FIRST DRIVE 2026 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid | 5th Gen Redesign + 320 HP PHEV Details!
Welcome to Everyday Reviews and welcome to Woodstock, Ontario. What’s the significance of our location? Well, Woodstock is home to TMMC, which is Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, one of their two plants. And this plant builds a lot of cars. How many? Well, they’ve built over 11 million Toyotas to date. And two of those models are really important, and that is the RAV 4 and the RAV 4 Hybrid. So, we’re here as one of the very first to test drive the brand new sixth generation RAV 4. How important is this vehicle to Toyota? Well, it’s the bestselling compact SUV in both Canada, and of course, North America, the United States as well. So, a lot of cars are built here. And for 2026, all new redesign on the sixth generation. Lots of changes, including, hey, it only comes electrified now. So, stay tuned. [Music] Compared to the outgoing RAV 4, the dimensions of the new generation RAV pretty well remain the same, as does the wheelbase. The big change though is the styling. Design-wise, Toyota has gone bold. You’ll notice a more defined hammerhead front end. It’s inspired by the latest Prius and the Crown. You can even say the Lexus RX. It’ll come with three distinct personalities. There is the Core, which is clean and refined. You’ll see it on the LE, the XLE, and the Limited. You get a paint match grill. It’s all one piece, so making manufacturer even easier. It has chiseled lines and it comes as a hybrid only. The next one is the rugged or your outdoor adventure style, and that’s your woodland edition. This gets a different split grill. You also get higher ground clearance, all-terrain tires, roof rails with crossarss. You get integrated rigid fog lamps, and a standard trailer hitch. And I have to say, this turned out even better than I was expecting. They executed this very well. Next personality is the sport and that includes the SE and the XSE and the very first ever GR Sport plug-in hybrid which gets aggressive styling, larger wheels, and a lower stance. I love this red. By the way, all Ravs are available with a power rear hatch as well as a hands-free option. Like the outgoing model, lots of great flat utility once you open it up. And check this out. You get a spare tire. No inflator kit here. And just like the outside of the RAV 4, the inside is completely redesigned. Uh we have Michael from Trackworthy in the driver’s seat. We are on our way to Woodstock to the plant where they actually make these RAV 4s. But before we get there, let’s talk about some of the interior changes. And there are a lot of them. Okay, first up, I got to say it has been so warm in the Ontario area for the last probably month or so. Definitely unlike temperatures for this time of year. Other than today, it is pouring rain as you can see in some of these videos. It’s it’s basically flooding, but okay. What is overflowing though are new features on the interior of this RAV 4. Starting from the two screens that you see standard now you have a 12.3 in instrument display and of course you can change different things on it. If you go and change your drive modes you get all these different animations in the middle you go from 8 in to 10.5 in that we have here. But if you go for the XSD tech package that goes all the way up to 12.9 in. Now this also has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Not only that, they have a new system called Arenine. And this system, first of all, it has a lot more RAM. It’s four times faster. You have a lot more storage, 256 gigs of storage. We have overthe-air updates depending on what trim you get. You have 360 cameras. And check this out. I’m not sure if this is just because as you can see here, we are running pre-production software right now, but uh this when we actually hit our camera button is showing us the cameras in operation while we are driving on the highway right now. Normally they normally turn off. But speaking of cameras, another thing this is a big thing and I’ve said this for years that any manufacturer should be every manufacturer should be doing is using the cameras that are already built in to the vehicle for the safety systems. And why not turn them into dash cameras or as they call it here drive recorders. Now, this actually has drive recording, and that is standard on every single RAV 4. That’s amazing. And, you know, you can you can have a trigger as well. Yeah. So, doesn’t matter what you get, you’re going to get a dash camera. Another thing, big improvement, this one has heated steering wheel. We have heated seats in this woodlands as well. If you go for the XSSE tech package uh that we drove earlier as well, you also get ventilated seats and heated rear seats. But the big difference, this heated steering wheel is heated all the way around. This not it’s not only halfway like we had on our Highlander before. I always criticize Toyota for Hey, why don’t you heat the whole thing? All right, so now you’re getting a full heated steering wheel on there. You have lots of storage. I can put another phone right beside that wireless charging spot. We have a shelf area up top. Down below, more storage. And you’ll see on here you have these quick buttons here. So if we want to change our drive mode, an easy push, you want to go back to normal, just hit that. And if you have your different terrains, your trail, your snow, uh right there. Another thing to note, which I’m a fan of, first of all, on the bottom dock, this is permanent. It’s always on there. You can always see your your uh HVAC controls, but you have hard buttons for your temperature adjustment there, as well as your defrost for your front and rear. Also new, this is the regular shifter that you get on this wood lens, but if you go into the XST Tech, which we drove, it uses a shift by wire shifter, and it saves some room up front. Here we have two drink holders here. As you can see, the water bottles, standard water bottles. This would hold a nice Yeti tumbler. 45 watt charging for the USBC’s here. There’s five USBC’s in this vehicle. And we get to storage in the middle here. This middle bin opens both ways. Sorry, Michael. And not only that, there’s another party trick. It comes right off. So, you could use this as a tray. So, hey, go through the drive-thru, put your burger and fries up there. No, just kidding. But, uh, it is a pretty good tray, though. It’s not bad at all. See, there it is. That’s pretty cool. I like that. This woodland has a regular rearview mirror. However, on the XSSE with technology package, that turns into a digital rear view mirror. We get a sunroof here with a manual sun shade. Top trim of the tech package that we we’re talking about gets the panoramic roof with the power sun shade. These seats are made out of soft text. Essentially, it is their artificial leather. I like the color. This is mineral, but you see you get these orange accents uh throughout this woodland trim here and including the steering wheel right there. Yeah. So, this trim does not have it, but the XSC with technology package for the first time in a RAV 4 is available with a brand new head-up display. One thing I’m should note on this system here, what I really do like is if you’re using your mobile, for instance, your CarPlay’s navigation, the turnbyturn uh instructions or directions will actually show up on your instrument cluster. out. [Laughter] Not only was it cool to be one of the first to drive these pre-production RAV 4s, but getting a chance to see where they’re produced is even maybe even cooler. Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada or TMMC in Ontario does have some flexes other than the producer of the RAV 4, like being the first plant outside of Japan to manufacture Lexus vehicles or being the top award-winning plant globally. They’ve produced over 11 million vehicles. And on a short visit, we learn about the stringent quality control and machine and human logistics involved in producing over half a million vehicles per year. This here is the Carakuri dojo, which associates can learn and try out different techniques using some common physics to reduce workloads while being more efficient. By doing so, not only increases productivity, but can reduce strain and injury to the associate as well. You know what? They’ve really thought about everything at this plant. TMMC is often benchmarked when it comes to automotive production, and I can see why. Time to get behind the driver’s seat. All right, that was pretty incredible, wasn’t it? Like, can you believe that? Like, the thing is every 54 seconds, under a minute, there’s a new RAV 4 rolling off the assembly line at that plant. That’s just it’s mind-blowing. Yet, they still can’t make enough of them. That’s how popular the RAV 4 has been and it has been for years and you know and wait till the sixth generation comes you know so uh we mentioned earlier on at the beginning hey it’s electrified yes now all RAV 4s are electrified that doesn’t mean that they are EVs but there’s no more gas only variants so now it’s only either a hybrid or plug-in hybrid and so at the Woodstock plant they are making the hybrid the PHEV it will be made in Japan. Uh the hybrid is also made in the Cambridge plant as well I believe in Kentucky in the United States. So yeah, hopefully they they can ramp things up and build lots of these. So what’s powering this? It’s different again. So you have a 2 and 1/2 L 4-cylinder that’s matched to a fifth generation hybrid system now. So power has been increased. So, you go from 219 to 236 horsepower now. And that’s thanks to you get a larger electric front motor. 134 kW before, now it’s 150 kW. You have the same 40 kW in the rear. In Canada, all RAV 4s are all-wheel drive. We do not have a two-w wheelel drive variant uh here, which makes sense because most Canadians will opt for the all-wheel drive. So, let’s quickly talk about the PHEV, which we do not have here to test yet. It will be coming out in late in Q1, uh, by the way, and we’ll make sure that we test that and you’ll let you know when it comes out. So, that one is all new. Quite a few things new. First of all, you get a larger battery. You go from 18 kW to over 20 kW now, and that’s going to increase your EV range by 20%. So you get an estimated 80 kilometers of range. Now that’s pretty incredible, right? And I personally know people that own the current generation RAV 4 Prime or PHEV and they’re getting sometimes in the summertime over 80 km themselves. That’s about 50 mi. Uh so I think that this one will actually get even better than that. Uh not only that, you’re going to get more power, 320 horsepower now as well, faster charging. So, uh depending on what trim you get, you can get, you know, for regular uh level two charging, 11.2 kW charging, it’ll charge us to about, you know, from zero to 100% in about 3 hours. But if you get the XSC with a tech package, you will actually get DC fast charging up to 50 kW. That’s really, really good. That’s going to be really quick. And what they’ve done is they’ve made a very popular vehicle even better. And it’s going to be even more popular, which they say that they’re going to take care of that because you guys probably know how hard it is or was to get a RAV 4 Prime or a PHV. I personally was trying to buy one and I know some people that waited years to get their prime. So, uh, Toyota Canada says that they are hoping to sell 20% of their RAV 4s as PHEVs, which means they’re going to have to get more. They are going to have to, you know, get more build get more built and have them available for us Canadians here. The PHEV’s lithium battery is not only larger now, they’ve actually redesigned it, they has better thermal management. It can use a heater to to heat the battery up for optimal charging even now and cooling it. And that’s going to help for longevity as well. Uh, also, it’s been repackaged. It’s more compact. And what they’ve done now, because it’s more compact, they’re able to even put the onboard charger and bring it back up front underneath the hood, which frees up room in the rear, so there’s less compromise for any type of cargo area, which is really good. Now, we mentioned the different trims. You have the core, you get the rugged, and then you have the sport trims. Uh the PHEV is not available in every trim. In the US, you could actually get it with the Woodland uh that we actually showed you the interior of. In Canada, the Woodland only comes with the two and a half hybrid. Uh but if you go into the the SE, the XSE, and the new GR Sport, that comes with a PHEV. Uh so that’s huge. That GR Sport, hopefully we can actually get one of those to test. That thing’s going to be hot. Not only, first of all, you’re getting an updated suspension, so it’s a sportier suspension. You get, you know, 320 horsepower. It has a different appearance. Not only that, even the wheels are different on there. They they they’re 5 lbs lighter per rim, and that unsprung weight will also make a difference with that suspension. So, make sure to follow along. We’ll let you know when we actually get one of those. Now, speaking of suspension and ride, one big thing they’ve improved on this new uh platform here is the ride, the harshness and the noise. And we have really tested that today. First of all, it’s been pouring rain. Pouring uh and this thing is it’s really isolated us from the gross weather outside. It is noticeably quieter and that’s due to how they’ve actually manufactured this vehicle. They they use more high strength steel. They use different adhesives. They use more welds. There’s about 500 more welds. I believe it’s around 4,100 welds on this vehicle when previously it was around 3500 and something. So more welds means a more rigid uh platform. Suspension can work better, but it’s also a lot quieter. And with this torque with the electric system, it’s fairly seamless. It really is. When that uh gas engine does come on, now if you really put your foot into it and demand uh the engine to actually really work, you are you are going to hear it as you can hear there. But yeah, the pickup is good. It’s really really smooth. And of course, fuel economy is where it’s going to really, really shine. Real world fuel consumption for all day. We’ve been driving for uh close to 6 hours on the road today. Uh we are averaging 6.2 L per 100 kilometers in combined city and highway driving in the pouring rain. We mentioned some of the standard features like the drive recorder. That’s pretty amazing. Like we just tested the the Hyundai Palisade which I you know had a first ever dash camera built in but that was only available on the very top trim. The fact that Toyota has included this on every single trim of RAV 4 is is amazing. It really is. Now which cameras is it going to use? It’s going to use whatever cameras your vehicle is equipped with with your package. So, if you don’t have a surround view or 360 camera or panoramic camera, then it’s only probably going to have just the front and the rear. Another thing that comes standard is Toyota Safety Sense 4.0. The current one is at 2.5. So, this is it’s improved in all aspects. And one thing that’s very, very different is they all come with radar cruise control. So, you can set your distance uh with the vehicle in front of you. But now this radar cruise control has different settings. You can set it to an eco setting. So what that’s going to do is it’s going to maximize, you know, your efficiency. It’s not going to make make you tailgate, but it’s going to set the distance where you’re going to maximize your your aerodynamics, for instance. Uh so that’s going to actually help save along with the hybrid system. Another thing that’s going to help save, they have these air flaps uh now and it’s they’re standard as well that they’re basically right by the front tire that over 70 km an hour they’ll come down and it’s going to actually create better aerodynamics for you know for an SUV we kind of need it. The new RAV 4 really hits all the marks. You have you know better utility, more efficiency, more power, more technology. It’s all there in. So, they really made a a good package even better. And this vehicle is very important to Toyota. How important? Well, you know what? They’ve sold over 14 million RAV 4s globally. A million of them right here in Canada alone, you know, so they couldn’t really screw it up. And they really didn’t. It really is everything that the previous RAV 4 was, but just enhanced and just made better. And by doing that, it’s just kind of really cementing their place at the top of the compact SUV and I’d say probably for many more years to come. So, what do you think? Make sure to leave a comment below and also hit that subscribe button and that bell notification if you haven’t already because when the new PHEV comes and we get to test that, you’ll know when that video drops from Ontario. Hope to see you on the next everyday review. Ciao. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]
The 2026 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid is here — redesigned for its 6th generation and built proudly in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada 🇨🇦
Join Brian Chow from Everyday Reviews as he takes you behind the scenes at Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing plant and behind the wheel of multiple Hybrid trims, including the XLE, Limited, and Woodland Edition. For 2026, every RAV4 is 100% electrified, available as a Hybrid (HEV) or Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) — no gas-only models.
🔥 2026 Toyota RAV4 Highlights:
New 5th-Generation Hybrid System with 236 HP (up from 219 HP)
Standard AWD on all Canadian Hybrid models
6th-Gen Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) with up to 320 HP and 80 km EV-only range
Three new design personalities: Core, Rugged, and Sport
All-new RAV4 GR SPORT – developed with Toyota GAZOO Racing, featuring GR-tuned suspension, aggressive styling, 20” wheels, and the powerful PHEV system
RAV4 Woodland Edition – higher ride height, all-terrain tires, roof rails, and integrated Rigid Industries LED lights
Upgraded ride comfort and cabin refinement thanks to reinforced frame joints and improved suspension mounting points
New tech: Toyota’s Arene software platform, Toyota Safety Sense 4.0, and a next-gen multimedia system with wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and dual Bluetooth connectivity
Digital cockpit with a 12.3” digital gauge cluster and up to a 12.9” touchscreen display
Shift-by-wire toggle shifter for a cleaner, more modern interior design
Built right here in Canada, the new RAV4 continues Toyota’s long-standing reputation for reliability, quality, and innovation. The Woodstock, Ontario facility has produced more than 11 million vehicles across its Canadian plants, including the RAV4, RAV4 Hybrid, Lexus RX, and NX models.
🏆 The RAV4 remains Canada’s best-selling SUV, with over 6 million sold nationally, and continues to lead Toyota’s global electrified lineup of 24 million hybrid and plug-in vehicles sold worldwide.
🔔 Subscribe for my full review of the RAV4 Plug-In Hybrid GR SPORT when it arrives — with 320 horsepower and 80 km of EV range!
