sandrafish9: Toyota RAV4 EV

Two years ago, we were announcing that Toyota and Tesla Motors had entered an agreement that would net Tesla $60 million to design and manufacture an all-electric powertrain for the RAV4 SUV. Finally, after all of this time we have a debut date set. Unfortunately, it isn’t a showroom debut, but rather a showing of the final product.

Toyota has just announced that it will release this new Tesla and Toyota collaboration to the U.S. at the International Electric Vehicle Symposium in LA on the May 7th at noon. We still don’t have any precise details on this upcoming vehicle, except for an image of the vehicle’s logo. We do have some footage of the test mule, but we assume that the final product will be a good bit different than that model.

The test mule for the RAV4 EV was powered by a a Tesla-built lithium metal oxide battery that has a usable output rated somewhere in the mid-30 kilowatt-per-hour range. The battery was built and supplied exclusively by Tesla for the Rav4 EV, among other parts. The new RAV4 EV will likely use a variant of the same electric drivetrain used in the Tesla Model X, but it will be tuned more for efficiency than performance. The RAV4 EV could also potentially carry the same dual-motor AWD platform that the Model X has. It will also come with a 60 or 85 kWh battery – 60 kWh would be standard and 85 kWh would be optional.

For now, this is all we have on this upcoming model and we’ll keep you up to date as more information comes out about this revival of the RAV4 EV.