Driving the Toyota Rav4

North Las Vegas Travelog #13
Back at the hotel - Sun, 19 Feb 2023, 5pm

Our rental car this trip is a Toyota Rav4. I've been assigned Rav4s as rental cars a few times over the years. Avis, the agency I normally rent from, has them in the "Mid-sized SUV" category that's considered an upgrade to "Full-size car" category I normally purchase. So I've gotten them as "upgrades" a few times from, say, a Toyota Camry.

To date I've never been impressed with the Rav4. The performance (from the base engines) has been "meh" at best, road noise and harshness have been problems, and the middling fuel economy has been nothing to write home about. This is my first experience, though, with the current generation Rav4. It debuted for model year 2019. Would it be better?

Right away on Friday afternoon after I picked up the Rav4 I was disappointed with its performance. The engine was sluggish and wheezy despite its spec of 203 horsepower. Accelerating to highway speed to merge onto the interstate was a leisurely affair, and I didn't feel safe with other vehicles whizzing past me at 80mph.

That's what stood out in the first 20 miles of driving. What about since then?



In the past 2 days I've actually put a fair number of miles on this car, about 200 so far. Sure, I could easily have logged 3-4x that number if this were a road trip, but remember we're staying in North Las Vegas all three nights this trip. So far I've driven back to the airport to pick up Hawk, then driven out to a couple of parks— Red Rock Canyon yesterday, and Valley of Fire today. The pic above of the car is from Valley of Fire.

So, after 200 miles of driving experience, what stands out?

1) Performance is weak. There's no two ways about it, this car just feels slow. The engine nominally makes 203 horsepower, and the transmission's 8 forward gears suggest that it could keep the engine in its sweet spot while accelerating, but the whole system seems programmed for fuel economy even when the driver's pressing hard on the throttle. To merge safely on Nevada's high-speed freeways (even in Las Vegas everybody has V8 pickup trucks and SUVs they drive at 80+ mph) I have to drive the Rav4 like I'm mad at it. And it wheezes angrily when I do. Shifting the transmission to Sport mode helps a bit; the transmission holds gears longer when accelerating. But the powertrain is still reluctant and noisy.

2) Features are a mixed bag of cheap and upscale. The car I'm driving is a Rav4 LE AWD. LE trim is the base model, so I understand that this car won't have all the bells-and-whistles I might want. That said, it's surprising what's included in the base model— and what isn't.

2a) Standard iPhone integration. The most pleasing surprise is the inclusion of bluetooth with Apple Car Play and Android Auto integration. That makes it easy to tether our smartphones for playing music, using maps, and answering calls. The integration even reads text messages and can take voice dictation for responses. ...This isn't new, BTW. It's just a treat to find it in base trim of a not-luxury car.

2b) Nanny comes standard. Also a bit surprising to see as standard on the base trim is a suite of driver-safety nannies. The Rav4 comes standard with lane keeping assist, traffic sign recognition, cruise control speed adjustment, and you-haven't-called-your-mother-in-a-whole-week alerts. Thankfully the driver before me had turned off most of these annoying nannies so I didn't have to go hunting through the menu system to find where the options are embedded and disable them. What's more irritating to me is that I were to buy a Rav4 I'd have to pay for them— they're not an option. They can't be cheap, as things like traffic sign recognition use cameras mounted in various places around the car. Plus, how much does it cost to fix when that stuff breaks?

2c) Cheapo climate controls. While base-model cars in the US pretty much all come with standard features that were upgrades years ago— thinks like power windows and power locks— it's interesting to see where manufacturers cut corners to keep costs down. One place that's obvious in the Rav4 is the climate control system. There's a nice, big knob for temperature— yay for obvious, intuitive, direct analog controls, BTW— but the system doesn't display a temperature number. It's just left-for-cooler, right-for-warmer. The system's got to have a thermostat to work; how hard is it to connect that up to the car's already-multitudinous computers— remember, it's got cameras and image processing to recognize road signs!— to display a helpful little figure like 71°?! For heaven's sake the car has a system to display the outside temperature in degrees, it just can't do the same for the inside temperature or set point!!

3) Comfort? Meh. Comfort-wise there's nothing wrong with the Rav4, but there's also nothing great about it. The front seats are adequate. Ride comfort is adequate. Road noise levels are at least kept to reasonable levels, unlike earlier generations.

4) Fuel economy also Meh. So far I've averaged about 27mpg on mostly highway driving. Compared to the EPA specs of 27 city/35 highway/30 combined that's poor. Maybe knock off 1-2mpg from the specs for the AWD system, which I'm not even using so far? I dunno. If the car were a speed demon, these results would be fine. But it's not; acceleration is poor. So this fuel economy is also poor.

Signor Frog's lasagna from Costco

A few weeks ago I decided to try a pre-made lasagna from the refrigerator case at Costco. No, this wasn't Costco's Kirkland brand lasagna; we tried one of those a few years ago. This is a new brand I saw for the first time and decided to try it.



At only 42oz. (about 800g) it's less than half the size of a Kirkland frozen lasagna. I figured if it sucked there'd be less waste to throw out. 😅 But seriously, I bought it in hopes that it would be better than the Kirkland variety. The fact it's sold under a third-party manufacturer's name is a positive sign... even if I've never heard of them before. The fact it's advertised as beef and short rib is a plus, too. I don't like lasagna that's got too much pasta and not enough protein. And since it's sold refrigerated rather than frozen I figured it's likely higher quality.



Hawk decided she wasn't going to be part of eating this lasagna. Even if she were, the package would be 2 meals for us. For me, solo, it's 3 meals. I decided since the lasagna come refrigerated, not frozen, I'd divide it into 3 pieces, cook 1, and pack away the other 2. So I had three, 14oz. (400g.) portions.

How did it turn out?



Well, since I portioned out the lasagna before cooking it I didn't cook it in the plastic dish it came in. It got a bit sloppy on the baking pan, especially when I went to scoop it up with a spatula after 20 minutes. Thus what landed on my plate didn't exactly look delicious... but I didn't let that faze me because it looked tasty enough while cooking.

The lasagna tasted fine. The texture of the noodles, sauce, and cheese were reasonably good— the best so far I've had from a pre-made, store-bought lasagna. (Not that I've had many....) It was nicely meaty, too, with the bits of short rib providing a nice textural difference from the ground beef.

Of the two portions I set aside, one I put one in my fridge and the other I froze because I wasn't sure how long it'd take me to get back to it. I wasn't ready for more lasagna the very next day but it was tasty enough I was ready for another meal of it a few days later. The lasagna kept well in the fridge, and the piece I froze cooked fine from frozen.

This is one store-bought lasagna I'd actually buy again. The quality is good, and the smaller package size— 3 meals for me versus 7— makes it easier to embrace than a larger frozen package or the standard pan size of making it home-made.