How Toyota designed the new RAV4 for the future: interview

Imagine having this on your resume: “Chief Engineer of the World’s Best-Selling Car.” A claim like this is sure to turn heads at your next interview. For Yoshinori Futonagane, the man behind the sixth-generation Toyota RAV4, it’s a badge he wears with pride.

Futonagane-san is currently supervising the latest Rav 4 In addition to the Highlander and Grand Highlander, which are two of the most popular SUVs from Toyota. So, it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two about what American drivers are looking for.

When it comes to the RAV4 in particular, Futonagani-san understands its importance in the United States — and the significant risks associated with launching an all-new hybrid version this year. By our standards, Toyota’s new RAV4 already shows a lot of promise, although the journey to production hasn’t been without its challenges.

We recently sat down with Yoshinori Futonagane to learn more about what it will take to bring the next-generation RAV4 to life, and how Toyota plans to maintain this sales success over the next few years. (The following conversation was conducted through a translator and has been lightly edited for clarity and length.)

Engine1: The RAV4 is a very important model for Toyota, so what is the biggest challenge in producing this new model?

Yoshinori Futonagani, Toyota: The big topic for us was how to electrify the car moving forward. So this challenge was we’re going to electrify the car, but how can we surprise the customer and make them say, “Wow?”

Just a short while ago, when you talked about converting a car to electric, it meant you’d get better fuel economy, but you might lose a little in terms of excitement. So we wanted to make sure that electrifying the RAV4 would make it a more dynamic and exciting car.

Was the decision from the beginning always to make the RAV4 a hybrid?

In the early stages of development, we were looking at all possibilities. But with the speed of the transition to electric vehicles these days, we reached a certain point where we had complete confidence and complete assurance that we could match and exceed the necessary performance expectations of the RAV4 through electrification.

The other important point is that we felt that the market itself would accept this kind of offer from us. And so it was a real timing problem. Hence, this accelerated our decision on which engines we will use for this new generation.

The plug-in hybrid model debuted with the Prime model a few years ago. With this new generation, would you like to expand the PHEV range to more customers?

Yes, we really wanted to expand the range of PHEVs because, firstly, plug-ins contribute greatly to carbon neutrality, but they also improve the dynamic performance of the vehicle as well.

There are two different shipping types for different decorations. What is the reason behind this?

So the SE and GR Sport don’t come with DC charging. We wanted to focus on the core performance aspect of these two models. So that was our main priority going into that. The XSE has DC charging. And thinking about the use case scenarios for these two different segments – a little bit higher end, a little bit higher end – and so we added the DC charging option for the customer. We wanted to give them the option to use DC charging in more situations.

Have there been any updates to the RAV4’s fifth-generation hybrid system?

The front-mounted units are the same as those found in the Camry. But the difference is that the RAV4 uses all-wheel drive. So the rear motor unit is different from the Camry.

What is the fuel economy strategy for the RAV4 Hybrid? What are the goals?

Fuel economy numbers per se were not the biggest priority when developing the new units. The biggest focus for them was, how can we make this new hybrid unit match the full potential, and work well with this new vehicle? How can we maximize that? As a result, we got an 8 to 10 percent improvement in fuel economy. But it wasn’t as if we were just looking to try to improve fuel economy per se.

GR Sport is new for this year. What is the strategy for adding the GR Sport model to the RAV4 lineup?

GR clearly lives in motorsport. So taking this racing technology and experience and integrating it into regular production cars is very important. If we look at the RAV4 customer, a lot of people enjoy driving. This is something we realized. And we understood.

So we wanted to increase the driving experience and enjoyment for these particular customers. This was one of the reasons why we wanted to take the technology and genetic expertise that we had within the Toyota group and apply that to the base RAV4.

The previous infotainment system wasn’t that old, so why was the decision made to create a new infotainment system in the RAV4?

So first, your comment, “Well, the previous generation system wasn’t that old” – that’s a really personal comment. But the biggest reason is that, recently, in particular, vehicle software – SDV (Software Defined Vehicles) – needs to be updated more and more. So for us, we wanted to use the SDV process to create safer cars as a priority.

And then let’s take the RAV4, then – 180 countries around the world, it has a very broad use case – so for us to apply it to the RAV4 is a reflection of our desire to make cars the safest, widest possible range of situations, and that’s a good benefit that the RAV4 can also offer us as a core platform.

Software-defined vehicles are a hot topic at the moment – ​​explain how Toyota wants to move further towards SDV and what exactly that means.

So the ultimate endgame is safer vehicles. But the ultimate endgame could be zero deaths and zero accidents. This is the direction we are moving in. So the RAV4 is almost at the starting line, in the very early stages. So, if we take our current safety system, TSS – Toyota Safety Sense – we’ve taken all the older versions of TSS and all that data so we can create better awareness with the newer systems, so you can react.

The one thing we had to make sure of was that the driver or passenger could use the interface more easily because that meant less distraction and safer driving. And also voice recognition. If the customer gets lost in the menus, it means you are distracted. Of course, this affects safety, but also as a product, it becomes harmful when the system is not good.

You want customers who are more driving-focused, but we’ve seen manufacturers remove hard buttons from their vehicles, including the RAV4. Will we see fewer hard buttons overall in the future, or will some buttons never go away?

When we talk about which buttons to let go of, and which ones not to let go of, when a driver or passenger first gets into the car, the immediate items — the items they want to touch — like climate control, defrosters, things that you just need to access immediately once you get into the car, we tried to leave out. You must have physical buttons for those.

What is the reason for placing certain things – such as fan speed – on the screen?

Our voice recognition functions can now handle this with ease. From here, agent education will also begin to play a role as we transform and evolve. One of the goals is also to reduce the number of items the driver must manually set and control each time.

How important is electrification to the RAV4 lineup overall? Would an electric RAV4 make sense?

When you start thinking about carbon neutrality, the impact of the RAV4 is huge. As you know, Toyota is now moving forward with a multi-track approach. We are not talking about an individual model per se. So each vehicle in our range has its own role and duty. So we look at it as kind of a complete portfolio. We take our lineup, and then we use that portfolio effectively, we use multiple paths to try to get to the carbon neutrality envelope.

When we go back to the RAV4, and if you’re talking about full BEVs, we obviously have the BZ. We are recalibrating the corona, ensuring that each vehicle delivers on its distinct role within the multi-track, within its portfolio, and within its natural characteristics.

But you’re right that we’re at a point in time now where each model may have different variables and a lot more than before, so we’re at that point in time. Obviously we can’t talk about product planning for the future, but from an era, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to save these things whether they’re on the table or not.

Maybe there will come a time when Toyota needs to consider a BEV RAV4.