The new Toyota RAV4 has plenty of people raving but, once again, Teknikens Varld in Sweden has thrown a fly in the ointment, with the RAV4 failing its moose test.
The world can rely on Teknikens Varld and its moose test to work out stability control and suspension tune weaknesses in new vehicles. And it’s done it again with the new Toyota RAV4.
Having tested two RAV4s to make sure it wasn’t a fault with just one vehicle, the test involves a vehicle being swerved, as if to avoid an animal (moose or, insert kangaroo). For the vehicle to meet approval rating, it needs to perform the high-speed swerve at 70km/h.
Unfortunately, the RAV4 only managed to do this at 68km/h. And even getting to that speed, according to the vehicle testers, was an unnerving stretch.
“Toyota RAV4 has quick front end reactions when we turn left into the lane. When we turn right it cuts in and the car goes up on two wheels. But the behaviour varies. Sometimes it goes up on two wheels with extreme reactions including severe skid tendencies, other times the car bounces sideways through the moose test and manages, in the midst of this hard to handle behaviour, to ease the worst forces and avoids going up on two wheels. But instead the car becomes willing to skid sideways.
After much effort and great hassle, we manage to reach 68 km/h (42 mph) – a speed that is not approved,” testers wrote.
This isn’t the first time a Toyota has failed the Teknikens Varld moose test, with the Toyota HiLux failing in 2007. Toyota swiftly responded then. And here’s what Toyota had to say in response to the Teknikens Varld test this time around.
“At Toyota, the safety of our customers is our number one priority, and to ensure their security, we apply strict safety tests during the development of all our products.
“Our internal tests fully meet the global standards for obstacle avoidance, and since 2016, we have updated our processes to also reflect the procedures used by Teknikens Värld. During its development stage, RAV4 successfully passed all internal tests, including the ISO 3888-2 and the Teknikens Varld Elk test.
“We give our assurance to all Toyota customers that they can be confident in the safety of their vehicles.”
