Is the Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid a Good SUV?
- With up to 42 miles of all-electric range, the 2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid remains one of the most impressive and versatile PHEV crossovers on the market. Just don’t expect it to come cheap: Prices start at just over $45,000.
How Does the Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid Compare With Other Compact SUVs?
- The RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid’s all-electric range is the best in its class — and among the best in the industry — making its pricey cost of entry a bit more palatable. Power and performance-wise, it’s a significant step up over PHEV compact crossovers like the Hyundai Tuscon Plug-in Hybrid, as well as standard gas-electric hybrids like the Honda CR-V hybrid and Subaru Forester Hybrid.
A 2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid and a 1981 Porsche 911 SC Targa walk into a Texas dive bar and — ah, never mind. You had to be there.
In early spring, my dad and I pointed the family 1981 911 Targa southbound to the rich, rolling Texas Hill Country bound for the appropriately named Texas Hill Country Rallye, a hands-on, athletic celebration of air-cooled Porsches that spurs three days of consistent use and abuse. Though the 1978-83 911 SC is an uncommonly robust classic, ours was fresh from a seven-year hibernation with only a few hundred shakedown miles under its wheels. We needed a support vehicle.
Related: Toyota Clarity: RAV4 Prime Renamed RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid
The criteria were simple: a reliable, no-nonsense, four-door vehicle that would be as happy hauling humans as it would be swallowing a whole lotta mechanical detritus and redundancies. If it could tow a 2,700-pound Porsche on a rented U-Haul trailer in a worst-case scenario, all the better. The 2025 RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid checked many of those boxes, but its 2,500-pound maximum towing capacity meant we’d have to call AAA in the event of a disaster. Still, I couldn’t imagine a better background companion to our wheezy, leaky 911.
How Much Does the 2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid Cost?
The RAV4 Plug-in arrived in an evocatively named Wind Chill Pearl color with a contrast roof in Midnight Black Metallic, a combination exclusive to the range-topping XSE trim. That’s not saying much, though, as the 2025 RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid only comes in SE and XSE trim levels starting at $45,615 and $49,485, respectively (all prices include destination fee). That may be more than you thought you could even spend on a new RAV4 (both of my parents guessed the price tag of this glitzed Toyota to be somewhere in the high 30s — maybe low 40s).
Solid guesses, especially given they were fresh from researching and test-driving a 2025 Lexus NX, the RAV4’s luxe cousin. Even sticking with the base SE trim of the RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid, you’ll still spend nearly $3,500 more than you would to get a base, front-wheel-drive NX 250. It’s not a fair comparison, but it does make clear that the plug-in RAV is positioned as a relatively premium product within the Toyota family.
Our test car’s extra-cost, two-tone color combo and optional Premium Package meant it was pricier still, coming in at just under $53,000 — a smidge more than the agreed insurance valuation of our Porsche. That’s right: For maximum cred at the country club valet stand, ditch the geezer 911 and roll up in a plug-in XSE.
While the RAV4’s appearance and interior presentation don’t quite match the buy-in, its amenities list is requisitely impressive, as are its PHEV functions. Our test car had heated and ventilated front seats, a heated steering wheel, smartly stitched simulated leather upholstery, a panoramic moonroof, premium JBL audio and heated outer rear seats.
What Powertrain Does the 2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid Have?
Regardless of trim, all RAV4 Plug-in Hybrids are mechanically identical. A naturally aspirated 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine works with front and rear electric motors that are fed by an 18.1-kilowatt-hour battery. All-wheel drive is standard, and it boasts a combined system output of 302 horsepower.
With the battery and tank brimmed, we loaded the RAV4 with a pallet of spare parts and assorted tools for any roadside eventuality. When prepping for a long-distance classic rally, you must plan for the inevitable O.C.S. (Old Car, uh, Stuff) that occurs to even the glossiest of restorations. Our Targa was freshly reconditioned after seven years of pickling in a hot Texas garage, and though we trusted it for tens of miles at a time, we were unsure how it’d perform when the trip odometer rolled well into the hundreds — or even thousands — of miles in a four-day span.
Is the 2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid Quick?
Thus: In Toyota we trust. As fun as the Porsche is, six hours at the wheel through the wide, yawning expanse of Texas’ non-hill country had my dad enviously eyeing the serenity of the RAV4’s leatherette-wrapped cabin at every fuel-up. When it was still factory-fresh, the Porsche’s naturally aspirated 3.0-liter flat-six screamed out 180 hp, enough for a 0-60 mph time of around 7.5 seconds — if you pop the clutch, poke its eyes, yank its hair and kick its stomach.
Even our most rushed stoplight departures were far, far more leisurely than the smokey starts granted by Porsche’s Swabian engineers. Extended countryside meanders, however, meant we explored the mid-range of the Porsche speedometer, and the 302-hp RAV4 had no problem matching its pace. In fact, had I not been confined to the supporting tail-gunner role, the Targa would have been a Wine Red Metallic speed bump in the wake of the RAV4’s quoted 5.5-second 0-60 mph sprint.
Impressive, but you’ll have to plan ahead for these bursts. As far as I can tell, this scramble is only possible with a full battery, driving in the Sport drive mode and setting the gear selector to “S.” Even before we escaped the gravitational pull of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the RAV4 Plug-In’s 42-mile electric range fell in a hurry, leaving its acceleration somewhere in the “peppy” range.
Everything else is right where you left it in the previous RAV4 Prime (unsurprising, as the change from 2024 RAV4 Prime to 2025 RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid is purely nomenclatural). The PHEV’s excellent drivetrain is still one of the smoothest in the mainstream class, featuring a near-seamless handoff between gas and electric propulsion. Brake blend between pure regenerative resistance and the physical brakes is well balanced, as is accelerator pedal response — regardless of the powertrain’s current operating mode.
The RAV4 Plug-In is reasonably quiet, rides well and is perfect day-to-day transportation. It’s a RAV4! You know how it drives, you know how it “lives.” What you might not expect is just how good the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA, or as I call it, “Tinga”) platform is to huck around country roads. It’s expressly not engineered for canyon thrills, but TNGA’s baseline capability means the RAV4 feels less like a crossover than a severely swollen Corolla Hatchback.
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2025 Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid: The Perfect No-Nonsense PHEV
We rolled into Kerrville, Texas, toward early evening, the scrubby, tangled ranchland bathed in the low sun’s golden glow. First stop was the venue hotel (a booking we forewent in favor of an off-site Airbnb), where the Porsche slept amongst its kind in the parking lot. The next three days were a sunny, oil-drenched blur. The RAV4 was our bedrock, serving as our breakfast, dinner and 7-Eleven sled. With half a day to kill before event festivities started in earnest, we buzzed over to charming Fredericksburg for some appropriately German lunch and a military museum, the RAV4 saving us from the occasionally finicky and far less refined Porsche.
Returning to Dallas was more of the same, with the indefatigable Toyota counterbalancing the neurotic Porsche with wordless, anodyne reassurance. We rolled into Dallas with some 700 miles and a 37.5-mpg average on the trip computer, the RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid having proved itself every bit the efficient, reliable and comfortable support vehicle we needed.
Till next year, in Kerrville.
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