Video: 2024 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid XSE Review: Efficiently Outdated

It was competitive in user interface, but it did really well in our fuel economy test. It had, it's first place, 37.9 miles per gallon there. Yeah, I mean, Toyota's been doing hybrids for years and very few people do them better than Toyota does, and that really was the RAV4's strength was its fuel economy and you know, if that's the most important thing to you, then the rest of the RAV4 is fine. It's not exceptional in any number of the categories. None of us actually thought it was, you know, a straight out winner in any of the subjective things like interior quality or comfort or space or anything like that. But if you're just looking for something that's average and does really great fuel economy, it's hard to top this thing. Yeah, I think the other judges were a little bit more favorable to the interior than you, but again, it's not like a standout interior in this comparison. It's just mostly well done. I really enjoy the rubberized controls. Those are really easy to manipulate for things like climate and volume. They're also on the door handles for gripping. But yeah, it's an improvement over the previous gen RAV4 for sure, but it's just not that good at pretty much anything but fuel economy. Yeah, and while the rubberized controls are great, some of the other climate controls, why are the buttons the size of Tic-Tacs? I mean, I applaud them for having actual buttons, but if you have to really squint, try and figure out what it is you're actually going to touch to try and activate something, that's a problem. It was a little bit better than the CR-V hybrid in terms of its fuel economy. That was 36.5 for the CR-V hybrid. But that user interface point you brought up, that was one thing where it did pretty well in terms of those easy to use controls. I think the screen was liked by judges too, in terms of how it worked with your smartphone and the connectivity side of it there. Yeah, there's, it's certainly an improvement over previous Toyota design, but we've been saying for a while it's intuitive. It's just missing some features that other screens have. Like there's no home button. You just kind of have to navigate using various specific icons to get to where you want to go, which can be frustrating. But wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless Android Auto, it's a perfectly good screen. And I have issues with the gauge cluster itself. I mean, the gauge cluster is extremely dim. A lot of the new Toyotas are. And it had sweeping dials and whatnot that, for things that you don't necessarily find important, like the hybrid features. Now we should note that this has the standard gauge cluster. There is an optional fully digital gauge cluster, which is a little bit better. We've sampled that in other vehicles. But as it stands, the standard gauge cluster, it's hard to see. It's kind of dim. The whole interior is really kind of dark and dour, and it's not just the tint that's on the side. You put all the windows down, it still feels dark and dour in there, but there just needs to be a bit more flare in there, especially when we're comparing it with some of the really nice interiors that we saw in the competitors that we tested. Yeah, and this was an XSE trim level, so more of a mid-level trim, but it was still almost $41,000. So it was right in that price range with a number of the other vehicles in this test. Some of the other things that stood out, I know on your side was, it lost in braking and quietness. So it was a fairly loud powertrain, but also one that was really kind of hard to use the brake smoothly. Yeah. In like the last 10 feet of stopping, the hybrid system just grabs. Really, really suddenly causing everyone's head to jerk forward. At least that's what my experience was. And so that's something that you don't have that level of smoothness that you would in some of the other vehicles and I really don't know why that is. Yeah, the numb braking feel of the RAV4 is pretty common in Toyota hybrids these days, and it's just sort of part of the price you have to pay to get that good fuel economy. That did really well in that. But it underperformed in most of the other categories we scored these SUVs on. So that's kind of really what led to its seventh place finish here. It needs a more refined drive train. It needs a nicer interior to compete with the other ones here. The RAV4 hybrid's lone standout area of fuel economy is an important one if that's what you're looking for in a compact SUV. But it underperformed in a lot of the other categories we scored these SUVs on, including as tested value, which combines both features and the as tested price of these vehicles. It could really use a more refined drivetrain and a more upscale interior to compete with the other SUVs here. To read the full results, head to cars.com/news.