One of Toyota’s best-selling models over the past 30 years is the RAV4. Introduced way back in 1996, it was one of the first crossovers – which are now sold in different sizes and price ranges by nearly every vehicle manufacturer. They became popular chiefly because they offered what most cars stopped offering – practicality and utility – because their shape expanded the available interior space for people and cargo vs. a car of the same size. You also got – or could get – all-wheel-drive, which most cars did not offer back in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
The RAV4 was also fun. Past tense. It was available with a manual transmission, which gave the driver something to play with. It was also available – for awhile – with Toyota’s potent (269 horsepower) V6 engine which, in this harmless-looking little crossover, made it one of the greatest sleepers of the early-mid 2000s. No more V6 after the 2012 models passed. The manual option was last available back in 2005. Since that time, it has been automatic-only, four cylinder only and a lot less fun.
Soon it will be something else.
Toyota announced the other day that the 2026 RAV4 will be hybrid-only, joining the now-hybrid-only Camry (which also used to be available with a V6 and a manual transmission) and the also-hybrid-only Crown, which replaced the Avalon – which used to come standard with a V6 – as Toyota’s top-of-the-line model.
You have perhaps noticed a trend. Put another way, the bum’s rush toward an “electrified” future of battery-powered devices has not ended. It has merely slowed down a little. Kind of like the way chemo slows down cancer. Trump’s victory in 2024 can be seen in that light. But what we’re seeing now – and soon will see – in new vehicle showrooms is the result of what was done the prior four years. Toyota didn’t just decide to hybridize the RAV4. It had been in the works for years because that’s how long it takes to execute such decisions when it comes to vehicles. Toyota – like every other vehicle manufacturer – has been making plans for the future. A future that is electrified or at least partially electrified (that’s what a hybrid is) because electrification – fully or partially – is the only way to achieve compliance with existing and expected federal rigmarole pertaining to gas mileage and gas “emissions” (of CO2).
President Trump said recently that he would like to see the regulatory regime “get back” to what was in force – exactly the right word because none of these regulations are suggestions – back in 2020. But that is like an oncologist wanting to get his patient back to the state at which his cancer hadn’t yet spread to his bones. Which is fine, as far as it goes.
But it does not cure the cancer.
Curing it will require dealing with the underlying sickness, which in this case is the very existence of these regulations at all. So long as the authority of the federal regulatory apparat to decree how many miles-per-gallon new vehicles must deliver is conceded, the vehicle manufacturers will have to operate under the assumption that at any time, the apparat will increase the number of miles-per-gallon decreed. That is what happened under the regime of Trump’s predecessor. Biden’s EPA decreed a near-doubling of federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy “standards” – as these requirements are styled – to 50 MPG from the current 35.5 MPG and that is why the RAV4 will soon by hybrid-only and also why the Camry and Crown already are. The partial electrification of these vehicles being the only way to even approach the 50 MPG “standard.”
But it is also the only way to get to the current “standard” – i.e., the one Trump wants to “get back” to.
The current (2025) RAV4 delivers god gas mileage. But not good enough – for the government. It averages 30 MPG, so about 5 MPG below the existing CAFE standard of 35.5 MPG and thus a liability for Toyota insofar as compliance. The 2026 hybrid-only RAV4 will be more-than-compliant – with the existing standard – because it will average better than 40 MPG and that will help with Toyota’s “fleet average” CAFE math. This being the sum of the mileage delivered by all of Toyota’s offerings averaged out. A hybrid-only RAV (and Crown and Corolla) that exceed the CAFE standard will enable Toyota to continue selling models that fall short, such as the Tacoma pick-up and 4Runner SUV (though both of those have also already lost their V6 engines too and are likely to be partially electrified as well in the near future, too) because the higher CAFE score of the hybrids offsets the lower CAFE score of those models.
But all of this compliance has its costs – literally and more subtly.
Literally – in the form of having to pay extra for the partial-electrification. The hybrid-only 2026 RAV4’s base price of about $33,000 is about $3,700 higher than the base price ($29,250) of the 2025 RAV4 with just an engine and transmission – as opposed to those things plus the electric motor/battery that the ’26 comes standard with. You’ll get better gas mileage – but you’ll be paying for it.
And that brings up the subtler thing, which is the winnowing of choices. The current (2025) RAV4 is available with a partially electrified drivetrain. The ’26 RAV4 – like the Camry and Crown – won’t be available without it.
Put another way, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with partially or fully electrified vehicles. But there is a lot wrong with the subtle forcing of them on people via a regulatory compliance regime that can only be complied with by manufacturing only partially or fully electrified devices.
Why not let the market sort it out? Why not let buyer demand determine what’s for sale? Never mind that, says the government.
The apparat knows best.
. . .
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Read Agenda 21, 30. The Goyim, penned in their 15 minute, jewtech city, won’t be driving, let alone enjoying it. As this jewjab culling plays out, look around, won’t be many of you motherfuckers left to bitch and moan. Every corporation, every 1 is owned by them. They don’t give a fuck about customers. It’s about an agenda, with you not in it. Sad, but true.
The government doesn’t trust the true marketplace, because people will chose things that they don’t want us to have. It also doesn’t trust science either, it thinks it can over-rule scientific reality with pie in the sky laws.
Automakers have offered vehicles with better mileage since the beginning. It’s just that it’s a smaller part of the marketplace and it would remain so because that is reality. People chose larger sizes for various reasons including both practicality and just because they can and prefer to do so.
High gas mileage isn’t a priority, especially in a wealthier society. A guy owning and driving a Porsche doesn’t worry about the price of gasoline. That isn’t just an American thing, I would add, most of the world would probably do so too (buying larger vehicles), but since governments worldwide are even worse when it comes to regulating vehicles,,, we have what we have. For example in Great Britain you cannot register a large pickup or cargo van for personal use (like as a daily driver) they are only allowed for business use.
Rolling back to the rules to 2020 are pointless. The 2020 rules are just as ridiculous as the Biden regimes increased ones. Trump can dial them back for a few years, but the next Democrat will just crank up the heat again. They have to be destroyed so they can’t be increased in the future.
Yes, that would mean most electric and hybrids would be discontinued, and V6’s and V8’s powered vehicles would return. To them reality sucks and should be banned.
My next “New” vehicle will be a 1950’s to Mid-1960’s Pickup (either Ford, Chevy or Dodge). Then, buy as much spare parts (belts, hoses, lights, points & plugs, carb rebuild kits, etc.) as possible. I’m not going to be driving a device. Plus I can fix it myself.
Ditto that, Verbal –
I love my ’02 Nissan Frontier for these reasons; I’d love a ’70s pickup for the same reasons even more!
I drove a 2012 V6 RAV4 for many years. Sleeper indeed. I like the Mazda CX-50 that replaced it, but it would be a better car with a V6 and all the safety and compliance stuff deleted.
There’s trouble in EeeVee land, admits the Lügenpresse, even as it continues spewing absurd lies about cliiiiiiiimate change:
‘Now, the decades-long tug of war between combustion engine and electric cars is intensifying again, and electric cars may be in trouble, at least in the United States.
‘The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to undercut the growth of electric vehicles, impose a new tax on them and swing federal policy sharply in favor of oil and gasoline.
‘Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks [sic] they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace.
‘A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines.
‘The triumph of internal combustion made long-distance travel accessible to the masses and helped power the U.S. economy. It also led to deadly urban air pollution and has been a major cause of climate change.‘ — NY Slimes
https://archive.ph/u36QW#selection-799.0-799.208
Head-spinning, ain’t it — the Lügenpresse finally confesses what Eric has been preaching for nigh on a decade now: EeeVees aren’t convenient.
But then to make up for telling the truth for once in their blighted lives, the frayed-collar stenographers start barking like little chihuahuas on meth: Deadly pollution! Climate change!! YAP! YAP YAP!
Oh wait, there’s a misgendering issue too:
‘Electric cars have not just been hampered by politics. They also had to overcome gender stereotypes. Their benefits [sic] like quiet, smooth operation were considered by some men to be too feminine, and, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many models like the Baker Electric were explicitly marketed only to women.
‘Advertisements for the early electrics hang on the walls of Jay Leno’s Burbank garage. “Make This the Happiest Christmas — Give Your Wife an Electric,” proclaims one. On another, a young woman pleads, “Daddy Get Me a Baker.”
‘Daddy get me a Baker!‘ — AH HA HA HA! Sure, my sweet, but it’s gonna cost you a hummer. And I’m not paying extra for no Fapzonic exhaust. That’s for the lady boys.
The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo’s math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter
— Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues
As a shop owner and operator, I have little to no qualms about non-plug-in hybrids. They have never had the spontaneous combustion issue of EVs. I will be banning plug-ins from my property, as I do full EVs, as they are equally suspect and not worth losing everything I own to please the ‘in’ crowd.
We have a Constitutional Right to Freedom of Association, and I will defend that, with my life if need be!
‘I have little to no qualms about non-plug-in hybrids.’ — gtc
Ditto. Nor would I call a hybrid a ‘device,’ as the sensationalistic headline does.
Devices have no direct shaft connection between an internal combustion engine and the driving wheels.
Thus an EeeVee with an auxiliary IC engine to charge the battery is a device, while a hybrid which can add electric motor boost to the primary IC engine drive is not.
Both Mazda and Dodge are giving their EVs the axe, at least for now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_NqOLygTdg
Never under estimate the state’s ability to F*** things up.
It’s literally the only thing they are “good” at.
I suppose that would include killing people, which is what they are best at.
….all the while telling you they are trying to help you, or that it is for your own good.
Another downside to the price and complexity is that as of next year, EVERY Camry and RAV will have a lithium ion hybrid battery. As these menacing batteries are now becoming ubiquitous, I’d be terrified to have one in my garage for fear of a thermal runaway event.
At least for the time being, the Crown’s hybrid battery is nickel metal hydride.
The biggest problem with EVs and Hybrids in my opinion is that long term durability is reduced compared with straight ICE cars. Even cars with CVTs and less reliable engines can last a lot longer with more frequent fluid changes and maintenance. As I’m not aware of anything that will lengthen the battery life of an EV other than even slower charging which is not available to most so I consider them a bad deal.
Almost all my vehicle’s are over 25 years old and some over 50 years old. I’ll also admit they live sedate lives as garage queens till I beat on them like a rented mule; but it seems like a waste not to enjoy a rat motored Chevy.
In a slowing economy I wonder how well a hybrid will sell and how much it’s value will drop when it needs a new battery when it’s less than 10 years old, let alone when repairs on a more complicated drive train are needed.