Imagine having this on your resume: “Chief Engineer for the world’s best-selling vehicle.” A claim like that would certainly turn heads at your next interview. For Yoshinori Futonagane, the man behind the sixth-generation Toyota RAV4, it’s a badge he wears proudly.
Futonagane-san currently oversees the latest RAV4 as well as the Highlander and Grand Highlander—three of Toyota’s most popular SUVs. So, it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two about what American drivers are after.
When it comes to the RAV4 in particular, Futonagane-san recognizes its importance in the US—and the significant risks associated with launching an all-new, hybrid-only version this year. By our measure, Toyota’s new RAV4 already shows lots of promise, though the journey to production wasn’t without its challenges.
We recently sat down with Yoshinori Futonagane to learn more about what it took to bring the next-generation RAV4 to life, and how Toyota plans to maintain that sales success over the next few years. (The following conversation was conducted through a translator and has been lightly edited for clarity and length.)
State of Motion
Welcome to State of Motion, where we sit down with automotive industry leaders to discuss where the car world is headed. Expect insight and candor from those defining the future of the car.
Motor1: RAV4 is such an important model for Toyota—what was the biggest challenge in producing this new one?
Yoshinori Futonagane, Toyota: A big topic for us was how we would electrify the vehicle moving forward. So this challenge was, we're going to electrify the car, but how can we surprise and make the customer say, ‘Wow?’
Just a short time ago, when you talked about electrifying a car, it meant you would get better fuel economy, but you might lose a little bit on the excitement side. So we wanted to make sure that electrifying the RAV4 would make it a more exciting, dynamic car.
Was the decision from the beginning to always make a hybrid RAV4?
In the very early stages of development, we were looking at all possibilities. But with the speed of electrification these days, there was a certain point where we had full confidence and full confirmation that we could match and surpass the performance expectations necessary for RAV4 through electrification.
Another big point was, we felt that the market itself would accept that kind of offering from us. And so it was a real timing issue. So from there, that accelerated our decision of which powertrains to use for this new generation.
The plug-in hybrid debuted with the Prime model a few years ago. With this new generation, did you want to expand the PHEV to more customers?
Yes, we really wanted to expand PHEVs because the plug-ins—one, they contribute greatly to carbon neutrality, but they also improve the dynamic performance of the vehicle as well.
There are two different charging types for different trims. What was the reasoning behind that?
So the SE and GR Sport do not come with DC charging. We wanted to focus on the fundamental performance aspect of those two models. So that was our main priority on that. And the XSE has DC charging. And thinking of the use case scenarios of those two different grades—a little bit more premium, a little bit higher end—and so we've added the DC charging option for the customer. We wanted to give them the option to use DC charging in more situations.
Were there any updates to the fifth-generation hybrid system on the RAV4?
The units that are mounted in the front are fundamentally the same as in the Camry. But the difference is that the RAV4 uses an all-wheel-drive system. So the rear motor unit is different from the Camry.
What was the strategy for fuel economy regarding the RAV4 Hybrid? What were the targets?
The fuel economy numbers themselves were not the big priority when putting the new units in. The bigger focus for them was, how can we make this new hybrid unit match the full potential, and really work well with this new vehicle? How can we maximize that? As a result, we had an improvement of 8 to 10 percent in fuel economy. But it wasn't like we were just looking to try to improve fuel economy by itself.
GR Sport is new for this year. What was the strategy in adding the GR Sport model to the RAV4 lineup?
So GR obviously lives within the motorsports. And so taking that racing technology and experience and infusing that into normal production cars is very important. If we look at the RAV4 customer, a lot of people do enjoy driving. And that was something that we realized. And we understood.
So we wanted to increase the driving experience, the fun of that, for those particular customers. And so that was one reason why we wanted to take the GR technology and experience that we had within the Toyota group and to apply that to the RAV4 base.
The previous infotainment system wasn’t that old, so why was there a decision to do a new infotainment system in the RAV4?
So first, your comment of, ‘well, the previous generation system wasn't that old’—that's really subjective. But the biggest reason is, just lately, especially, vehicle software—SDV (software defined vehicles)—they need to be updated more and more often. And so for us, we wanted to use the SDV process to further create safer cars as a priority.
And then you take the RAV4, then—180 countries all across the world, it’s got a very wide use case—so for us to implement it on the RAV4 is a reflection of our desire to make cars safer, the widest range of situations possible, and that's a good benefit that the RAV4 can also give us as a base platform.
Software-Defined Vehicles is a hot topic right now—explain how Toyota wants to move more toward SDV and what that means exactly.
So the ultimate endgame is safer vehicles. But the ultimate, ultimate endgame might be zero fatalities, zero accidents. And so that's the direction we're going in. And so the RAV4 is almost just at the starting line, at the very early stages. So if we took our current safety system, TSS—Toyota Safety Sense—we took all the older versions of TSS and all that data so that we could create better awareness for the newer systems, so that it could react.
One thing that we had to make sure of is that the driver or the passenger could more intuitively use the interface because that means less distraction, safer driving. And also voice recognition. If the customer gets lost in the menus, then you're distracted. Of course, it affects safety, but also as a product, it becomes a detriment when the system’s not good.
You want customers who are more focused on driving, but we’ve seen manufacturers removing hard buttons from their vehicles—RAV4 included. Will we see fewer hard buttons in general going forward, or will certain buttons never disappear?
When we're talking about which buttons should be left, which should not, when the driver or the passenger first sits in the car, the immediate ones—items that they want to touch—such as climate control, defrosters, things that you just need to access right away as soon as you get in the car, we’ve tried to leave. You need to have physical buttons for those.
What was the reasoning for putting certain things—like fan speed—onto the screen?
Our voice recognition functions can now easily handle that. From here, dealer education is also going to start to play a role as we shift and we evolve. One goal is also to minimize the number of items that the driver must manually set and control every time.
How important is electrification to the RAV4 lineup in general? Would an electric RAV4 make sense?
When you start thinking about carbon neutrality, the impact of the RAV4 is very big. So as you're aware, Toyota is now moving forward with the multi-pathway approach. And we're not talking about an individual model, per se. So each vehicle in our lineup has its own role, its own duty. So we look at it as sort of a whole portfolio. We take our lineup, and then using that portfolio effectively, we use the multi-pathway to try to get into the envelope of carbon-neutrality.
When we go back to the RAV4, and if you're talking about full BEVs, obviously, we have the BZ. We're recalibrating the wreath, making sure that each vehicle is providing its own distinct role within the multi-pathway, within its portfolio, and its natural characteristics.
But you are correct in that we're at a stage in time right now where each model might have different, many more variants than previously, so we are at that point in time. Obviously, we cannot talk about product planning for the future, but from a time era thing, it wouldn't be far off to save these were on the table or not on the table.
Maybe the timing will come to where [Toyota] needs to consider a BEV RAV4.
