Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Wednesday, Oct. 22.
By any definition, the Toyota RAV4 is the star of the automaker's U.S. lineup. Deliveries of the handy little crossover rose 16 percent to 118,683 during the third quarter and gained 2.2 percent to 358,134 vehicles for the first nine months.
The typical U.S. Toyota dealer sells roughly one RAV4 every business day, as Larry P. Vellequette wrote in this story today. The RAV4 by itself would outsell several major brands in the U.S.
But in the ultimate first-world problem, deliveries of the 2026 RAV4 will be choppy and dealerships will be stretched to maintain their inventories.
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Unlike most other automakers heading into a model changeover, Toyota won't follow a sell-down strategy, Vellequette wrote. "Ours is a max build-out strategy. If we can build [2025 models] a day longer, if we can build them over a weekend on overtime, anything we can do to get the vehicles into the marketplace, we're obviously doing so," Damon Rose, vice president of sales for the Toyota brand, told Automotive News in an exclusive interview.
As a result, Toyota has pushed back the redesigned RAV4's U.S. launch past its original end-of-year timeline. But it's also given the four plants longer to prepare for the switch, our story says. Japan-built RAV4s will make the roughly two-week ocean voyage to the U.S. and be stockpiled to serve as the stopgap supply.
Yoshinori Futonagane, chief engineer for the sixth-generation RAV4, as well as the Highlander and the Grand Highlander, said in our story that Toyota will do its plant changeovers in stages to keep inventory flowing as much as possible. Japan will go first later this year, then the two plants in Canada, and then Georgetown, Ky.
As for the new RAV4 itself, Vellequette wrote that the different versions carry different looks and capabilities, but they all share one of two powertrains: a standard 2.5-liter four-cylinder hybrid powertrain rated at 226 hp in front-wheel-drive configurations and 236 hp with all-wheel-drive options, or a plug-in hybrid powertrain that offers up to 50 miles of electric-only range and up to 324 hp.
Pricing for the 2026 Toyota RAV4 will start "in the $30,000 range," Toyota told Vellequette, but specific pricing won't be available until closer to its launch in the first quarter of 2026.
That's it for now. If you want to view this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
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