive in the XSE trim level. This vehicle is sitting on 225 60 Michelin tires wrapped around 18 inch alloy wheels with a gloss black finish. It also has four-wheel disc brakes with ventilated rotors in the front and solid rotors in the back. The name of this color is Calvary Blue and it's a really cool kind of like a baby blue in a way something like that. Looks really good and it looks good in contrast with the gloss black which is all over this vehicle especially here in the front. So the grille has that gloss black portion there and then a huge portion here at the very bottom then there's like this gray or silver piece right here. Now the badging has the blue on it which also serves as the radar adaptive cruise control sensor. There's a little camera right in here as well for the 360 camera system which is really good. Parking sensors it has these little accent lights here at the bottom they're not fog lights they're just led accent lights. Now the led headlights they're in a projector housing with a black bezel they look pretty cool they have this little design to the headlights and when the lights kind of reflect in there kind of accenting that design it's kind of neat. The gloss black continues here and it's like basically cladding around the wheel wells I suppose and here the base of the doors it also has gloss black wheels pillars roof rails so it's pretty much everywhere. It does have body colored handles though. Now you notice this one has a sport tune suspension you notice it has this blue strut here in the front this is what the key looks like it's pretty much standard Toyota key rav4 and it has the ability to lock unlock open up the power lift gate and a panic button there you can also remote start it but the way by pressing in the the lock button two three times then hold it on the third time but the problem is with Toyotas in general and Lexus is that when you remote start it when you open the vehicle it turns right back off so it's a little bit it's not as useful as other remote start vehicles but you can remote start it and it can be somewhat useful. Now it's the type of system where you lock it by putting your finger over the sensor and you unlock it by putting your hand here on the back of the handle and it senses the key on the outside of the vehicle and allows you to unlock the vehicle. There's also a physical key location here on the driver's side only. Now the doors go all the way to the bottom of the vehicle sealing up the threshold fairly well there's a seal here on the door they're at the very bottom the inside of the door now this is like a like a vinyl type material it's all soft touch here all the way across now it has this blue stitching looking pretty nice the rest of the door is a hard touch has little metallic accents there handle and then a pocket there at the bottom once again all hard touch surfaces here it's durable easy to clean and that's the intention there's a threshold no fancy seal plate or anything manually adjust the seat here on the passenger side now these are soft tech seats and if you know anything about soft tech it tends to hold up really good like vehicles get traded in years later and you clean them up and they look brand new it's amazing so yeah more blue stitching hit there in the center pretty comfortable seats kind of you know in that medium range not super duper comfortable but not uncomfortable it has like a berber carpet mat back here up here there is a locking glove compartment and this is all hard touch surfaces here and smooth plastic on the inside the cabin filter is actually behind this so you could just you get this glove compartment out of the way and the cabin filter filters in there maybe i'll do a video one day it's really easy to save you a bunch of money at the dealership so right here is a pocket and it's really handy for a lot of things to put in there but it's kind of a you know rubber it's not really basically things will slide around in there if it if you put it like if you don't put papers or something so it's handy to have but if it had like some kind of you know more textured surface it'd be a little bit better so this is a soft touch here and a rubbery soft non-reflective dash getting in and out the front of the front doors and the seats and everything is like really good the seat height off the ground is perfect just about for anybody so it's one of those type of vehicles just easy to get in and out the opening here in the front is fine you're not bumping your head or anything swing of the door is great now the back door i think could swing out a little bit better it's just a little bit angled and so it doesn't swing out as much as i think it could and i think it'd be a little bit easier to get in the back seat if the door swung out now you do have lots of room here once again you're not going to bump your head or anything so it's fairly easy to get in and out of it's just this area right here is a little tight so the swing of the door would help if it's a little bit more once again we have like this vinyl type material here soft touch at the bottom a little bit of blue stitching and hybrid hybrid battery is underneath this back seat so that saves your cargo area and then once again we have the soft tech seats it's basically a bench seat with some contours here armrest cup holders pretty soft this has the light system for car seats here on the outer two seats on the back of the passenger seat there's a matte pocket but not on the driver's seat the floor is almost completely flat i mean it has a little hump in the middle but it's not really a big deal has climate control vents here and two usb ports for charging so looking at the back of the vehicle it has the the roof rails and they went ahead and put the crossbars yeah you can take these crossbars off if you if you don't want to use them they'll give you a little bit better gas mileage and stuff but it has a shark fin antenna that's gloss black once again the whole roof is gloss black actually and then this rear spoiler there's the third brake light and right in here right below that third brake light is a camera and so this you want to keep this area right here clean because that's the rear view camera so the rear view mirror is also a camera so that's the view which i think is excellent i think all vehicles should have rear view cameras at least as an option anyway has a little wiper there as well uh led combination of led and standard bulbs for the taillights and the backup camera once again kind of tacked on offset not even in the middle it looks like an aftermarket add-on parking sensors back here more gloss black more silver dual exhaust tips looking pretty cool let's open up the power liftgate here you can of course use the key uh there's a button under here you can press that or you can like kick your foot or something um but yeah and then under here is the it's like a really hard touch surface on the underside of the liftgate if you have all the seats occupied with passengers this is the cargo space which is really good considering it's a hatchback you can really put a lot of stuff in here and easy to get through the door instead of like a trunk or something uh it's a very usable cargo space now it has a jbl sound system there's a subwoofer here there's also tie downs here here on the right side is a single light which add more but there it is and there's a little cubby here with a net pocket keeping things from sliding out i guess but once again it's like you know smooth plastic so whatever you put in there it's going to be sliding around rattling around 12 volt power supply back here as well now this shade uh you can take it out but it comes back here and it's pretty basic and simple nothing too fancy and this carpet seems to not fill in all the way up there i'm not sure what's going on with that uh but this lifts up it doesn't lock or anything uh but it lifts up and there is a spare tire with so some vehicles do not have a spare tire anymore uh but this one does now there's also a place to store the shade under here as well if you want this shade up here if you want to put it down under the floor out of your way when you're not using it you could do that these seats fold down in a 60 40 split so you can fold down one side of the other to add to your cargo space while still maintaining passenger space or you can fold them both down and get the maximum amount of room back here now you can lower the paddle lift gate by pressing this button or you can use the key as well there is a locking fuel door and it's on the driver's side and it has a traditional cap tether a little place to hang the cap here while you're pumping gas here's the floorboard in front of the driver's seat now you notice the floor mat on this side snaps in place so it has these little places right here to connect to the floor so that way it doesn't slide around on you it keeps it straight and everything there's the accelerator brake pedal and footrest really large footrest let's take a look under the hood to raise the hood there's a latch a little bit to the right of center just reach in down move it to the left and lift up and the hood's got a little bit of weight to it and it does require a prop to hold it up the prop is on the underside of the hood and it swings down to right where that arrow is pointing there's some insulation under the hood there's also a seal across the back there's also insulation on the firewall there now the strut towers are kind of braced in to the unibody structure of the vehicle uh this engine cover is like a soft or soft kind of soft rubbery soft in a way cover here so even with all that uh you still hear some engine noise you know that's that's the thing about toyota and lexus is the uh the engine noise tends to get through you know the loud engines and they tend to get that that noise into the cabin a lot but they are trying to you mitigate that uh to some degree the exhaust is there in the back the intake is here in the front you can see the heat shielding uh back there hopefully you see that so this is a hybrid vehicle and toyota makes really good hybrids uh it has a 2.5 liter four-cylinder engine and an e-cvt transmission so it's an electronically controlled c continuously variable transmission basically so it's not like a normal cvt but you do kind of get the cvt experience which is not a big deal is all-wheel drive it puts out 219 combined horsepower uh but yeah it feels strong it has good delivery uh to the road and gets really good fuel economy as well the blind spot indicator is here on the side mirror illuminates when there's a vehicle on your blind spot the driver's door is just like the other side except for it has a few more buttons now there's two presets for the power seat here power windows are here and it's one touch up and down so it goes pretty quick uh the back windows same thing down one touch all the way down as well there's the door lock controls side mirrors are adjusted they're pretty straightforward power seat here on the driver's side with a two two-way lumbar adjustment so you can go forward back tilt and all that stuff and then two-way lumbar adjustment but yeah these seats look really cool with this blue stitching pretty impressive now to the left of the steering column there's a few buttons here there's the dimmer switch for the interior gauges automatic high beams you can turn on or off this will turn on a little heater that's underneath the windshield wiper so they'll release them if they get frozen this is to turn on the awesome camera system that vehicle has there's the heated steering wheel so you can just basically on and off and then it this is the cycle through your odometer or trip and then you can press and hold it to reset it this is to open up the power liftgate now your vehicle does have to be unlocked for this to work there's also a tilt and telescoping steering column that you lock in place here i'm sitting in the driver's seat i'm six feet tall and i have the driver's seat all the way back and all the way down and i still feel like i need a little bit more room you know so if you're six feet tall or taller you definitely want to take it for a test drive make sure that it's gonna work for you especially with your you know passengers in the back your family or whatever but yeah i mean it's okay it's not it just feels a tiny bit like it needs a little bit more room so it's not i mean it's no problem i just really wouldn't want to you know take super long trips or anything in it now the steering wheel feels really good and it is heated as well but the heated portion is only here on the sides it's not on the very top and very bottom so up here it's not heated only on the sides here now it has some buttons on the volume for the radio voice recognition and then you have the audio source with which is mode and then there is to change through tracks or radio stations depending on what you got going on now the cruise control settings are here you do have to turn it on first when you first you know start the vehicle then you can set resume and cancel here you can set the distance between you and the vehicle in front of you using the radar adaptive cruise control and then there's the lane keep assist system here here on the left side is the uh the phone button it's a single phone button so i prefer two but it's the same button to answer and then the same button again to hang up and then there's just these little arrows and okay and back button those correspond with the gauges we'll get to that in a second uh windshield wiper controls are here for the front and rear and it does have an automatic rain sensing system once it turned it was turned on now the rear wiper um does pass in front of the rear view camera i mentioned that camera back there you have to keep it clean uh so that rear wiper does pass in front of it so it's able to help you keep it clean here on the left side is the turn signal of course but also has the headlight switch so you can turn off the daytime running lights automatic parking and then headlights here now there's this little pocket right here i forgot to mention so this gauge cluster um you use these buttons to control it uh the back the okay these arrows right here so right now it's showing digital speedometer uh it has digital clock there outside temperature odometer is right here and also that's where you find your trips as well when you press the trip button and then you have a power meter here average fuel economy which is doing pretty good here on the right side is the uh just like a just a regular speedometer it simulates one anyway there's a power meter uh so it shows the energy flow so whether the energy is coming from the engine go to the battery or back and forth what wheels is using all that stuff's going to show up there and it shows your range fuel gauge all that stuff there is an engine coolant temperature here as well and it shows you that it's ready the actual vehicle is on right now and so the engine will cycle on and off when necessary right now it's completely off it's showing ev mode the vehicle is ready to drive all that stuff so using these buttons here i'm going to kind of cycle through here so if i go left and right it gives us these uh different views here one two and three okay you notice these is basically the the the basic structure is the same but it gives you different information all right so let's go to number two right here and let's press and hold okay and it gives us the ability to highlight either the left middle or right and then once we're on that we can cycle through and choose what we want to have there whether it be nothing or the information that we want same thing in the center we can change that if we want here to the left we can change that if we want uh so each one of these displays one two and three uh we can customize so that way we can have three different options that quickly kind of go through and uh and change the the different ones that we want to look at so it gives you um you know somewhat customizable gauge cluster i think it's pretty interesting uh design i guess i mean it's not fully customizable but it's very easy to change those views while you're driving uh most vehicles you have to set it up or that you know like it's not easy to you have to go into some sub menu or something like that to to do any kind of adjustments this one will give you the ability to at least do some changes while you're driving so there's the start button here and here is the touchscreen uh so it has these little icons here on the left it doesn't have like a home button or anything just has these little icons and so the top one here is the navigation now keep in mind the navigation has been activated on this vehicle i didn't do it you have to use the app on a cell phone to activate the navigation on this vehicle uh so you know just keep that in mind you're going to have privacy notices and all that stuff you're going to have to read and decide whether you want to do it uh so yeah it does have a really good navigation map once it's installed and everything here's the radio here you have the different sources so you have radio which would be amfm that kind of stuff satellite radio and then you have bluetooth it does have wireless apple carplay and android auto as well well you do have to connect to the system i mean you have to set it up for it first before it'll show up so there's you can add devices uh this is information about the vehicle so right now it's energy flow so basically as you're driving so right now it's showing the status of the battery so if i go ahead and put it let me just put it in drive real fast so you can see what i'm talking about let's go back to energy flow so if i move the vehicle right now you see it starts showing me uh that the power is coming from the so that way while you're driving whether the engine's running or whatever it just has this little energy flow information which is pretty cool and down here is the settings so you can hit that and you kind of go through and adjust the settings so now the engine's on now so you can hear a little bit all right so yeah it's a pretty basic system but it is very functional it has some stuff that you would need regularly and it's easy to get to real fast you don't have to go too far these little icons can get you really quickly in different places fast four-way flashes are here climate control is down here so it does have an automatic function let's go ahead and turn it on and you can sync the driver and passenger if you want or you can have them separate but these knobs is where you adjust the temperature for the driver and passenger i like these kind of rubbery knobs here look pretty cool and rugged feeling and they protrude out a little bit so it's very easy to access those and use them while you have gloves on or whatever some vehicles have these little itty bitty knobs and they're kind of like you know you get to like uh get your hand in there and everything but this one's like perfect you know as far as just the ease of turning them finding all that stuff so you have the automatic function off sync and then you have the different buttons here front rear defroster recirculate the air you can concentrate everything on the front of the just the front instead of the back if you'd like to do that this is where you want the air to blow and then there's the fan speed if you want to adjust it um you know manually instead of the automatic you do have an eco heat and cool this will you know kind of diminish the heating and cooling in the vehicle as far as like you know maximum if you want like maximum heat or maximum cool then it kind of cuts down a little bit but does save you a little bit of energy so there is heated seats and it's a high and low for both the driver and passenger traction control off button is here if you need to spin tires for whatever reason you can turn them on so yeah if i'm driving like this and then i just slow down i think it's like yeah five miles per hour or something like that then the camera turns on and i'm able to quickly kind of get my bearings on where i'm at compared to other things so you know typically when you're driving you know you you're aware of the surroundings of the vehicle but this gives you just that that certainty of making sure that you're you know parked properly or if you're not too close to things that kind of thing play ran but as we drive you'll be able to see this over here where the engine's running and then it powers not only the wheels but it also is able to um recharge the battery and stuff like that so even though you have a little bit of engine noise coming in it's not really that bad um you know i've heard definitely louder toyotas and the acceleration is very satisfying with that hybrid system you know with the electric motors so it has two motors in the front and one in the back and so it has that on demand all-wheel drive system so i'm on dry pavements i don't really need uh all-wheel drive right now you know but it does give you that that all-wheel drive system now i don't feel any torque steer anything like that i haven't experienced that so it does a good job of handling everything and you know mostly with the front wheels now with the hybrid system you're bumping up the efficiency to a great degree so i'm averaging a little bit over 40 miles per gallon and that's pretty good i mean for a vehicle like this now it's just me and my equipment i don't have like a bunch of people in here and also i'm driving on flat roads i'm not driving up mountains or anything um but as it is it's pretty good you know 40 is for this type of vehicle is uh it's pretty it's pretty good uh so having the electric battery having the battery and the electric motors you're able to take the kinetic energy of the ford motion and put it back into the battery and then reuse it later so it adds to that efficiency so the more electric more electricity you have basically in a car the more you can increase the efficiency that's why evs are like the most efficient because they have they're all electric right um so yeah it's a very efficient vehicle now i think one of the positives i would say that i noticed you know driving rav4s is that especially this generation here is just it feels very solid it's just a very solid feeling vehicle and uh and very confident there's no you know i don't feel any like there's no like rattles or anything like that or and this is very stable you know even at high speeds it just feels like a very strong sturdy vehicle uh the noises are tolerable especially if you're you know have the radio playing or something like that i mean it's not really a big deal toyota's very you know they they're they tend to be sometimes loud but this one is fine like the engine is running right now you know and it kicked in i can feel it a little bit kicking in so it wasn't as seamless as you know it could have been but um it is right now not very loud sometimes there's certain vehicles certain toyotas and and then you'll hear this a lot with with toyota lexus that um the the loudness you know and i've mentioned this before lots of times because it's always an issue uh that there is a loud motor turning on especially on a hybrid you know you're driving along and all of a sudden you have it's all nice and quiet and then you hear the engine turn on and then so it's kind of a little bit more jarring because you're not accustomed to the engine being on all the time with a hybrid since it's turning on and off so that's that's part of it too yeah very satisfying acceleration for this type of vehicle and the and the fuel economy and everything and the adaptive cruise control lane keep assist system it works fine it's not really you know nothing super special not but it's not a problem either it's kind of in that it works so that just leave it alone basically so yeah that's good it's a good system really like the rear view camera here uh of course i mentioned the the 360 camera you know parking and everything is great so yeah that you know a little bit higher speeds get up to about 60 miles per hour there's very they hear a little bit of wind noise but there's very little little road noise i don't hear any road noise just engine and wind noise really to me it's more actually right now it's more wind noise all right so that was basically to the floor most of the time so yeah the acceleration you get the cvt experience uh which i don't mind me personally i don't mind cvts this one is actually done really well toyota hybrid systems you know they have a different type of cvt type system so um it's not really the same thing as say uh so like say a nissan cvt that has the belt and stuff it doesn't have that kind of system and then honda has their own separate system so yeah it's pretty interesting and and amazing what they're able to do with hybrid systems and their transmissions you know just kind of integrating everything you have electric motors uh you have multiple electric motors actually and um and it's able to deliver the power to the wheel to the wheels through a system that is like a cvt but it's not and it's not really a traditional transmission either you know so it's pretty interesting and um you know the engineering is is amazing and it's reliable that's another thing you know it's a it's a that that's key right there you know if it's a vehicle it's unreliable and it's going to have problems then um you know what's the point right so with toyota you have the reliability uh you have the efficiency here and just a solid vehicle and the all-wheel drive on demand is you know that's uh the big plus as well so yeah there's a lot of positives i could say about this particular vehicle i mean it is the number one vehicle basically in the united states i think uh pretty for sure it's still on top as far as the number one selling vehicle besides the truck you know the trucks are the top and then you can have this vehicle then i think it's like the tesla model y or something like that so it's in that that range um in that top tier uh vehicles but yeah it's a it it matches a lot of people's preferences with the hatchback the height of the vehicle getting in and out is is good uh the efficiency and i think the roominess i think will work for most people but um you know me i feel a little bit a tiny bit cramped in it but not not really a big deal but yeah let me know what you think in the comments a lot of you probably already have like a rav4 maybe a different uh previous generation different year model but let me know what you think of the this rav4 and also the new change they're going to have next yeah i think it's 2026 uh so another year or so they're going to have the um the new redesigned rav4 so looking forward to that uh this one i think is about five years old or so and it it was pretty good uh there was a couple things i was kind of scratching my head on wondering why they designed it that way but um but yeah it worked out well for them and hopefully the next generation will be just as successful anyways thank you for watching i'll see you next time