The Sweet Spot
More and more plug-in hybrids are entering the market that can travel well over 100 kilometers on electric power alone. Toyota believes an electric range of around 100 kilometers is sufficient for its plug-in hybrids for the time being.
Not so long ago, a plug-in hybrid with an electric range of just over 50 kilometers was not bad at all. Nowadays, many plug-in hybrids squeeze more than 100 electric kilometers out of their battery. Think of the very recent plug-in hybrids from the brands of the Volkswagen Group. That car manufacturer is certainly not the only one that offers PHEVs with a range of over 100 kilometers. For example, the Renault Rafale E-Tech also travels well over 100 kilometers on electric power alone, Mercedes-Benz has several plug-ins in its range that achieve this, and Lynk & Co has the 08 on the menu, with which you can even cover 200 electric kilometers. And Toyota? It thinks 100 kilometers is enough for the time being.
Andrea Carlucci – Head of Marketing and Product Development at Toyota Motor Europe – says that an electric range of 100 kilometers for the time being offers ‘the right balance’ between what it costs to equip a fuel car with batteries and what it yields. Carlucci says this during the Automotive News Europe Congress in front of – you guessed it – Automotive News Europe. Larger batteries simply make a plug-in more expensive.
The electric range of around 100 kilometers that Carlucci mentions is of course not chosen at random. The brand new Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid has an electric range of up to 100 kilometers behind its name. The new RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid gets those 100 electric kilometers from a 22.68 kWh battery pack. The plug-in hybrid versions of the previous generation Toyota RAV4 reached around 75 kilometers on electric power alone.
Incidentally, the Toyota RAV4 Plug-in Hybrid is currently the only plug-in hybrid Toyota that can achieve an electric range of 100 kilometers. The Toyota Prius is only available as a plug-in and travels up to 86 kilometers without recharging, the Toyota C-HR – which is also available as a Hybrid – manages to reach an electric range of 66 kilometers as a Plug-in Hybrid.