Toyota Debuting Electric RAV4 on May 7

Toyota has announced it will unveil the new RAV4 EV on May 7 at the 26th International Electric Vehicle Symposium in Los Angeles. 

Toyota mentioned this vehicle during its press conference at the North American International Auto Show but had no pictures of it at that time. 

This is not the first time that Toyota has offered an electric RAV4. The first generation RAV4 EV was sold from 1997 to 2003. The vehicles were leased to individuals and local governments. They had a top speed of 78mph and a maximum range between 100 and 120 miles depending on how it was driven. The RAV4 EV used a 27kWh NiMH battery mated to a single-speed automatic transmission. It was quite slow with acceleration to 60mph taking 18 seconds.

Toyota leased 1,484 cars during its lifetime, and 328 were leased to individual consumers. They had a base price of $42,000, but state and federal tax breaks dropped the price to $29,000 in California. 

Toyota also built 35 proof of concept, current generation RAV4 EVS with Tesla. These cars used Li-ion batteries with a 37kWh capacity with a range of 80 to 120 miles. Toyota had not said how the production version will differ from these pre-production models. 

The only image that Toyota released for the production model was the badge, which you can see in the gallery.